Comment by mattzito | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattzito | Hacker News Reader

> When you purchase a domain name through Njalla, we own it for you. However, the agreement between us grants you full usage rights to the domain. Whenever you want to, you can transfer the ownership to yourself or some other party.

That's extremely concerning, given that the domain name industry has a very robust set of regulations and legal procedures to govern privacy, mediate dispute, and establish consumer rights. I'd be very concerned about what this relationship between Njalla and myself would do to those protections - they're not a registrar, nor are they a reseller - what am I actually paying them for?

Unfortunately, the ToS and/or registration agreement that I am signing up for doesn't appear anywhere that I was able to find. I went through the purchase flow to try to buy a domain, but it won't let me proceed without funds in my wallet, and I'm not going to put 30 euro just to try and read a legal doc.

In other words, this seems like it's Probably a Bad Idea(tm), though it's difficult to know without more transparency on their part. (full disclosure: I work for a company involved in the domain industry)

§2.3:

1337 will have the right to immediately terminate the provision of the Services and these Terms, as stipulated below under section 9.2. Such termination will have the effect that 1337 may, at its discretion, choose to assume the registered domain name and hold it in its own account, let it expire, or sell it to a third party.

Seriously? "leet"??

Here you go https://njal.la/tos/

My understanding is that ownership of a domain belongs to whoever is listed in the Whois, and therefore long established Whois privacy products already deal with the problem (of "private" ownership) through the use of a contract between the customer and Whois contact (proxy owner). Can you clarify if that understanding is wrong?

I am not a lawyer, so I am sure there is nuance here that I am missing. However, that interpretation of the ownership is a fairly narrow inferred one, which is to say that ICANN says "WHOIS data needs to be accurate" and "Transfer procedures need to go to the owner via the data in whois", ergo whoever is in the whois must be the owner.

Some registrars, however, say "Nonsense, the owner of the domain is the Registered Name Holder, and we maintain that information, and the whois privacy is just a registered agent who will pass that information back to the registrant".

I think it's telling that the Njalla ToS linked elsewhere does not mention ICANN, UDRP, or WHOIS as a sign that they have not thought through the implications of what they are proposing to do.

EDIT: also, a practical step for transferring a domain is to ask the registrant to disable whois privacy to do name and address validation, which might also mitigate the "who owns this domain" concern

What's the alternative when you want to provide a registrar where you don't even know who your customers are?

This is one of those DIY "legal hacks" that never works out in the real world. Like when you try to stand up "my dog ate my homework" in Ms Beasley's class. "You see, Ms Beasley, technically I did my homework, it's just in my dog's gut!" Got'em!

What happens when they get a phishing customer?

How are they going to get around defacto ownership?

When has asset protection through redirection ever stood up in court?

Their scheme protects the identity of the real domain owner, not necessarily the domain itself. They imply that the law enforcement wouldn’t be able to find the real owner and bring them to court.

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