Daily Poll: Should Registrars Be Able to Force a Domain Transfer?

Gab has been in the news quite a bit the last few days. The social media platform acquired the matching Gab.com domain name via Flippa for $220,000 a month ago, according to NameBio.

Apparently, Gab.com is registered at GoDaddy, and the registrar is requiring (Twitter link) that the company either transfer the domain name to a different registrar or GoDaddy will suspend its services due to reported TOS violations. The website is apparently not hosted at GoDaddy – just the domain registration is there.

Today’s daily poll asks if you think a domain registrar should be able to force a domain transfer or suspend the usage of the domain name for non-compliance?

Please keep your comments on point about the issue at hand rather than the Gab platform and be respectful.


Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

4 COMMENTS

  1. Until “being an asshole” defines a class with legal protections against discrimination, then I’m fascinated by the use of the word “force” in this context. Someone is being ‘forced’ to do something either way.

    Should I be forced to do business with someone with whom I do not want to do business, provided that (a) my services are not inherently religious, or (b) my preference is not based on religion, ethnic origin, age, gender or handicap?

    The only ordinarily commercial service to which anyone has a Constitutional right is criminal legal representation.

    Employers also have responsibilities to their employees. For example, there was a customer of a registrar who was not only difficult to satisfy, but had a habit of calling the registrar’s support line and making derogatory, obscene, and racially pejorative comments to that registrar’s employees on a regular basis. I had no problem advising that registrar that if they would like to invite that customer to leave, they are certainly entitled to do so. Not only are they entitled to do so, but continuing to require their employees to have to put up with that guy could lead to employee claims that by NOT showing that customer the door, the registrar may be held liable for not mitigating a hostile workplace environment created by that customer.

    In this current instance, if these guys have $200k to spend on a domain name, they can set up their own registrar for a fraction of that.

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