So you register a .eu domain OR you want to register a .eu domain that someone else already has….
Should be relatively simple to see when the domain in question is up for renewal, shouldn’t it?
Well you would think so, but you’d be wrong.
Let’s take this domain as an example:
Domain: isquattedyour
Status: REGISTERED
Registered: Mon Apr 24 2006
So we know we registered it.
That’s a start.
But when is it due for renewal?
Was it registered for 1 year, 2 years, 3 years?
There’s no easy way to find out, unless you are the registrant and actually know that you only registered it for a year.
Of course you’d have to wonder why the registry isn’t putting the data into the whois output.
It’s not exactly a privacy issue.
.ie, for example, gives the following info:blacknight@sicilia:~$ whois isquattedyour.ie
% Rights restricted by copyright; http://www.domainregistry.ie/copyright.html
% Do not remove this notice
domain: isquattedyour.ie
descr: Michele Neylon
descr: Natural Person
descr: Discretionary Name
admin-c: ABG182-IEDR
tech-c: AAM456-IEDR
renewal: 22-May-2007
status: Active
nserver: ns.blacknightsolutions.com
nserver: ns1.pendingrenewaldeletion.ie
source: IEDR
person: Michele Neylon
nic-hdl: ABG182-IEDR
source: IEDR
person: Blacknight.ie Hostmaster
nic-hdl: AAM456-IEDR
source: IEDR
You can clearly see the renewal date.
It’s unfortunate that the registration date isn’t visible, but that’s not a big issue.
Other European ccTLDs don’t have an issue with making that information available:
whois cheaphostingdirectory.co.uk
Relevant dates:
Registered on: 28-Feb-2007
Renewal date: 28-Feb-2009
Registration status:
Registered until renewal date.
(slightly cutdown due to its verbosity – I also needed to edit a bit of it !)
So what’s going on with EUrid?
You ask the rhetorical question, “Was it registered for 1 year, 2 years, 3 years?”.
The answer is that it was registered for one year, only. Renewal is “automatic” (section 9 of the Registration Policy).
The expiry date is always (surely?) on the anniversary of the registration date.
The issue is whether or not the registrant choses to “cancel” the registration before or on that date.
Nic
Ah but you see that’s the problem – it’s not clear when the renewal is, as was made apparent by EUrid’s latest email to registrars, where they now have the renewal date set to the last day of the month of registration – which is nuts and the date still does not appear in whois – which is even madder
Michele
As stated before: the .eu names are up for renewal each year. They are automatically renewed (and billed) to your agent at the end of the month. It’s up to your agent to notify you of the upcoming renewal. It’s up to you to pick a decent agent that does this for you 🙂
The agents that have actually read the paperwork, know this. As do all the agents that have worked with the .be tld, as it has been for many years that way in the .be zone.
Frank
I think you’re missing the essential point here – the total lack of transparency.
Why can’t EUrid simply publish the renewal date in WHOIS?
Michele
Michele,
Did you ask Eurid about this? They have a good reason why they do this, but it’s too long to make the full explanation here. The point is that:
– your agent should tell you the exp date of your own domain names
– you shouldn’t know the exp date of my domains, as you might mail me just before they get renewed to ask me if I would like to transfer them to your/your agent. Even better: you might create a database of all .eu expiry dates, and know when to check if a certain domain name has been put in quarantaine or not.
Frank
That’s laughable.
Michele
Hey, it ‘s not my policy 🙂 Go ask eurid if you need more info.
Frank
I was at their session at ICANN Lisbon, so I wouldn’t expect to get a good reception from any such queries
Michele
Some of us are used to it, eg AUDA (.com.au, http://auda.org.au/) have *never* published expiry dates, for the reasons Frank suggests.
The DNB.be system, on which the EURid registry system is based, might be fine for a small ccTLD with less than a million domains registered but when it comes to serious numbers, that whole monthly billing cycle stuff is absolute rubbish. In the real world, registrars time things to the day, if not the second. Financial projections are based on daily trends and planning requires the granularity of day based accounting.
EURid’s secrecy is motivated, in part I think, by the intent to cover up the damage that has been done to .eu ccTLD by the squatters and warehousers. Potentially hundreds of thousands of .eu domains registered by squatters and warehousers had no nameservers assigned in an attempt to hide them. EURid allowed such activity.
As for the stuff working for .be zone, so what? Just because it works for a small ccTLD like .be doesn’t mean that it should be inflicted on the rest of the world.
EURid launched its registry system without a working transfer process. That killed natural development in .eu during the landrush. The flurry of trading activity that runs in parallel with a landrush is where people trade domains and start to develop websites. This was missing from .eu ccTLD.
It is easy to speculate why EURid doesn’t provide expiration details in the WHOIS data. Perhaps it is such a screwed up system that the billing and whois data are two different databases. Perhaps such an incompetent operation as EURid (as the sunrise and landrush fiasco demonstrated) should never have been given the contract to run .eu ccTLD.
Well I’ve I’ve got a .eu domain registered with 1&1 internet. I had so many issues with them (billing, collection agencies, phone disconnections, emails that don’t get properly and the like) I’ve decided to get out ASAP.
I had just paid for another year for the domain with 1&1 to get them off my back and vowed the very next week to transfer out. Thing is the eu domain listed in http://www.whois.eu reports no expirary date, and that the record was last updated in 2006. So I assume the domain has not been updated yet for the extra year I paid for (according to this post it happens at the end of the month, but I have no way of telling if 1&1 have initiated the process or not).
In addition, I bought a domain transfer elsewhere a couple of days ago, although I haven’t clicked the confirmation email yet. I’ve tried phoning up and emailing 1&1 and asked them to update the record to 2008 but they don’t seem to understand what I am saying (they keep saying according to their internal records it has, but I want proof that EURid has been updated!).
The question is, if I move domains to another registrar will the domain record get the extra year I paid for by the end of the month (from 1&1) after they lose control. A mess I know…
The other issue would be that the new registrar would have added a couple of extra years thus making it harder to prove that 1&1 owes me another year.
Cheers…
Alex
Transferring .eu domains between registrars does not add years to the registrtion period.
Michele