Steen said:
Ok John,
The point I was trying to make is, does the domain have a clear title? It didn't really drop...
Here's an example if you don't understand the concept.
e.com is registered to E Inc via NSI. John Doe transfers e.com to his account at NSI. Mr Doe is concerned about being caught, so he does not renew the domain name when the registration period ends. NSI and Snapnames then auction the domain off to the highest bidder. Sally Victim ends up owning e.com because she was the highest bidder at Snapnames. Is e.com still a "stolen" domain or is Sally the new proud and legitimate owner?
Thoughts?
I'm not a lawyer. But I do know a couple of things:
1. Until the new ICANN rules on domain deletion takes effect a few months
from now, NetSol is pretty much free to do with the domain name as they
please once it's expired. With their SnapNames partnership, NetSol won't let
delete the domain name from their database anymore and instead award it to
the highest bidder from SnapNames for convenience.
(FYI, they're not NSI anymore. They're now called Network Solutions LLC
).
2. John Doe clearly stole the domain name. But E Inc has to prove that's what
happened.
On NetSol's side, a domain name "ownership change" is considered valid if it
followed all standard internal transfer conditions. If they detected anything
amiss, they
may do something about it, but it's rare.
That's why NetSol and other registrars have standard disclaimers absolving
them of things like this, recognizing the possibility of it happening. That won't
stop the domain name owner from trying to hold them liable, though.
3. On SnapNames' end, Sally Victim becomes the new owner. Whether she
should be held liable or not is up to E Inc to prove she should be.
4. The problem with this is for someone from E Inc to discover
early on if the
domain name was transferred from their name to John Doe. If nobody noticed
this, the domain name expired, and is auctioned and won by someone from
SnapNames, NetSol won't do anything about it because nobody notified them
of this on time.
For legal concerns, I leave it to experts like JBerryhill.
jdk, actually as posted above, the domain name was transferred by John Doe
to his account. That makes it John Doe's responsibility to renew the domain
name or not.
Hope this helps.