Re: [ga] Contemplated Registry Fees

["John Berryhill Ph.D. J.D." <john@johnberryhill.com>]

> If there is a dispute over a transfer, providers (registrars/registries)
> should be expected to handle it, period.

I wish it were that easy, but it is not.  To the extent that the registroids
get involved in making determinations in transfer disputes, even if they
agree, they expose themselves to liability if they are wrong.

> If they do not, there are legal
> avenues.

Quite often, there are not.  And what legal avenues exist are pretty narrow,
in view of the standard registration contract terms.

>  Why should a registrant have to
> spend hundreds or thousands of dollars when there is a transfer mess?  Who
> will benefit?  Registrars should be held accountable for transfers, as
> should registries.  If an error is made - fix it.

Again I wish it were that simple, or that the "fix" was so obvious to all
concerned.  Your comment about hundreds or thousands of dollars doesn't fit
well with your "legal avenues" comment.  What legal avenues *don't* cost
thousands of dollars?

> That's pretty simple.  If a registrant files a complaint about a transfer,
> follow the trail and fix the problem.  If it was fraud, get law
> enforcement involved.  If it was an error, reverse it and refund any money
> collected.

I have seen quite a few situations where various parties concerned really
don't know exactly what happened, but they disagree.  Here's an outline of a
real situation that came up recently:

1.  Registrant A forgot to renew domain name.

2.  Registrant B registered the domain name after it dropped.

3.  Registrant A then noticed that B had the domain name.

4.  Convinced that B had hi-jacked the domain name, A persuaded his registrar
to issue a transfer request to get the domain name "back".

5.  B was then pretty well convinced that A had stolen the domain name.

The fact is that A *had* stolen the domain name, but A didn't see it that
way.

Both parties had a "trail" that suggested to each of them that their
perception of events was correct.  It took quite a bit of doing, and you bet
it cost several hundred dollars to get this mess sorted out.  At the
registrar end of things, it took up considerable staff time, for which none
of the registrars was compensated one thin dime.

The real world is just not as simple as "fix the problem" when people have
different views of what "the problem" is, and different sets of evidence
which support their views.  And, in the situation above, each of the parties
was convinced to a certainty that the other party was lying.  Both of the
parties, however, were quite earnest in their convictions.



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