Guarding Against Lapsed Domains
This section is not important to you if you are running an online business and don't care
what happens to your Web pages if that business is terminated. It may be very important to you if you have created a
political, historical, artistic or other informational Web site.
An informational Web site that has been on the Web for a while is a valuable property. Suppose you
have a Web site with 20,000 pages and 50,000 backlinks built up over many years. The Web site may have intrinsic
intellectual worth and it also has commercial value. A site that contains news becomes a historical archive. A site that
contains documents, information and photos contains information that will be of value to visitors in 50 or a hundred
years, as much or more than it is valuable now, if it remains on the Web.
Not long ago a friend died. Over the years he had built a 20,000 page Web site - documents, short
stories, quotations, news items, links to organizations and descriptions of the organizations. Even if every
organization described in that Web site were to disappear and the links to their Web sites were to vanish, the information about the period and
region would still be valuable. Someone could use this Web site, and perhaps could make a comfortable living from the
advertising alone.
His widow knows nothing about the Web and is not interested. The domain was allowed to lapse. In
one day, twelve years of loving work disappeared. This happens every day. The hosting company is holding on to the
domain name, so nobody can use it without their permission. In effect, through a $15 transaction that assigned the
domain name to a particular user, they became the controllers of thousands of pages of information.
In a different case, a registrar arbitrary blocked a domain because a political opponent made a
bogus legal threat. The site was off the Web for a while until the domain could be transferred.
Firms go bankrupt, people lose interest in a project, organizations close. If your Web site is
just a business, there is no point in keeping it on the Web of course. What if it is "only" a news journal or
commentary? Isn't it important for people to be able to say what happened ten years ago, or twenty years ago? If the
information, Web log entries, creations etc. that you are putting on the Web is important to you, and you want to
preserve those pages and their visibility, you need to plan ahead to make certain that it has a future even if you go
bankrupt.
You should also be aware that a properly maintained Web site, no matter what it is about, is a
valuable financial asset. 20,000 pages can produce a significant income in advertising revenue.
Worthwhile information is usually saved by www.archive.org,
but the original links of the Web site are lost and therefore its visibility in search engines, and availability through
existing links, are lost. Make sure that www.archive.org is able to crawl your
site and that its spider is not blocked. To do that, just go to the archive.org site and search for your Web site. If
your site has been up for more than a year and is of reasonable size, it is probably archived.
If your domain lapses, and you stop paying for hosting, the hundreds of Web sites that linked to
your material and depend on it are going to be left with a lot of broken links if your Web pages are no longer on the
Web or no longer at their original address.
We cannot at present, change the strange laws that allow domain registrars to control domain
names, and thereby to control valuable intellectual property based on tiny financial transactions. We can, however, take
some steps to ensure that work is minimally protected:
1- If possible, register the domain name for five years rather than one year.
2- If possible, make yearly Web hosting contracts rather than monthly payments - and make sure that others know how to renew the
hosting and domain name. Make sure that you have a partner or partners who may be interested in continuing the site.
3- Check the policy of the Web hosting service and registrar before you start. Make sure it is
easy to find human support personnel that will help your associates safeguard your domain and your material, and that
the hosting/registrar company will not arbitrarily close down your site or block your domain because of legal threats
(this happens!) or for other reasons. Make certain that they allow you to transfer domain ownership quickly and easily.
4 - Do not invest a great effort in Web pages that are part of someone else's Web site or in free
Web sites. These can be lost to you and to the world if the host changes its policy or goes out of business. That
applies to free Web logs too.
5 - If someone else makes the Web site for you and maintains it, make sure that you have:
- Raw sources of the contents
- Backup copies of all the Web pages that are created
- If the pages are generated by software (a Web log or content management system) , then make sure
that the system or software is generic or that you have a way of accessing and controlling the software. Don't let a Web
designer or company own and control the software and the content that is in it.
6- Take reasonable steps to ensure that you have a copy of any work that is valuable to you -
including online backup schemes, as well as copies on your own computer.
7 - If you are about to lose interest or drop a large Web site for any reason, make certain that
someone responsible will take over from you, or sell it. Large Web sites are generally valuable.
Notice: Copyright
All materials are copyright 2008 by Ami Isseroff. All rights reserved. These pages may not be reproduced in any
form in electronic or printed media without express written permission from the author.
