Comments on: Web Designers Holding Domain Names Hostage

By: Domain Name Wire » News » Another Webmaster-Holds-Domain-Name-Hostage Case - The Domain Industry's News Source

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:26:13 +0000

[...] wrote about this issue back in October when a small town in Connecticut was in a battle with its web design [...]

By: Enrico S.

Enrico S. — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:31:38 +0000

Edo: Happens all to often. Feel free to give us a call. http://www.traverselegal.com.

By: Edo Heinrich-Sanchez

Edo Heinrich-Sanchez — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 06:38:12 +0000

Help! We are being held hostage by our ex-webdesigner. If you google oicbc you will know that the contents http://oicbc.org has been “deleted”. Several attempts have been made to ask for the designer to tranfer the username and passwords in order for the new webmaster to work on the site. Now I found out that the oicbc domain has been extended for another year. The designer is still using our pages in her portfolio and until last May had a self promoting plug on the front page chihi.ro “Supporting the Okinawa International Clean Beach Club”
This is like an ex-staff that decides not to return the master key to the office. We are locked out. The OICBC (clean beach club is being re-organized and will be re-released in the future). What can we do? This is frustrating as she has no right to do this.
The contents was taken down by her without consultation. In Japan, if you google oicbc, it is the first page that comes out.
Isn’t this an attempt to strangle the organization’s web presence? I am very, very frustrated and would like to take legal action that does not put us underground.
Any advise would be helpful.

Thank you.

By: Johnny

Johnny — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:02:57 +0000

This is an interesting blog that I stumbled across.

One of the most common mistake by smaller organizations is to allow employees to renew their Domain when it expires. Although registrant is stated as the “company”, the “administrator” (in this case the “employee”) is able to change this for a few meagre $$$ or even free.

Who then holds ownership of the domain? This poor company has been using the domain for the past 10 years, with email and web apps hosted on it. Is there an avenue for going after a “vengeful ex-employee” in this case?

By: Jason Lavigne

Jason Lavigne — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:38:28 +0000

Enrico,

This would be fine for gTLD’s such as .COM where you can easily change the domain ownership at anytime without any fees having to be paid however many ccTLD’s charge for a change of ownership. Our registrars have a very large .CA customer base and more often than not it is the domain owner that ends up having to pay in order to correct the registration to list their name.

By: Enrico S.

Enrico S. — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:13:03 +0000

If you register a domain on behalf of your customer, you should list the registrant as “[your company name] on behalf of [your customers name]“. This way it will be clear and you will not impact your client’s trademark rights.

By: Sergio Igartua

Sergio Igartua — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:11:37 +0000

I run an marketing and advertising firm in Los Cabos, Mexico, and while we develop sites, host and register domains for our clients, we see these domains as belonging entirely to our clients as they paid for the work in the first place.
When a client requests that we release their domain, we simply transfer it back to the client at cost if anything at all.
It’s important to point out that an agency’s money should come from development, design, advertising services or marketing expertise it provides, not from holding someone else’s brand name or property hostage.
We’ll host it if you want us to, and if not, we will show you how to host it yourself.