.at domains warning | Hacker News Reader

.at domains warning

0x2a.im

27 pointszimbatm16 comments

You think that's bad...

http://padovachronicles.welton.it/2007/08/18/confronting-the...

There's a reason why it's still really difficult to buy .it domains on regular registrars like name.com.

Two months ago I bought an .it domain through GoDaddy. No issues at all. Other than an expensive registration fee, the experience was similar to buying a .com/org/net domain.

Things have changed; I bought a .it domain a couple of years ago very easily (i.e. just like buying a .com)

In reality, Ghandi is following the AT rules in a bad way - they are using the easy way out, instead of doing what's right.

I contacted the Gandi support. According to them, the NIC.at registrar doesn't allow them to break the contract on my behalf. They also say that this practice is unique to this TLD.

I work at a Dutch registrar and we have monitored .at terminations in the past years due to this issue and making sure contracts get terminated. Since recently we are able to delete a domain for our customers through EPP so our customers don't have these problems after terminatin their contract.

Interesting. Are you able to automate the process ? Also, what's EPP ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Provisioning_Protoc...

The blame should go squarely to NIC.at. A long time ago we registered a domain for my fraternity, a registered legal entity in Austria, and it was refused by NIC.at on the grounds that such a thing does not exist. A silly thing to do facing an organization with a hundred lawyers as members and some threats got them to reverse their stance but they act like the worst kind of government employee, enjoying their ill-gotten profits from a namespace monopoly in true honey badger style.

Yes, the AT rules are unique.

No, Gandi doesn't have to just do nothing to warn you and let you sort it out afterwards.

They have at least two options upfront: - Do what the other large international registrars do: give a fuck about the rules and just cancel the domain. - Actually tell the customer two months before and get them to explicitly cancel the domain.

Or, option three: do nothing and just 'billwithdraw' the domain (this is what gives the domain back to nic.at to handle the renewal), causing lots of pain for the customer.

Not saying that the AT rules are super great, but most of the blame really is on Gandi here.

Just got another support response. Gandi told me that they now work around that issue properly so that the user doesn't get annoyed by NIC.at's policy.

I had to send a fax to cancel something once and I used one of the email to fax services. It was quick, easy and pretty cheap for a once-off fax. I don't really think its a big problem, even though fax is clearly outdated.

Good thing I didn't go with WhereMyPeeps.at for my domain name I guess...

That's wrong information:

On this page[1] nic.at states (under "Cancel a domain") that cancellations can be made by fax or letter.

Also on the "fax confirmation" PDF[2] it says in big letters: "Please send it by fax or scanned by e-mail to: ..."

[1] http://www.nic.at/en/service/

[2] http://www.nic.at/fileadmin/www.nic.at/documents/formulare/C...

Thanks for keeping me honest. To be frank, I went the route of ignoring them at first, thinking it was a scam. Then I had to settle.

The problem could be that they require a signature. And a scanned+emailed signature is not a valid signature under Austrian law (IIRC, IANAL, but I am from Austria).

But from the PDF file in the second link from the parent comment they say that they accept email, so I would just try to mail them.

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