Best of the ISP-Lists

Webhosting Gets Personal

When company disputes involve a disgruntled employee — or even a divorce — the webhosting company can get caught in the middle. Members of the ISP-Webhosting list share tales of woe.

[May 22, 2000]

On the ISP-Webhosting list in May, HP posted this tale of woe:

"A client informed us that their webmaster had been dismissed and asked us to remove his access to the Web site. However, the webmaster registered two domains through us and one through Network Solutions — in his own name, as opposed to the company's name. He's now saying that since he is the domain owner we must give him access to the site. In my mind, although the webmaster may have done all the work on the site, he acted as a company agent in doing so and can not claim rights to the site. As for the domain name, I'm not too sure what the laws say about that and I think they are probably resolved on a case by case basis. But I'm wondering where we stand from a legal standpoint. Thanks for any help you may be able to offer."

Respondents were plentiful. A number raised the issue of payment:

[Newsupdate wrote] "Whoever can prove they paid for the domain gets the site. Also, who paid for the Web space? The company, or the individual? That should tell you who you are working for."

Another group weighed in on the question of the domain ownership:

[JG asserted] "You are obligated to give access to the legal entity that contracted with you for hosting services to host that domain. If the webmaster is indeed the registrant on the domain, then he has the legal rights to the domain itself; however, that doesn't mean you have to provide him access if his company is contracted with you for your services. Our policy is that the customers are always the billing and administrative contacts for their domains and the entity that contracts with us for hosting must be the legal registrant of the domain."

[AMS replied] "We have many 'hosting resellers' who have hosting clients in turn. Those end-clients own their domain names and we don't bill them, we bill our resellers. The end clients don't even know we exist 99% of the time. So our billing contact need not, and often cannot, be the same as domain registrant, admin contact and/or billing contact. In fact, all of these could be different. It makes things a little trickier for us, but that comes with the territory."

The list noted that the business could depend on the domain name if the domain name is the company name:

[BP wrote] "If the domain name is the company name (or the name of a division of the company) then he registered those sites on behalf of the company, and that would be judged in the company's favor in virtually any court."

These situations are, apparently, fairly prevalent:

[AMS wrote] "We had a similar situation between a husband and wife who got divorced. We had been working with the husband who had other 3-4 domains with us. One day we get a call from the wife asking us to disable access to the guy as she owned the company and he was an employee. According to our records, the account was in the company's name, so I had her fax a copy of the incorporation papers and a signed letter on her company letterhead stating she was the president/owner and had legal binding authority to sign for the organization. I confirmed the validity of her papers and, since the husband's name wasn't mentioned in the papers, we did what she wanted."

One respondent stated the obvious course of action:

[JE wrote] "Go talk to your own lawyer, one that specializes in Internet law and the issues faced by ISPs. Advice on from this list on technical, sales, marketing, service, etc. issues is very helpful — legal advice, on the other hand, seldom is."

LD concluded with this practical advice:

"Make a good backup of the whole site and config settings and put it in a safe."

—End