Administrative questions on how we currently handle domains

Community Ops
#1

Hey guys,

I have recently come to understand that when a domain is registered there are multiple contacts that can be associated with that domain:

  • Registrant
  • Administrative
  • Technical
  • Billing

I have a few questions about these and how we currently handle domains. Does this mean that the “registrant” is the recognized “owner” of the domain or are the contacts treated somewhat equally? When we’re registering or taking over a domain for a community, do we include their contact information in any of these places?

Even for communities who don’t mind that Mozilla is handling the domain, I think it would still be good best practice to identify them in the contact info. What does everyone else think?

#2

https://www.bestregistrar.com/faq/a6.jsp is a good summary of how these contacts are sometimes used.

#3

So which ones would we want to be us/Mozilla and which ones should be a contact from the community?

#4

My suggestions:

Mozilla

  • Administrative
  • Billing
  • Technical (if Mozilla manages nameservers)

Community

  • Registrant/Owner
  • Technical (if Community manages nameservers)
1 Like
#5

Looking at the link from mrz, it seems that we can give almost equal power to Mozilla and to the Community by assigning one as the Owner and one as the Administrator. From the link:

…a domain administrator has authority almost equal to that of the owner
on decisions concerning the domain, including transferring ownership. If
there is a dispute, only the owner of the domain can override the
administrator’s decisions.

The question is whether it’s better to make the community the owner or the administrator. If a community member goes missing and Mozilla is the administrator, then Mozilla will still have the power to change the owner so long as the owner doesn’t come back out of inactivity to dispute the change. Though in that case Mozilla would still have some legal recourse as the trademark owner.

However it would be much simpler for Mozilla to manage this if they were the owner, the community would still have full control unless Mozilla disputes them. In the case where Mozilla is trying to take a domain away from a community I am not sure if the extra power of being the owner of the domain is that helpful to the community since it would seem they have bigger problems!