"The Desktop Global Marketer" (tm)

   A free on-line newsletter of Sidereal Designs, Inc.,
   for Internet Entrepreneurs, and those who are
   considering becoming one.
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                     April, 2002

In this issue: "He registered a domain with a low-cost
provider and then incorporated a company using the
name as the corporate name. Later he discovered that
the domain name had never been registered, someone
else had gotten it, and the fly-by-night registrar was
long gone."

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Domain registration is a very serious business. Good domain
names sell for -- literally -- millions. Nobody else may
want yours but to you it's priceless if you've invested
years in making your clients aware of it.

There has been a good deal of change going on in the domain 
registration business in the last year, including a lot of
not very seemly behavior. My recent note on a particularly
nasty scam generated a good deal of interest, so it may be
a good time to present an overview of the current state of
affairs and the traps to avoid.

What exactly does a registrar do? Think of it as being like
a telephone book for web browsers. People have names and
phones have numbers and the phone book keeps track of the
correspondence between the two. 

The domain registry system similarly keeps track of the
correspondence between domain names and the internet number
addresses of the computers they're hosted on. The
correspondence can change when a domain changes hosts just
like it can between people's names and telephone numbers if
they move.

The licensed registrars handle the additions, changes and
updates to this system and make sure that no two web sites
can have the same domain name. Thus, they say who owns what
name.

In the beginning there was only Internic which was chartered
by the government to handle domain registration in the early
days of the internet. Those were sleepy times and there was
no commercial activity on the web, and everyone on it was a
computer guru, and Internic's clumsy system of handling
domains did all right, sort of.

Then commerce -- followed swiftly by greed -- appeared, the
Web grew like lightning, and things went downhill fast.
Other firms demanded the right to register, Internic lost
its monopoly, and became Network Solutions. Most recently it
was purchased by Verisign. 

Unfortunately Internic/Network-Solutions/Verisign never
figured out that the methods of customer service they
learned as a government-chartered monopoly in the old days
just might have to be updated for the state of the web
today. 

As a result doing something with them that ought to be
simple like updating a hosting location is far too often a
torture that puts a root-canal to shame. According to some
people they are also refusing to put expired domains back
into the available pool -- presumably so they can re-sell
them themselves. They seem to make the claim in some of
their service agreements that they own the domains and are
only licensing them to you.

Avoid them like the plague; there are decent, helpful
registrars out there who charge less into the bargain.

Unfortunately there are also a lot of con-artists. One of my
clients registered a domain with a low-cost provider and
then incorporated a company using the name as the corporate
name. Later he discovered that the domain name had never
been registered, someone else had gotten it, and the
fly-by-night registrar was long gone. I wish he had come to
me BEFORE registering. If you're going to work with a
webmaster, get him/her on your team before setting things
up.

The way the system works, there is a relatively small number
of official registrars licensed by the Internet governing
body to maintain the domain registration system. They will
sell you a registration directly - usually at a pretty hefty
price, but they also wholesale registration services to
small companies who then retail them to you, usually at
steep discounts. If you know how to choose one these retailers
can be a good choice.

Aside from price and honesty, one thing to look for is the
auxiliary services that are offered, and for how much. For
example, temporary domain parking, domain forwarding
services, and other domain-related services should be
available.

A corollary of this is don't use one who's principal
interest seems to be to sell you a raft of
marginally-related services you don't really need. This
seems to be the major activity of some of the bigger
registrars these days.

The most important thing to look for is service. When you
want to move a domain, do they answer the phone? Take care
of your needs? Understand what you want? You don't want to
find out how frustrating it is not to be able to get your
domain name connected to your new web site and not be able
to do a thing about it except send pleading e-mails that are
never answered.

So who do we recommend? We used to love Register.com, but
they've been bought by Verisign and they are getting far too
pushy about selling you other things, and they aren't cheap.

Today I like a little company I've recently found called
Simpleurl.com. They'll register you for $12/year (less with
quantity discounts) and give good service, quickly. 
Furthermore they'll give you lots of things like domain 
forwarding for free.

Once you're registered, as many of you apparently have
discovered, the letters start to come from the
con-artists. This includes real registrars either trying to
get you to renew long before you need to so they can earn
interest on your money, or else trying to trick you into
moving your registration to them from your current
registrar. It also includes simple criminals trying to part
you from your money. For example, this was in the news
recently:

"WASHINGTON, April 25 (Reuters) - A Canadian company has
agreed to pay $375,000 to settle charges that it duped
Internet domain-name holders into needlessly buying
similar-sounding names, federal regulators said on Thursday.

The Federal Trade Commission said a Toronto firm doing
business as National Domain Name Registry sent unsolicited
faxes to domain-name holders claiming that an unidentified
third party had applied for an Internet domain name, such as
"example.net," that was similar to the one held by the
owner, such as "example.com."

The result could be confusion by customers and a loss of
business, the fax claimed, unless the recipient blocked the
application and bought the name itself for a $70 fee.

In fact, nobody had applied for those names, the FTC said."

I've received a lot of those faxes, and I'll bet you did
too. A lot of my clients called me to ask if they needed to
do anything about it.

The bottom line is, domain registration is an important
issue concerning a potentially very valuable piece of
property, but there are a lot of domain owners who are not
too clear on what the registration business is all about,
and there are a lot of nasty people out there who are trying
to take advantage of that fact.

What should you do about it? First, be deeply suspicious. If
you get an email or fax you're at all uncertain about urging
some action with respect to your domain name, ask your
registrar. If it's from your registrar, ask your webmaster.

Thanks for reading this month's issue!

Best,

Ernie

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