What would you do? Money vs Ethics

Give it back to him at cost. And if I understood raymor's post correctly, maybe you can manage things for him domain-wise and make money in the future in some way. If he was decent to you and you realize he was boned by not being up to speed, do the right thing, karma wise. What goes around comes around. Plus you may get free dinner for life, who knows.

As silly as it sounds.. return it back without thinking. Think what would happen if it happened to you.. trust me if you do this you'll feel great. Money always comes and go, being proud of yourself for doing things right is always a good memory

Hope this helped...

ADG

I would give the guy his domain back. That would be the ethical thing to do.

never heard of that before but then I never paid attention to a .nl domain nor did I think for a second that all tld's wouldn't work the exact same way. Why would they never expire? Doesn't make sense. Why would that be any different than any other domains, where you don't renew it goes back to the public.

If what you said is true, then I would just become buddy buddy with the register, not pay for renews and have them opt not to turn my domain back in and I would never have to pay again... seems like a way to cheat the system and I would think ICANN has that shit shut down tight.

Assuming the register made a mistake, what part of buying someone else's domain that should never been sold to you in the first place is considered " business". What business is done in buying stolen property... Again assuming that is the case since the OP failed to fill in all the details, especially if .nl has some wacky rules with not paying.

They don't automatically expire. The registar has to fill out some paperwork to have a domain cancelled. Don't ask me why it is like that, all I know that it is like that.

But of course, you dont have to believe me , just look up the whois for any .NL domain and try and see if you can find an expiration date listed somewhere. You wont be able to find one , because they dont have one.

What I said is true, but is not as simplistic as you seem to assume. It is not because you are not paying for your renewals that nobody else is. The registrar still has to pay for it. So many dutch registrars are real assholes. They would let you register a domain, and then put in some little wording somewhere that it auto-renews UNLESS you indicate ONE MONTH before your one year is up that you dont want it anymore.


you are indeed assuming , unless you know the full details your speculation on this subject is not really relevant to this situation

then so are you and everyone else in thread since the op is the only one with the full details...


who knew the dutch .nl tld was so ass backwards.

don't involve me in your assumptions I was merely commenting that you have no way of knowing if the previous owner was paying the yearly registration fees like you stated

If this is the case then why are even bothering to ask? Don't be a dick.

Thanks for all the feedback guys. Sorry I left you hanging with too many questions, I obviously didn't explain the situation good enough.

Here are the exact details:
- There is a restaurant chain called Name. Name is a generic word.
- They own the domain RestarauntName.nl
- I eat there a lot so I wondered one day who owns Name.nl
- Name.nl was owned by, what seemed like a studygroup or some frat house. A horrible looking site with just photos on it. It seemed like the site hadn't been updated since 2007/2008
- The previous owner, who mailed me yesterday, claims to be a non-profit organization. There's no way though that previous site was a non-profit organization site.
- Seeing as the domain looked inactive for a few years I mailed the host. It's the only thing that showed up on the Whois, the name of the host. So I mailed them asking to forward my interest in the domain to the current owner.
- That's when they mailed back and said they could transfer the domain.

Now the host in question isn't a small time teenage boy living in an attic with his 5 servers. It's a pretty solid and well-established company, so a complete amateur fuck up "looks" out of the question to me.

I'm about to get in touch with them to see if they really were the ones to fuck it up. If it's on them, I'll return the domain. If he made a mistake, it's his loss.

So in short, the restaurant owners have nothing to do with the previous domain and free dinners for life are never going to happen

The process of obtaining the domain took quite some time aswell. Plenty of time for them to realize they were making a mistake. Took about 2 weeks, had to sign contracts for SIDN and stuff..

I think most likely the previous owners were not actively paying renewal fees, and thus the registrar took hold of it. But with the SIDN rules being so stupid you have to make an active effort to get a domain to be deleted they probably just never got around to it. Just keep the domain!

especially if the registrar that handed it over to you is a big time operation who know the rules well

Get a lawyer

Question? Are you so in need for money that the few extra bucks you make off this domain is that important? Host rob people all the time of there domains, and for idiot reasons to. Lets say even if the domain expired, lets also say most likely hi host never informed him as his old site was still up was it not?

Honestly the fact you are even asking this question esp gfy makes me think that you are either unethical, or are about to cross that line between morality and a peaceful soul, or greed, knowing you will do anything, even sell out your own mother to make a quick buck

I think we have all met these people. Now ask yourself which one is happier. Give the poor guy his domain back.