buying domain names

popadom

Ok,, another dumb question..then how do people sell domain names or how do you end up being a company like 123 reg that "owns" them as someone must.

WelshPaul

rgay1992 wrote: »

Ok,, another dumb question..then how do people sell domain names or how do you end up being a company like 123 reg that "owns" them as someone must.

123-reg do not own any domain names and the same with telephone numbers. for example vodafone don't own any mobile numbers they simply get assigned them!

You cannot own a telephone number, email address or domain name as such, little point going on about it really.

RobTang

rgay1992 wrote: »

Ok,, another dumb question..then how do people sell domain names or how do you end up being a company like 123 reg that "owns" them as someone must.

Ownership is a bit difficult and things get a bit more confusing when you start bringing in trademarks, and it 'may' be possible to own a domain name but you'd have to consult lots of law books / cases.
However even if you did own it it doesn't mean you can control or use it.

123reg and virtually all registrars are essentially resellers.

Its a bit difficult to explain because there really isn't a good analogy. And you need to know a bit of how the internet works.

Every top level domain and country level domain there is a single company that manages the domain (for .uk its Nominet), You are paying for that company to put a registry in their DNS servers, which is essentially the master phone book as it were.

This master phone book gets copied into DNS servers lower down the chain and eventually to ones that you and I would use.

Different registry companies operate differently, most cant be botherd to deal with the public so they have registrars who re-sell the registry's services, others may choose to deal directly or a bit of both. The Registry company sets whosale prices for their services.

Now while you are the registrant of an address you have control over the registry entry, when you 'sell' you are essentially making them the registrant giving them control of the domain.

popadom

Thanks for clearing that up robtang.