January 29, 2008
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In the past two weeks TechBlog.org has been receiving emails of people complaining about
Network Solutions' (NS) questionable business ethics.
On their site people can type a domain name to see if that domain is available or if it's taken. If
the domain extension you wish to register is already registered, NS will advise which other extension
might be available for you.
However, it dosen't stop there. Today, when one of TechBlog.org's readers checked a
domain for a client, Network Solutions' site said it was available, so he gave the news back to
his client. The same day, when he tried to register it at his usual domain registrar, their
site (GoDaddy.com) said the domain was already registered.
Sure enough, a WhoIs verification of the domain did reveal what had happened: Network Solutions
said the domain was available to register, but on the Network Solutions site! When checked at GoDaddy,
1&1 and Register.com all three registrars' websites said the domain was taken. (See the accompanying
print screen that reveals the WhoIs information taken from NS's site)
If you look carefully at the top of the printscreen, it says "This domain is available". Then
go down to the red arrow we placed and you will see that the domain is registered until Jan. 29, 2009.
So the question is, if it's registered until 2009 how can it be available?
What effectively happened is that Network Solutions registered the domain for themselves,
or in a way altered their WhoIs database to reflect that. What's ironic is that Network
Solutions is often the database that many domain registrars use for their WhoIs queries,
including GoDaddy, 1&1 and Register.com.
Currently, NS charges $34.99 a year for a .com or .net domain, while GoDaddy charges
about $9 and 1&1 just $6.12 for a one-year registration.
So with his client's approval, our reader (name withheld) returned to the NS site and successfully registered
the domain in question, but at a price substantially higher than what 1&1 or GoDaddy would charge. So
the question is, is this legal? It probably is, but is it ethical? I will let you decide. It sure looks
abusive to me.
If you've had a similar experience lately, we would like to hear about it. Needless to say,
this new domain owner wasn't too pleased with this. The only way he could register the domain
he wanted was to abide by Network Solutions' rules AND at a much higher price.
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John McTavish,
Editor,
Tech Blog.org
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