I have a client that had previously been with a company that had done
what you describe below... the company had registered the domain name,
naming itself as both Administrative Contact and Technical Contact.
When the client decided to use us as their site designer and relocate their
domain to another ISP, the new ISP processed the paperwork with InterNic
to have the domain relocated. The original company, not wanting to lose
the business ($70/mo for maintenance that never happened), refused to
answer InterNic's attempts to contact them. Since the domain name was
nearly indentical to the client's business name, Internic, after a
week of no response from the domain name's "owner", changed both the
Administrative Contact and Technical Contact information to reflect the
"true" ownership and the domain was successfully relocated to the new
ISP location and placed under our control at the client's request.
I guess the point of all this is that even though you might place the
domain name "ownership" in your name with your client's permission,
they may still be able to take back control and ownership of it without
your permission should they ever desire to do so... especially if the
domain name resembles their business name or any other trademarks they
may have rights to.
As to your basic question, I do NOT think it is a good idea to do it
for the reasons you describe. If your only "lock" on keeping your client
is your domain name "ownership", you're doing something wrong. Far
better to have the domain name registered with your client listed as
Administrative Contact and your company as Technical Contact and let
your service and client relationship be the basis for keeping them as
clients. And yes, IMHO, I believe you could be held "legally"
accountable for any content on a domain listing you as both AC and TC,
but that is just my opinion... check with a "cyber-aware" attorney
for verification of that.
Tom Fosson
At 07:38 PM 2/13/99 -0600, Brian Jackson wrote:
>My company is making a new policy concerning our registration of domain
>names for our client. Under the agreements with each client, the domain
>name that will be registered will be under sole ownership by my company. Is
>this a good idea? I know that if we register the name under our client,
>then we would be giving the ownership to the client. We would do this to
>have complete control over the name. What is the legal issues associated
>with this. Would my company be liable for anything that is under that
>domain name. The reason that we would do this is to secure our client with
>us because we would own his domain name, not him. Please let me know if
>this is a good idea or is just undermining the client. Thanks for any
>advice.
>
>
>Thanks for the help,
>
>Brian Jackson
>InterComp Services
>www.intercompservices.com
>www.subleasers.com
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