So, I got involved in a local car club and the current site's webmaster
asked me a question about the site. I decided to check into something
and realized that the hosting company has all their (not the car club)
information in the contacts for the domain name.

The host is TinyHosts.com. Here is their response to his question about
why their info is in the domain record:

----------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: Domain registration
From: "John Jones" <webmaster@tinyhosts.com>
Date: Tue, March 14, 2006 10:19 am
To: webmaster@DOMAINREMOVED
---------------------------------------------------------------------

NAME REMOVED
Regarding domain name DOMAINREMOVED

You are named as the registrant of this domain:
Registrant:
NAME REMOVED

Other details remain with us as this domain was registered for you by us
on the free domain name hosting Plan and the domain name does not become
your property until the end of twelve months hosting at which time
should you wish to continue to host with us we will again renew the
domain free of charge.

If you wish to transfer the domain away from tinyhosts.com you may do so
but we exspect you to pay for the domains renewal/registration You can
read about this in the "Terms of Service" here:

http://www.tinyhosts.com/html/legal.html

John Jones
webmaster@tinyhosts.com

-----END MESSAGE-----


This is shady as shit. Does this guy have any recourse with them?


--
Karl Groves
http://karlcore.com
http://chevelle.karlcore.com

Accessibility Discussion List: http://smallerurl.com/?id=6p764du

On Wed, 15 Mar 2006 10:21:29 -0600
Karl Groves <karl@NOSPAMkarlcore.com> opined:
all and is fully disclosed. There is a cost associated with their
registration of the domain. It becomes profitable when amortized over
12 months of VERY cheap hosting.

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"Karl Groves" <karl@NOSPAMkarlcore.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9787738A0A283karlkarlcorecom@216.196.97.13 6...
The first quesiton might be: Does he need a "recourse"?

They are getting the domain name for free and everything is working fine...
the only charge to the car club, involving their domain name, would be if
they want to transfer it to another registrar. How is that really a
problem?

What sounds kind of "shady" is your concern in the matter... To be honest,
it sounds like your plan here was to switch the domain name to yours or an
affiliated service so you could make a couple of bucks a year off these
guys.

For the hosting company it doesn't really sound like they are trying to pull
some kind of scam here... they are providing the free domain names as a perk
to get people into using their system so they can profit off them with other
services and charges, and the transfer fee is probably in there to prevent
somebody from scamming them or abusing their offer - IE: Somebody registers
the free domain and then switches right away to another hosting company...
or somebody who registers domain names in bulk for the sole purpose of
reselling them and doesn't want to pay the registration fee for what might
be a bunch of dud names, and this way it would only cost them money on
domains they sold (they sell the name and have to pay the handling fee and
hosting for a year to transfer the sold domain name to its new owner)

But either way, when you get something for free that costs somebody
something you have to expect there to be a catch in there somewhere.

"Auggie" <Imperial.Palace@Rome.It> wrote in
news:F8YRf.32648$vC4.6367@clgrps12:

It is an issue of principle. A site's domain name should ALWAYS be owned
by the people who own the site. In this case, the customer.

As a more real-world example: It is a problem if, sometime during that
year, the customer decides they're unhappy with the service and wants to
move.



First, I offered my advice for free. I'm a member of the car club. The
club's webmaster lives LITERALLY one door down from my bus-stop when I
was a kid.

Second, I make more money in an hour than I'd make all year off of
hosting that car club's site. Don't make hasty assumptions.


--
Karl Groves
http://karlcore.com
http://chevelle.karlcore.com

Accessibility Discussion List: http://smallerurl.com/?id=6p764du

Fleeing from the madness of the Somewhat jungle
Karl Groves <karl@NOSPAMkarlcore.com> stumbled into news:alt.www.webmaster
and said:

Aye - perhaps it should. Many examples of things that should happen but
don't.

In the meantime, I have looked at that business model and steered away
from it for this precise reason - that sometime, someplace, someone will
jump up and shout foul - all for two bananas and a shoelace per month.
Frankly, the hassle just ain't worth the effort of providing the service.

Then they pay up the dues and move - it ain't really a hassle - consider
it like this ... title doesn't transfer until the goods are paid for. In
this case (if I read it right) it takes 12 months to pay the dues.

--
William Tasso

whither a trophy?

Karl Groves wrote:
Not at all uncommon - I deal with it quite often. There is recourse, but
the question is how much effort do they want to put into keeping that
particular domain name.

And, folks, this is exactly why you shouldn't host with your registrar.

Auggie wrote:
He will at some point, most likely.

I'm willing to concede otherwise, but so far, EVERY time I have
encountered something like this, and there was ANY problem between the
hosting company and the domain owner, the hosting service wouldn't
release the domain.

Tony <tony23@dslextreme.WHATISTHIS.com> wrote in
news:121gmos9cpp4meb@corp.supernews.com:

I actually had success with this recently. It took almost a year, but it
got done.



--
Karl Groves
http://karlcore.com
http://chevelle.karlcore.com

Accessibility Discussion List: http://smallerurl.com/?id=6p764du

Tony <tony23@dslextreme.WHATISTHIS.com> wrote in
news:121gmkml58e8k9a@corp.supernews.com:


i asked this before - but godaddy and others offer 'private registrations'
ie a proxy company's details are kept on your domain's whois

Surely a big company like godaddy wouldn't be ofering private registrations
if they were a bad thing?

robert blake wrote:
But *I* am the one who enters the information, and *I* am the one who
controls the account - not godaddy. All the difference in the world, there.