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Expired Domains
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Expired Domain Snatching
WARNING: If your domain is not kept current, can fall in the hands of an unethical company or worse.The Problem
When a person registers a domain name, usually they do so for a minimum of 2 years or sometimes longer. A lot of things can change in 2 or more years, including the phyical or email address of the original registrant. When it comes around for renewal, the Domain Registrar has a difficult time getting a hold of the original domain owner. After several email attempts and perhaps even a written letter or two, the Domain eventually expires. For a breif time period, the domain is actually expired but still unavailable for re-registration by another person/company (and some companies don't even do this much, so I won't count on it). Either way, when the domain expires or the grace period has expired, the domain is available for new registration to the general public.In Bad Faith
Well, allowing people to buy expired domains is not a bad thing in itself. Really, if the company goes out of business and is no longer an entity to own the domain, then the domain should be allowed to expire and returned to the public. The problem arrises when there is still a legit company or organization that owns the domain but loses it because of address change, email change, change in domain contact information or whatever.What makes matters so bad relates to a questionable business practice: Domain Speculation. This is where companies will buy large groups of domains (sometimes at discount), with the sole purpose of selling them. Basically, they would profit from "being there first" -- since the domain registration market is largely a "first come, first served" type business. People or companies would guess what would make good domain names to own. The problem comes when the Domain Speculators "backorder" domains when they are about to expire in the hopes of selling them back to the original registrar (or anyone else) for a handsome profit. Of course, this means these domains were registered in bad faith -- with no intensions to use them.
The Impact: What's the Big Deal?
Well, if a company registers your domain name after it expires, regardless if this was a mistake or not, you will have little recourse. If you are lucky, someone has not already snatched up your domain and you can simply re-register the domain yourself. However, if someone has already taken it, you are out of luck. Most likely, they have registered it for only a one year term, so you could attempt to wait until it expires and hope to re-claim it then -- or pay the piper (pay whatever fees you and the speculator agree to). Another thing to consider is many domain speculators are based outside the United States (or whatever country you are from) so these companies are outside enforcement of your local laws or even your country's laws. International legal issues are messy and often go unresolved (ignored).The actual cost of losing the domain is fairly high, but not very apparent. So, you've out of your original investment, so you have to register a new domain -- which might be as good as the original, but good domains are becoming harder to find these days. If you change your domain, you will have to change your stationary, any literature, notify anyone that knows about your website to give them the new URL. Lots of search engines my have found you and so you will need to re-submit URLs to these places. For churches, any speciality sites, denomination websites, parish sites, etc will all need the new URL. Of course, if you were published in a magazine or newsletter, it will have your old URL in it -- so unless you get the magazine publishers or newsletters to publish an update, people reading these types of literature will not find you. What could be worse is the new domain holder could point your old domain to a pornographic or gambling site (or any other site that is anti-family oriented).
Prevention: The Only Cure
Hopefully, most people reading this have not already experienced this. If you own a domain, make SURE it does not expire. Be a least a month early with renewals, two months early if transferring to another Domain Registrar. Personally, I saw a person lose their domain because of a billing/credit issue -- at actually this was the Domain Registrar's fault for messing up which domain got the credit. Any case, it helps if you start early and monitor the entire process. Transfer can be graceful, but sometimes it might take several attempts before it actually gets transferred properly. When you do renew/transfer, consider going for the longest possible registration term -- usually you will get significant discounts if you go for 5 or 10 year renewal terms. Even 10 year domain registration should only set you back $100 to $150 -- when compared to what some domain speculators charge for your recently expired domain -- is a steal (he, he). Personally, I would prefer Domain Registrars would not make it so easy to BACKORDER domains, which only promotes this questionable practice.Special Note for ChurchServe Clients
Actually, this note applies regardless of who does the website hosting. ChurchServe (like other companies) will register your domain on your behalf (at least give the option) in order to help streamline the website hosting startup process. Any organization or person using our service must realize that ChurchServe does not own your domain name or are we responsible for renewal fees. Registration costs are either included in the initial setup of the website, absorbed as part of the first year of service, or cost extra when establishing service. One way to verify this is to do a WHOIS search from InterNIC (http://www.internic.org/whois.html) and make sure your name or organization shows up as the Registrant. The Registrant is the legal owner of the domain and the one responsible for registration and renewal fees. It is also the responsibility of the Registrant to keep the information current. This is an additional measure to help prevent problems with your domain.It is the general policy of ChurchServe to stay out of domain transfer, renewal, or other issues surrounding domains after the initial registration (if asked to register the domain on behalf of the client).
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