4 ms·

Web.com transfers the france.com they registered for their customer (since 1994) to the government of France without explanation or warning. "on March 12, 2018

by dade_ 8y ago

Web.com transfers the france.com they registered for their customer (since 1994) to the government of France without explanation or warning. "on March 12, 2018, Web.com abruptly transferred ownership of the domain to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The company did so without any formal notification to Frydman and no compensation." It is actually just another example proving the warning we have all known/given for years about SaaS / cloud providers owning your digital properties.

indigodaddy 8y ago
Yeah, I think as soon as he heard any sort of rumblings from those French entities, he would have been smart to transfer away from web.com to a real/first-party registrar. Potentially they would have been less likely to just hand over the domain.
- cft 8y ago
  Can you recommend such a registrar? I also had bad experience with Network Solutions / web.com. They seem to blur the distinction between being a hosting company and a domain registrar.
  - justinclift 8y ago
    easyDNS (easydns.com), based in Canada, has a reputation for not just rolling over. Their UI though is a bit crappy compared to other places though (like hover). Hover though I suspect wouldn't put up any kind of resistance.
  - gremlinsinc 8y ago
    I don't think namesilo would do this, they're highly respected, 8.50 .com's, and free domain privacy.
- testplzignore 8y ago
  I'm wondering if anything legally prevents Verisign or a registrar from saying "screw it, we're selling every domain name under our control and then shutting down our business." The total assets of Verisign and all of the .com registrars are surely far less than the value of all of the .com domains. Heck, the value of the FANG domains alone is probably worth more than all registrars combined. If Verisign transferred technical control of all .com domains to another party, I guess that would effectively result in a fork of the entire DNS system, assuming the rest of the root name server operators didn't go along with it. But could Verisign legally get away with it? In the france.com case, presumably the owner of the domain was paying Web.com for the domain, and they allegedly received no compensation from Web.com when it was transferred. Seems like a pretty blatant breach of contract to me. Why isn't Web.com being sued? Suing them indirectly via Verisign doesn't make sense.
  - sulZ 8y ago
    Can you please clarify what FANG domain means? A quick google search does not give much help (and actually leads back to this comment).
delinka 8y ago
“...cloud providers owning your digital properties.” Not entirely the case. If your domain name represents a registered trademark, I think you’ll find the courts on your side should someone attempt to commandere your domain name.
- rrix2 8y ago
  I think we'll see if that's the case after this court case is closed.
  - delinka 8y ago
    I don't see anyone claiming that the plaintiff has a registered trademark. He does, however, mention that the defendant specifically disavowed ownership on a trademark of the word "France." In other words, this case does not hinge on trademark. My point is that cases that do hinge on trademark tend to work out in favor of the trademark owner. This case feels like a kind of imminent domain.
jonknee 8y ago
The irony that it was generically named web.com who did this. Why should they keep their name, they don't own the web?
- gremlinsinc 8y ago
  He should team of with Tim Berners Lee, and get the creator of the internet to claim he owns the rights to Web.com ...
  - gerdesj 8y ago
    So it should really be web.co.uk, or web.ac.uk, or web.gb, or web.ch or web.ac.ch or something 8) Sir Tim is a Brit and we have two TLDs uk and gb and of course Sir Tim was working at CERN in Switzerland (.ch) when he started the www thing. Sir T only invented the www. The internet as such was invented by an American agency - ARPA/DARPA.
    - gremlinsinc 8y ago
      Was Al Gore for Darpa at the time? lol
    - Buge 8y ago
      And it should be france.fr not france.com
      - codfrantic 8y ago
        It's even worse. france.com forwards to france.fr at the moment..
    - maxnoe 8y ago
      In the mean time, cern even got it's own top level domain, because of its international nature. CERNs homepage is https://home.cern https://home.cern

by dade_ 8y ago

indigodaddy 8y ago

Yeah, I think as soon as he heard any sort of rumblings from those French entities, he would have been smart to transfer away from web.com to a real/first-party registrar. Potentially they would have been less likely to just hand over the domain.

cft 8y ago
Can you recommend such a registrar? I also had bad experience with Network Solutions / web.com. They seem to blur the distinction between being a hosting company and a domain registrar.
- justinclift 8y ago
  easyDNS (easydns.com), based in Canada, has a reputation for not just rolling over. Their UI though is a bit crappy compared to other places though (like hover). Hover though I suspect wouldn't put up any kind of resistance.
- gremlinsinc 8y ago
  I don't think namesilo would do this, they're highly respected, 8.50 .com's, and free domain privacy.
testplzignore 8y ago
I'm wondering if anything legally prevents Verisign or a registrar from saying "screw it, we're selling every domain name under our control and then shutting down our business." The total assets of Verisign and all of the .com registrars are surely far less than the value of all of the .com domains. Heck, the value of the FANG domains alone is probably worth more than all registrars combined. If Verisign transferred technical control of all .com domains to another party, I guess that would effectively result in a fork of the entire DNS system, assuming the rest of the root name server operators didn't go along with it. But could Verisign legally get away with it? In the france.com case, presumably the owner of the domain was paying Web.com for the domain, and they allegedly received no compensation from Web.com when it was transferred. Seems like a pretty blatant breach of contract to me. Why isn't Web.com being sued? Suing them indirectly via Verisign doesn't make sense.
- sulZ 8y ago
  Can you please clarify what FANG domain means? A quick google search does not give much help (and actually leads back to this comment).

delinka 8y ago

“...cloud providers owning your digital properties.” Not entirely the case. If your domain name represents a registered trademark, I think you’ll find the courts on your side should someone attempt to commandere your domain name.

rrix2 8y ago
I think we'll see if that's the case after this court case is closed.
- delinka 8y ago
  I don't see anyone claiming that the plaintiff has a registered trademark. He does, however, mention that the defendant specifically disavowed ownership on a trademark of the word "France." In other words, this case does not hinge on trademark. My point is that cases that do hinge on trademark tend to work out in favor of the trademark owner. This case feels like a kind of imminent domain.

jonknee 8y ago

The irony that it was generically named web.com who did this. Why should they keep their name, they don't own the web?

gremlinsinc 8y ago
He should team of with Tim Berners Lee, and get the creator of the internet to claim he owns the rights to Web.com ...
- gerdesj 8y ago
  So it should really be web.co.uk, or web.ac.uk, or web.gb, or web.ch or web.ac.ch or something 8) Sir Tim is a Brit and we have two TLDs uk and gb and of course Sir Tim was working at CERN in Switzerland (.ch) when he started the www thing. Sir T only invented the www. The internet as such was invented by an American agency - ARPA/DARPA.
  - gremlinsinc 8y ago
    Was Al Gore for Darpa at the time? lol
  - Buge 8y ago
    And it should be france.fr not france.com
    - codfrantic 8y ago
      It's even worse. france.com forwards to france.fr at the moment..
  - maxnoe 8y ago
    In the mean time, cern even got it's own top level domain, because of its international nature. CERNs homepage is https://home.cern https://home.cern