Perhaps. However, considering other factors, they won’t want to use their lawyers if they can get off cheap. This, of course, assumes that someone at the head of the company is behaving smart.

-Eric
From the Central Offices of the Technomage Guild, Intelligence Div.


On Jul 24, 2022, at 10:38 AM, Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:

I doubt threatening them with a lawyer will do much, they'll see your lawyer and raise you 5 of their lawyers.  It's a losing battle for the little person.

Rather go to their abuse team, explain it's a legal matter, and see if you can talk to a rational human vs. a call center monkey.  Those guys deal with this stuff all day every day, the joy of having 100m domains under your stewardship.

Unless they literally broken in and stole content, GD won't be inclined to do much other than apologize for your luck being targeted, and little they can/will do otherwise.  Best you can probably do is find who owns it today and attack them directly with legal, but if someone outside the country, you'll find the world's smallest violin quickly for your sad song.

-mb


On Sun, Jul 24, 2022 at 10:03 AM Eric Oyen via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
Since it appears that GD isn’t being helpful, get a copyright lawyer (you might even be able to find one on legalshield.com for cheap) and go after both the new host owner and GD for a DMCA violation. My experience has been if such is done and it looks like it might be a good case, the hosting provider will settle with you real damned fast in order to avoid a court case.

-Eric
From the Central Offices of the Technomage Guild, Legal Servicing Dept.


On Jul 23, 2022, at 7:24 AM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:



On 2022-07-22 23:05, Joseph Sinclair via PLUG-discuss wrote:
TL;DR  Have your friend contact GoDaddy, ideally by logging into their
existing account and contacting support from there, and request they
delete all content as you no longer control the site and they no
longer have any right to continue serving that content.
Contact with GD was made.  They are no help.

Most likely, the new owner simply didn't make any change to the name
server entries when they bought it (domain gamblers tend to do that a
lot).

Basically, the name still resolves to the same site host, and the
purchaser is waiting for your friend to beg them to "return their
domain" so as to keep the site (and presumably the business) running.
Some just kind of wait for contact, others will wait about 90 days,
then send email to the website warning of a deadline and demanding
heavy payment to not redirect it to a parking page or something
similar.

Name Servers:ns11.domaincontrol.com and ns12.domaincontrol.com  <- that looks like GoDaddy.

His hosting expired a long time ago.

The new guy getting the website seems fishy to me.

My friend paid GD to make contact with the domain owner to see if he would sell.  GD was not able to make any progress - current owner does not respond to emails and the domain has privacy.




A lot depends on who the host provider is.  If, as in this case, the
host provider is the same as the domain provider (side note, don't do
that in the future; always separate the two so nobody controls both
but you), then you may have some issues, but at least in theory your
friend can, at minimum, ask that the hosted content (which they still
own and on which they hold copyright) be removed.
If the host provider is separate from the domain provider, then you
could either arrange back payment and regain control, then point a new
domain to the site, or ask the host to remove the content (again based
on ownership and copyright).
In this case (with GoDaddy hosting both), I hope your friend has
backups of the site and can redeploy elsewhere, and I hope GoDaddy
does the right thing relatively quickly (sometimes they can be
difficult in this regard).
This doesn't apply in your case, but one other, somewhat ugly,
possibility does exist.  Some host providers use a domain challenge to
identify the site owner if they lose access otherwise (they have you
put a code in a dns record to prove you are you).
 Those are particularly pernicious as anyone with control of the
domain actually can steal the site and content by claiming to have
forgotten a password (which can result in theft of an entire business
identity for purely online businesses, and is a form of identity
theft).
 Always worth checking if your hosting provider uses that option, and
ask them to either administratively disable that (permanently), or
move to a different hosting provider (assuming you can).
  Note: Domain challenge to prove ownership of a domain, separate
from ownership of the hosting account, is totally normal and
reasonable, I'm referencing here using domain challenge to prove
identity and ownership of the separate hosting account.
Hopefully that helps.
Joseph Sinclair
P.S. The domain origination date does not change unless the domain is
returned to an unregistered state.

Ok that is some good info.  it seems this domain "expired" then GD held onto it until someone else bought it.

I have heard that the registers can hold a domain for up to a year w/o paying the reg fee.





When a domain is auctioned, it is
never "unregistered", the registration simply transfers after GoDaddy
takes over the registration for non-payment.
On 2022-07-22 06:45 PM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss wrote:
Hi,
I have a friend who owned http://www.nationwidedr.com/ .  It expired along with his hosting while he was in the hospital.
I get the domain was available to be registered.
Here is the interesting part.  Somehow the new domain owner also was able to get his WordPress website complete with all of his business content.  It appears not to have been changed.
The other part is the domain shows it was registered in 2002, the original date it was registered.  I thought when a domain expires and is re-registered by another it will show it was original registered on that second date.  Am I wrong?
Thoughts on how the new registrant got a hold of my friends WordPress website?
The domain and hosting were at GoDaddy.
Something seems fishy - am I wrong?
Thanks!!
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