A Domain Affair

So I picked up a copy of the Daily Mail (I know, but it is free and fits the cats’ litter tray perfectly) and saw this: Wheelchair-bound Tory disability campaigner sabotages party’s own website

A typical Mail headline in using the word ‘sabotage’ which is not accurate: he actually withdrew services, but I don’t expect the Mail to be highly technical.

However there is something in this article aside from the budget cuts that makes me see red. It still comes from the Tory party however, and it reads thus:

A Conservative Party spokesman said: ‘The Conservative Disability Group has not deactivated its website. ‘The owner of the domain, who is no longer a member of the Group, has deactivated it without any instruction to do so.’

If the man owns the domain and has all rights to it, then The Conservative Disability Group has no right to instruct him to do anything.

So I checked: http://www.whois.com/whois/conservativedisabilitygroup.org.uk
It is registered as type: UK Individual.
The address is of the gentleman’s company, Here2Support, not the Conservative Disability Group.

If the Conservative Disability Group had been paying for hosting and registration, it would normally be expected to be under their name and listed an organisation. Instead they know he owns it: note the “owner of the domain” in their statement. This is a pretty certain indicator that the gentleman has been providing it off his own back.

So why on earth do they think they have the right to instruct him to do anything, with a site they don’t own?

I’ve run into a similar problem with politicians before who refused to pay for the domain or hosting and assumed that we’d continue eating bills to keep a site up for them for free. We sent the email to Nominet, who laughed a lot and directed us to a section in their domain ownership rules: this PDF, specifically section 3.a.II.V.B. so, dear readers, a question for you:

If someone registers a domain for a third party and the third party doesn’t pay for it, the third party has what rights to the domain under dispute resolution?

None. Zilch. Squat.

What right do they have to force the currently registered party to sell to them at market rate?

None.

Even if not, check the Tesla case (finally settled for an undisclosed sum). As long as the current owner isn’t trying to extort money, infringing trademarks, or using it in a defamatory fashion (critiquing is fine), it is all theirs. And they have an absolute right to refuse to sell or to refuse the use of that domain to the third party.

Now, Mr. Ellis message on the website indicates that he was providing hosting: “owner of the hosting package Graeme Ellis”. The spokesman’s indicates that Mr Ellis owns the domain name: “The owner of the domain…”, so what of the site did the Group actually own? Sorry, but I suspect if the Group had been paying they wouldn’t be talking about instructions, they’d be talking breach of contract and the hosting and domain would have been under their name. They may produce receipts to prove this wrong, but somehow I don’t think so.

It would however be ironic that the Conservative Disability Group, meant to support the disabled, was expecting a wheelchair user to pay their bills for them and then lost their site because of the cuts their government made.

P.S. A domain is around £10. A Tory group can’t afford that?

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This blog has now moved to http://www.rablogs.co.uk/tirial, where the original article can be found.  A Domain Affair - http://rablogs.co.uk/tirial/2016/03/17/a-domain-affair/ was published on March 17, 2016 at 11:47 am.