Re: [PLUG] Tracking down expired domains

[Walt Mankowski <waltman@pobox.com>]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 10:38:50AM -0500, William H. Magill wrote:
> Under the new registration rules, a domain name is up for grabs when is 
> it is not renewed by the expiration date.
> 
> ... no grace period....
> 
> If the name is not registered, you simply register it. Then you're the 
> owner of the domain.
> Just pick your favorite cheap registrar.  Which one doesn't matter all 
> that much as they change very frequently. (Like annually, when the 
> primary contracts come up.)

When I first looked into this several months ago, it appeared that the
domain had recently been renewed.  I was hoping I could contract the
registrar find who'd registered it, and somehow track down the dude
who stiffed them.  Now I see that I must have misinterpreted what I
saw, and that the domain never was renewed.

> If this seems a bit cut-throat -- it is. (The competition to be a 
> Registrar is actually pretty fierce. Evidently there is some pretty 
> good money to be made. The competency of the Registrar or the 
> service(s) they provide is probably item number 7 or 8 on the list of 
> evaluation criteria.) It's especially hard on non-profits like yours 
> who "have no clue," and don't really care in the first place. ... but 
> then again, they don't care so it doesn't matter anyway.

It's not that they didn't care.  They care very much about their
website, and are understandably very upset that they're probably going
to have to pay someone else to recreate it from screen shots and
notes.  They delegated caring about the registration and hosting to
the person they paid to create the site.

> As for the website -- it was probably sitting wherever it was being 
> hosted until the bill stopped getting paid. Then it probably got wiped.

In theory the site itself still exists on the machine that was hosting
it -- someplace in Erie, last they heard.  But the creator either died
or skipped town or is otherwise unavailable.  The machine that was
hosting it is offline, and the only person who knows where it
physically is has disappeared.

Walt

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