Potential disruption to MacPorts domain registration

[Mr. Puneet Kishor]

and namecheap, who are fairly progressive, anti-SOPA and all that.


On Mar 29, 2012, at 11:45 AM, Sam Kuper wrote:

> gkg.net sounds awful. Hope I never have any dealings with them!
> 
> Wouldn't it be best to simply transfer the domain to another registrar
> asap? I've found Dreamhost, Moniker and 123-reg to all be reasonably
> helpful and reasonably priced for domain registration.
> 
> Sam
> 
> 
> On 29 March 2012 17:09, Joshua Root <jmr at macports.org> wrote:
> 
>> Short version: Our domain registrar, gkg.net, is threatening to cancel
>> the registration of macports.org and other domains that redirect to it.
>> We do not know whether they will follow through on this threat.
>> 
>> If they do, we will have no choice but to move our services to another
>> domain, at least temporarily. Tentatively, that would be
>> macports.macosforge.org for www.macports.org, and
>> trac.macosforge.org/projects/macports for trac.macports.org. We also
>> have macportz.org and macportz.com registered through another registrar
>> in case we need them.
>> 
>> If this does happen, the mailing lists will keep working, though
>> @macports.org email aliases will not. Our IRC channel, #macports on
>> Freenode, will also continue to be available. Further information will
>> be posted in these two places if necessary.
>> 
>> Background on the issue:
>> 
>> James Berry, who handles the domain registrations for the project,
>> recently renewed them. While doing so, he accidentally checked a box
>> requesting another service along with the registrations. He immediately
>> informed GKG of the error, and for the next several weeks corresponded
>> with them, asking them to cancel the unwanted service and provide a
>> refund. They refused to do so.
>> 
>> He then sought and obtained a chargeback from his credit card company.
>> After that, GKG contacted him and stated that to avoid closure of his
>> account, he had to pay a "chargeback fee" (which was greater than the
>> amount refunded), and provide "a notarized letter from the Registrant
>> and the person who paid for the services (if the person is different
>> from the Registrant) stating that they understand the charges they
>> incurred, they agreed to the charges, and they will not charge the
>> services back. The letter will also agree to the domains remaining on
>> Registrar Lock until GKG decides that there is no longer a threat of a
>> chargeback from the Registrant and/or the person who paid for the
>> services originally."
>> 
>> James will not be providing the requested letter since some of the
>> statements in it would be false.
>> 
>> - Josh (for PortMgr)
>>