Was chatting with my neighbor last evening, who owns a nice nearby restaurant. He started it a little over a year ago, with him running the business side - and his business partner, the chef, handling the food/beverage side.
Well, for whatever reason - their business partnership has been dissolved. My neighbor still owns the restaurant, but the chef is no longer there. I'm not asking too many questions on what happened - however, it would appear that one thing the chef did for the restaurant ... was to register the domain name. And based on the sound of the conversation last night, it sounds like the chef is not giving up the password to get into the website.
The domain comes up for expiration in a couple weeks. My neighbor has already purchased backorder services from GoDaddy (I'm going to get him set up with pool and snapnames, just to be safe) but I'm not confident he'll get it back before a domain name taster does. So I'm advising him he should go through the processes available for his business entity to legally regain control of his domain name.
The problem is - I'm not exactly sure what that process is. The world of ICANN policies gives me a headache. :-)
Can anyone tell me where to get started on researching this further? The domain ownership is not masked by a service like domains-by-proxy ... I can see all the details. The registration shows the "Registrant" as the legal business name of the restaurant, and the "Administrative Contact" as the chef - so I am hoping the legal business entity has the right to regain control of the domain somehow. Just don't know how to get the process started.
Unfortunately, although the legal "registrant" name appears to be the restaurant itself ... the "registrant's" address appears to be the chef's home address.
Much, much thanks for any help - oh wise webmasterworld members!
[edited by: encyclo at 4:56 pm (utc) on Aug. 9, 2008]
[edit reason] fixed typo [/edit]
Anyway, first step is contact the registrar and ask how to regain login access
to the domain name. Since you said the registrant is the business name, they
might ask for some letterhead with its name and address matching that in the
WHOIS details.
(And yes, it's easy to forge one. I'm going to next say that the registrar might
try to notify the administrative contact or whoever regarding this and request
consent or denial from them, and you know where it can lead to.)
If/when that fails, then next step is to do a backorder withoever the registrar
partnered with, if any, for auctioning their expired domain names. For example,
NSI auctions their names through NameJet, though it sounds like the one here
is with Go Daddy. (unless I'm mistaken...)
Hopefully it all ends with that backorder, and the other party doesn't renew it.
But if they do renew it, then seek legal advice.
Depending on the lawyer, one can use ICANN's UDRP for possibly this thing, or
sue in court, or try to work out something with the other party. Hopefully this
won't lead to the first two options I stated.
Hope things work out.
David
If it's with GD, then file a complaint for false WHOIS records. That adds a charge to the administrative contact's card each time it's done and requires him to affirm all details are correct. Little things like that, just about now, may make him think twice about renewing.
Evil. :D
David
The domain is currently registered with TUCOWS. Sadly, they have no support # that they make visible on their site - you have to go through their email submission on their site first, so I am waiting on a response to my inquiry.
The business owner already has a backorder in place with GoDaddy. I was going to suggest (or do for him, he's a good friend) backorders on pool and snapnames as well. Any others I should consider?
The domain is currently registered with TUCOWS.
Tucows auctions their expired domains through Afternic, so that backorder at
Go Daddy won't work.
David
