Is your domain name safe under new plan?

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Over the next few months, a group of ISPs will begin bundling domain name registrations with their Internet business services.

While the move sounds the start of competition in this market, it raises a serious question for users: Who owns the domain if ISPs offer domain name registration as an add-on to Web services?

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) last week announced that five companies, including America Online, will participate in a test bed for a new domain name registration system designed to end Network Solutions, Inc.'s (NSI) monopoly. With the test bed, the new registrars will hook into NSI's database in order to sell a pool of names in the .com, .net and .org domains.

ICANN also unveiled a list of 29 companies, including AT&T and Verio, that will enter the domain game after the test bed is completed in July.

Currently, users register their domains with NSI or through an ISP that passes on the $70 two-year registration fee to NSI. In either case, NSI recognizes the user as the direct owner of the domain name, which can be used to establish a company's online brand through URLs and e-mail addresses. NSI also lets users switch Web hosts without paying additional fees or losing their brands.

Under the new system, ISPs selected by ICANN can process registrations themselves. Already, ISPs are developing ways to offer domain registrations free. For instance, some ISPs will forego passing on to customers the $18 shared database fee owed to NSI if customers choose the ISPs to host their Web sites.

By bundling the registration, the lines are blurred about who owns the domain, leaving room for ISPs to hold customers hostage by saying the customers lose their domain if they switch ISPs.

For Deborah Alexander, owner of online Jewish foods distributor Kosher Grocer, this is a frightening prospect.

Alexander has switched ISPs twice and is about to switch again. She also is in the process of registering more than a dozen new domains. Alexander says that if her brand were attached to her Web hosting contracts, she would be tied to one provider and not be able to get a better deal.

"The only way this is going to work is if you write into your contract that you own the domain," she says. "If your domain keeps changing, you'll have no name recognition."

Doug Armentrout, vice president of Web services at Verio, agrees. "Customers should get the details of who owns the domain spelled out in a contract," he says. While Verio plans to hand over domains to users, he says "there are a lot of smaller ISPs out there that will use domain registration as a way to retain customers."

"There is no real benefit to AT&T's customers if we hold ownership of domain names, so I doubt we would do that," says Rose Klimovich, director of IP services at AT&T. But AT&T is still in the process of establishing how the carrier may integrate domain name registration with existing services such as Web hosting, she says.

AOL says it also has not determined how the company will blend in its new role as registrar with its existing services.

ISPs that have been approved as registrars could potentially register a block of domains themselves, then lease them to customers. Armentrout says ICANN should create guidelines to prevent this.

While ICANN has ideas concerning domain portability, ICANN President Mike Roberts says there is no rule by which registrars have to abide.