I have become increasingly distressed by a malignancy spreading through
the net. Several friends and otherwise good people have fallen victim
to something that while strictly legal is morally and ethically just
not acceptable. There seems to be pirates waiting in the wings to
pounce on unwary folk who happen to let their domain registration
lapse. If the registration lapses for even so much as a day, they find
the domain they have spent countless hours sweating over turned into a
porno site overnight. These people then are more than happy to turn
the domain back over to you… for an exorbitant price of course!
These extortionists are not afraid to ask thousands of dollars for the
return of your now smeared name.

The kicker is that some of the registrars are now making it far to easy
for this activity to go on. Imagine my surprise when checking on a
personal domain I already own and having the whois page return with a
link to a “waiting list” for this name! In other words, for a fee, you
can place yourself in line to capture a domain name if it ever were to
lapse and “become available”.

I can see the business sense in this, but I am also quite frustrated by
the utter lack of respect so heartlessly demonstrated in these
practices. I have no idea how to bring it about, but the best solution
I can think of is to have some sort of mandatory “cooling off period”
where the domain name could not be sold for, say, thirty days without
express written consent from the previous owner of the domain. Many
registrars are not sending any sort of reminders to their customers
whose domains are about to expire. Maybe something like this delay
would encourage them to provide some modicum of customer support. A
reminder to the owner could be completely automated and would require
very little in the way of personnel. I would think a registrar that
voluntarily offers this service might even find itself with customers
for just this reason, I know I would certainly recommend them to any
who needed them! [Robert Scott]