Brian 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.
This is a *very* bad idea. Totally absurd. If any Web host tried to pull
this trick on me, I'd tell them to take a hike.
Most of the names you register are going to be company names, trademarks,
or service marks over which your company has no legal rights. I'm no
lawyer, but I suspect that a court would give control of a company's name
to the company, not to another party. There is no justifiable reason I can
think of that a third party should have control over another company's
domain name. Suppose Coca-Cola was using you as a Web host--do you think
they'd want you to have "complete control" over coca-cola.com? No way. That
would be total insanity. Coca-cola is a registered trademark and an ISP's
claim to it wouldn't hold up for two seconds in court. Also, if for some
reason service failures on your part caused the company to lose revenue,
and your ownership of their domain made it impossible or impractical for
them to move, you could be vulnerable to lawsuits resulting from lost
income.
Several of our clients have their domain names printed on expensive
four-color brochures. The idea that someone else would own the domain name
the company is promoting is absurd. When my clients are getting
satisfactory service from their Web hosts, they stick with them. When
service is unsatisfactory, they *must* be able to switch hosts if they
wish. And I've never had a client switch Web hosts for any reason other
than poor service.
Take a current situation involving our client who is another vocal member
of this list: he and his partners own a domain name that was pointed to
Minerva.net, which until recently was one of the best services available. A
month or two ago the sudden death of their ace tech guy caused Minerva's
service to go to hell in a handbasket. (While one WC member reports no
problems, I and at least 3 or 4 other list members have had severe
problems.) My client/fellow list member needed to do some highly technical
stuff with their site and could get no tech support response from Minerva.
Regrettably, he was forced to move to another colocation situation to
prevent delays in launching their new service. Meanwhile we, as the
company's print designers, had designed and printed some $10,000 worth of
business stationery and brochures for the client's new product, including
the domain name on all materials This product which involved some $500k in
investment capital. Don't you think they would have sued the socks off of
Minerva if Minerva had tried to retain control of the company's domain name?
I advise my clients *never* to give up control of their domain names to
their Web host; always to make sure that the clients and myself are listed
as the billing and admin contacts on the Internic forms. That's because, if
they want to switch Web hosts because of service problems, going through
the fax process to get Network Solutions to redirect their domain is a
royal pain, time-consuming, and growing worse.
Suz
Suzanne Stephens, Dave Stephens Design; Ashland, Oregon
541-552-1190 http://www.KickassDesign.com/
Jewelry for Internet @ddicts:
http://www.kickassdesign.com/geek_jewelry/
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