Did GoDaddy make $15,000?

the spywareinfo.com domain expired in October. Before that I tried many times to renew it for Mike, but GoDaddy was adamant that no one except the owner himself could renew the domain registration. Telling them about Mike's complete diappearance two years ago moved them not at all.
So, time passed and when GoDaddy didn't get a payment from Mike on October 26 and of course couldn't contact him, they evidently decided he really had disappeared and had abandoned the domain. After only about three weeks, they auctioned it and it sold for $15,000.
Am I right in assuming that GoDaddy pocketed the $15,000?





__________________http://www.spywareinfoforum.com
(formerly forums.spywareinfo.com)

yes, GoDaddy auctions off expired domains on their own aftermarket platform www.tdnam.com






__________________Domain DevelopmentDomain Mass Development Services

They never put it there - they held a sort of private auction.
I see that GoDaddy now says
Quote:


Selling Price -- Actual Price
$15,560 -------- $10


What is that "actual price"? Do you know?





__________________http://www.spywareinfoforum.com
(formerly forums.spywareinfo.com)

The actual price was probably the starting price of the bid.





__________________
My views do not represent the company I work for.
I'm still desperately trying to figure out why kamikaze pilots wore helmets. - Al Capone

Why would GoDaddy allow someone to purchase a domain when you are not the original owner though. Did you have legal papers saying that you were responsible for Mike's business?

No, Mike left us nothing. It isn't really a business - a malware removal and PC troubleshooting forum manned entirely by volunteers, with no ads. And, we did not want to purchase the domain, we just wanted to pay Mike's renewal fee.
Certainly we could have proved that we are old timers on the forum, and I could have proved that I have root access to our server. GoDaddy could easily have been more flexible and allowed us to renew the registration for Mike. But it seems they wanted it to expire.
The owners of other forums have disappeared - it happens. If you are responsible for a site whose owner has lost interest, be warned. Get some kind of legal documentation that you can represent the owner.





__________________http://www.spywareinfoforum.com
(formerly forums.spywareinfo.com)

Wow, Godaddy must pocket a lot off their tdnam auctions!

Quote:



Originally Posted by SWI Forum


Certainly we could have proved that we are old timers on the forum, and I could have proved that I have root access to our server. GoDaddy could easily have been more flexible and allowed us to renew the registration for Mike. But it seems they wanted it to expire.


To be fair, GoDaddy has few options here. As an informal volunteer group, it's extremely difficult to prove that anybody other than the registrant himself (Mike in this case) is duly authorized with such capacity to act on his behalf; having root access only says that you are server administrators, but not necessarily ones delegated with financial responsibilities.
I remember when Network Solutions allowed just *ANYBODY* to renew YOUR domains. That was NOT good, to say the least.





__________________Nameslave - Knows a thing or two about domain names

Yes, but. How could paying the owner's fees for him possibly injure the owner? There would have been no alteration of ownership nor any access to the account.
What GoDaddy did is certainly legal. But capitalism is cold-hearted.





__________________http://www.spywareinfoforum.com
(formerly forums.spywareinfo.com)

I ponder the issue, too. So what if someone else pays the renewal? The records of ownership are not being changed. In the same way that a parent pays for a child's college, the child gets the degree, not the parent. If I pay my girlfriends rent for a few months, I'm still not the renter. In all of these cases, the beneficiary does not change, including someone else paying the registrant's fees. So what's the harm in letting someone else pay the registrant's fees?





__________________The Original Registrar in a Box -- A Complete Turn-Key Solution for ICANN-Accredited Registrars since 2002.
With flexible options from managed support to running in your data center.

Quote:



Originally Posted by nameslave


I remember when Network Solutions allowed just *ANYBODY* to renew YOUR domains. That was NOT good, to say the least.


So do I. The registrant's not being changed. And NetSol didn't change it, either.
So what's "NOT good" about that? Where's the harm?





__________________The Original Registrar in a Box -- A Complete Turn-Key Solution for ICANN-Accredited Registrars since 2002.
With flexible options from managed support to running in your data center.

Wow, considering it was just for a renewal you'd think they'd let that through, it's not like you're changing any info on the account or even accessing the account. It's probably a policy though.
This actually brought me to a scary realization.
If I die or end up hospitalized for a long time, there is no one who could take over all my sites. I'm the only one who has access to every single piece of my infrastructure, from server, shared hosting, and domain registration. Guess it's always good to have a backup person you can trust, for these type of things.
As for domains specificly this is also why I always renew 5-10 years ahead, at least for the more important domains. Ex: the main site is .com but I get .net .org etc, I'll do the .com for 5 years but the rest maybe 2-3 then renew one there's less than a year.





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