Who really owns a domain name, especially when using a privacy proxy?

[john5000]

A wiki page about private domain registration led me to a pdf file for a court case involving a specific registrar (not sure if this forum permits mentioning the specific registrar's name).

Anyway, I found the following sentence in the court case document:

In addition to functioning as
a registrar, (Specific Registrar) offers
an anonymity service known as (Specific Private Registration Service)
whereby (Specific Registrar) becomes the registered
owner of a domain name desired
by a customer, and licenses the domain name to the customer.

So now I'm wondering who actually is the owner of a domain name, especially in the case where a private registration proxy is used?

Is the registrar the real owner of the domain name, or the customer?

What if the private registration proxy service is a third party (and not the registrar), are they the real domain owner?

Could it be that Google becoming a registrar was a way to ensure that they truly own their own domain name?

If someone builds a billion dollar company, and it is centered around a .com domain name, can they really assume that they are the true owner of that vital asset, or are they just licensing it?

[lucy24]

It sounds as if the question only arises if the domain's apparent owner has, in fact, used an anonymizing service. Otherwise the owner is the owner is the owner. Bonus points if you can pull off a Jean Chrétien impersonation here.

An individual human might have legitimate reasons for not publishing their PII to the world. A billion-dollar company that wants to conceal its connection to a domain name would seem to deserve anything and everything they get.

[tbear]

Since, if you don't keep up payments you lose it, I'd suggest that the name is leased to the purchaser for them to do as they like with it, as an owner. So long as they keep paying.......

[john5000]

After reading more about the court case I mentioned earlier, it appears that in the case of private registration, it's very ambiguous who actually is the owner. The court was inconsistent as it applied registrant status to both the customer and the registrar. I found a "technology and marketing law blog" where the author commented on this case and made it clear to me that private registration is pretty sketchy as far as who really owns the domain name.

lucy24, i agree a billion dollar company should have the resources to figure out and do the best thing to strengthen their legal ownership of their domain name.

I looked up a couple companies with valuations in the billions, and the second one, Snapchat, is actually using a domain by proxy service, go figure. If it only took me two tries to find this example, then I bet there are more examples like this.

tbear, it sure does feel a lot more like renting/leasing than owning, regardless of using proxy service or not.

Here's a hypothetical question: what happens if a large company such as Apple, or Microsoft, or perhaps Snapchat, were to forget to renew their domain name. And they also forget to renew during any grace period, for some strange reason. Can the registrar now keep that domain for good if they really wanted to?

[tangor]

In the case of copyright or trademark style domain names, they can and have, sued to maintain those domains, even in the error of forgetting to do a timely renewal. If memory serves, it even happened to MS once....many years ago... but I've slept since them and it just might be a faulty memory.

[lucy24]

Can the registrar now keep that domain for good if they really wanted to?

Or, more realistically: Can the registrar now hold the name for ransom and set their own price?

Question of fact: Once a domain name has been registered, is the registrar allowed to jack up the price arbitrarily (that is, other than across-the-board increases like from $7.99 to $8.99) or are there Rules?

[toidi]

Or, more realistically: Can the registrar now hold the name for ransom and set their own price? 

This happened to me. Credit card got hacked, domain expired and the renewal price was crazy. If i didn't have so many urls and service plans with them they would have raked me over the coals.