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Comment by 0xffff2 | Hacker News Reader

I find the why much more interesting than the actual ask here.

>We had previously contracted with an outside vendor to provide certain services for Snopes.com. That contractual relationship ended earlier this year, but the vendor will not acknowledge the change in contractual status and continues to essentially hold the Snopes.com web site hostage.

Does anyone know what this means in this case? It seems quite careless to me for the owners of a site as significant as Snopes to turn over control of their domain to someone they don't trust absolutely.

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Apparently this drama has been going on for a couple of years, and involves a claim of embezzlement. I believe Proper Media gained a significant share of Snopes due to the fact that Snopes' creator/owner was a co-creator; his ex-wife was also a creator and she sold her half to Proper Media in 2016.

https://www.courthousenews.com/fact-checker-snopes-owners-ac...

https://www.poynter.org/2017/snopes-is-locked-in-a-legal-bat...

Thanks. This is the other side of the story that I wasn't at all aware of. I admit that I don't use Snopes regularly, and so don't have any real stake, but I am even less inclined to donate money after reading the linked articles.

Sounds like they trusted them (plus had a contract), and that trust and contract are now being violated. It's easy in retrospect to say they should have done it differently, but shit happens. Hopefully they get a quick resolution to this issue.

I commented a little earlier. IANAL. I just find this all interesting for some reason.

But it seems that what happened is that Mikkelson and his wife owned the underlying company ("Bardav", it's called), 50/50. They got divorced. She wanted to sell her half to Proper Media. But because of how they were incorporated, only individuals could own shares in Bardav. So these 5 guys from Proper Media decided to just each own a portion of that 50% themselves, then Bardav would contract services out to Proper Media to manage the site.

So Proper Media, as far as I can tell, doesn't -- and in fact CAN'T -- own anything. They're just a vendor. But then Mikkelson decided he didn't want Proper Media (as a vendor) managing things anymore. They even gave the proper 60 days notice according to the lawsuit. But the Proper Media guys are pissed because they're no longer getting paid that way. Sounds to me like they thought that found this slick little loophole to get around the fact that only individuals could own the shares, but they didn't really think it through.

But again, IANAL, and I have no expertise in any of this.

It's fairly common practice to keep a domain name with one company and the hosting with a different company. Then if something goes wrong, at least you have something.

You kind of HAVE to turn over control; you have to contract with SOMEONE to buy a domain name, you have to contract with SOMEONE to have a datacenter.

Not really. You can join most cooperative NICs (such as DENIC), and you can colo or run your own datacenters, and own your own IP blocks.

If you colo, a nefarious colo owner could hold your gear hostage. Even running your own datacenter, you probably have a landlord.

My only point is that all businesses require trusting some other business to not be nefarious.

They can hold my gear hostage, but not my site. I'll have offsite backups and can quickly switch to another provider.

It's worth noting that the options for hosting snopes.com were much more limited in 1994.

OK, yeah, you have to trust SOMEONE, but it makes a big difference who the someone is. Trusting a reputable registrar is a lot different from handing over total control to Joe Random web developer. I have a feeling that the case here is closer to the latter than the former.

Could we just setup a mirror on another domain and send all traffic there?

It could be done. The problem is that it wouldn't add up to much unless Google & Facebook signed on to the redirect premise (which they will not).

Presumably you do this, set up the mirror, then contact the domain registry with a trademark complaint, they point the domain at you. Then you proceed with copyright infringement claims against the previous host if the content is still accessible.

Does require the company to have itself in order though.

If you donate now what's to say it's not just going to be taken as a dividend by the shareholders? What are the finances like.

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