Reseller agreements and the Domain Name Suppliers Code of Practice.

[Drop.com.au]

From the most recent auDA registrar briefing are 2 slides that we are concerned about for many domain investors.





Also important to highlight one of the examples listed under the Section 4.3:

"(2) Pre-registering Domain Names that may be in demand in the future (reference clause 14.2.3 and clause 6.2.4 of Schedule B of the Registrar Agreement). This could be done to either artificially reduce the supply of a Domain Name perceived as good (eg. by registering all Domain Names with 3 letters, along with registering the appropriate business names to match), or with the intent to speculate on the value of the Domain Name for later sale. This example is sometimes called warehousing."

Many domain investors sign up for Reseller accounts at various registrars in order to receive discounted registration/renewal rates.

However under auDA Section 4 Market Conduct - If you are a Domain Investor and active in Drop Catching, it is safe to say that using a Reseller account is in breach and one should seriously reconsider using one. We would even take it further and suggest that the act of having an active Reseller account, even with no domains in it, would still be considered a breach on the rest of your domain portfolio managed by a different Registrar.

 

[namer]

What are they trying to achieve?

Want domain investors to use "retail" accounts instead of "reseller" accounts?

 

[Drop.com.au]

No idea, this policy has been in place for decades but seems to have become a problem recently.

auDA have and interesting blog post which discusses their new 2021 Compliance Posture
https://www.auda.org.au/blog/introducing-audas-new-compliance-posture-and-compliance-plan

It outlines their three step approach

1. Communicate and educate
2. Guide and Facilitate
3. Enforce rules

So I would see this as falling into Step 1.. to get the message out there that policies which might have been previously ignored do still exists.

Step 2 would see us reminding and then guiding Domain Investors towards not using reseller accounts, bearing in mind you can still get competitive pricing at a "Retail" registrar like drop.com.au.

Step 3. is the one we all want to avoid, so lets get our collective paperwork in order and figure out a better way to get competitive pricing without all the responsibilities of being a reseller.