>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?
the rest of the crew have presented a fairly good cross section of the "no,
i don't think the ethics of that are well-advised" theme, but there's also
a pragmatic issue to consider. even assuming your company was willing to
hand over the domains promptly and courteously to any client who wished to
go to another host, trying to process a change of ownership with the 'NIC
is a pain in the ass.
the three fields which are easy to change are those of Billing Contact,
Technical Contact, and Administrative Contact. both the tech and admin
roles have the right to change any or all of those three IDs. you fill
out a change-request form online, ACK the email which is generated
automatically, and that's that.
the role of domain owner, though.. the information which goes into the
registration form as item 3a.. can't be changed unless you send the 'NIC a
signed statement indicating the transfer of ownership for that domain.
it's a time-consuming, annoying process, subject to delays from the
internal bureaucracies of the 'NIC itself, as well as those of both parties
involed in the exchange.
i had to deal with a transfer of that sort between two affiliates of the
same company a few months ago. theoretically, everyone was on the same
side, but my staff still had to deal with several weeks of bitchy phone
calls from varying layers of middle and upper management. everyone wanted
us to push through the formalities to get the specific thing they wanted
done, and to freeze out any action which would tip the presumed balance of
power in someone else's favor.
if you don't relish the thought of spending an hour on the phone with some
ego-inflated, technically impotent desk pilot whose theory of management is
that:
- technical accomplishment is nothing more than a matter of 'clout'
- that they can get whatever they want if they:
- act sufficiently obnoxious
- refuse to accept anything that doesn't sound like "yes"
- constantly threaten to "take things upstairs"
once every two or three days, for the entire period it takes to squeeze a
signed document which makes an actual commitment out of your business
office, for each and every client whose domain you've decided to own, don't
stick your head in that particular tree-chipper.
SOP for anyone with a survival instinct is to define the client as the
owner (item 3a) at the time of registration, and to set the tech and admin
contacts to your own staff. the jury is split on the matter of the
billing contact.. some hosts choose to set that to their own staff, on the
theory that getting a copy of the renewal statement would just confuse the
client. i personally prefer to see the client get that message, because
it gives you an arguing position when the 'NIC screws up the processing on
a renewal and you start getting "why didn't you tell us there was a payment
due?" calls.
BTW - as long as we're on the subject, the easiest way i've found to do a
domain transfer between hosts is to process a single change reqeust of your
own, setting the new carrier's handle as tech contact, and then allowing
that person to complete the rest of the changes necessary to move the
domain to the new network. it eliminates a lot of phone calls, and allows
you to pass the buck to the other guy for the ones which do get through.
bottom line, DNS is an invisible support service which the general public
doesn't understand well, but which is essential to their online survival.
anything which interrupts the silent and reliable operation of that service
gets treated with the same primal fury that causes witch hunts and food
riots. if you deal with it, you're taking a firm grip on the third rail
of technophobia. if you don't treat that with respect, and with caution,
you'll get fried.
mike stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 'net geek..
been there, done that, have network, will travel.
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