information Lease to own option coming to Afternic

[equity78]

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GoDaddy/Afternic are going to be rolling out a lease to own option. In a blog post today at Afternic.com, James Iles laid out all the details.One of the things to pay attention to is the fees associated with the new offering.From Afternic.com:Service Fee and DiscountsAfternic’s Lease to Own provides buyers with the ability to pay for domain names long-term, but as with similar … [Read more...]

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

Cool.

 

[Constantin S]

Their commission structure confused me so much.

 

[Bhanu Kiran]

Nice ! will they also offer Lease to Own Option if Using the "Request Price /Ns3 , Ns4 " Name servers or only for Buynow /Ns5, Ns6 nameservers ?

 

[bmugford]

@James Iles

Is the buyer allowed to use the domain during the lease period?

I would assume so considering the article says -

This service fee will cover payment processing fees, renewal fees, buyer DNS support, and more over the term of the deal.

If so, where are the terms regarding the buyer's usage?

It is possible to damage the value of a domain name, based on the usage.

Brad

 

[Beezy]

How do you point your domains to the right afternic landers for this?

 

[bmugford]

@James Iles

Is the buyer allowed to use the domain during the lease period?

I would assume so considering the article says -

This service fee will cover payment processing fees, renewal fees, buyer DNS support, and more over the term of the deal.

If so, where are the terms regarding the buyer's usage?

It is possible to damage the value of a domain name, based on the usage.

Brad

Posted on Twitter as well.

Could you please clarify?

@James Iles @Paul Nicks

https://twitter.com/x/status/1679903388102799384

 

[bmugford]

Here are the lease agreement terms from Dan.com.

Is Afternic going to use the same terms?

I have done private lease deals, and a handful via Dan.com on a case by case basis, but have never enabled them on a large scale because of the potential issues.

Many of these banned uses are highly subjective and would vary based on location.

https://dan.com/terms_of_use

Article 7. Rental Agreement and Installment Agreement​

7.1 The Client and the Contractor may enter into a separate Rental Agreement and/or Lease to Own Agreement. With respect to the Rental Agreement and the Lease to Own Agreement, the terms and conditions as provided in these Terms apply. In that respect, the term “Provider” can be substituted for “Rentor” and “Transferee” for “Rentee”, as applicable.

7.2 Any commissions may be subtracted from the payment, instalment payment or rental payment and, if these payments are not sufficient, from the subsequent payments. In the event that the domain name is purchased in instalments or rented, the commission subtracted will be limited to the secured instalment or rent payment (e.g.: if the commission is 25%, and the instalment price $100, the Contractor only subtracts $25 from the payout of the Provider for each instalment.).

7.3 In the event of purchase of a domain name by way of Rental Agreement and/or Lease to Own Agreement, the Transferee shall only use the domain name in accordance with any applicable law and regulation, and with all duty and care. For the avoidance of doubt, the Transferee is banned from using the domain name in case such use:

1. is in breach of any applicable law, statute, or regulation;
2. is fraudulent, criminal or unlawful;
3. promotes racism, bigotry, hatred or physical harm of any kind against any group or individual;
4. infringes or breaches the patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, right of publicity or other intellectual property) rights of any Third Party;
5. contains video, audio photographs, or images of another person without his or her permission (or in the case of a minor, the minor's legal guardian’s permission);
6. provides information on any illegal activity (including, but not limited to, instructional information on acquiring or fabricating illegal weapons or drugs, privacy violations or distributing computer viruses);
7. publicizes or promotes commercial activities an/or sales without our prior written consent such as contests, sweepstakes, barter, advertising, and pyramid schemes; or
8. involves the use, delivery or transmission of any viruses, harmful code, unsolicited emails, Trojan horses or any other computer programming routines that are intended to disrupt, damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information.d

7.4 Notwithstanding the above, Client acknowledges and agrees that any (other) prohibited activity as referred to in Clause 5 above, as well or any other activity which may cause damages to the Provider or another person or Third Party and/or which may decrease the value of the domain name are strictly prohibited. Such activities include (but are not limited to) the use of aggressive SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on search engines and not a human audience, and usually does not obey search engines guidelines (black hat SEO), such as keyword stuffing, invisible text, doorway pages, adding unrelated keywords to the page content or page swapping (changing the webpage entirely after it has been ranked by search engines), and the use of the domain name for spam activities.

7.5 In case of violation of the Terms included in Clause 5 and this Clause 7, the Transferee shall forfeit (in addition to Contractor’s other rights and remedies) an immediately payable contractual penalty of twice the amount of the fees included in the Lease to Own Agreement, or, in case of a Rental Agreement, 24 times the monthly rent. This contractual penalty shall be calculated per violation or, at Contractor’s sole discretion, per day or part of that day that the violation continues after Contractor has made Transferee aware of the violation. In addition Transferee shall be obliged to limit any further damages and/or remediate any diminished value of the domain name associated with the violation.

7.6 In case of a Rental Agreement [or Lease to Own Agreement], Rentor is further prohibited to sell or rent the domain name to any Third Party, to pledge the domain name as security if such pledge frustrates the (performance of the) Rental Agreement, or to act in any other way which is in conflict with this agreement or which may cause damages to the Contractor and/or the Rentee, after the deposit of the Domain Name Price. Rentor acknowledges and agrees that it shall be fully liable to the Contractor and/or the Rentee for any damages resulting from its breach of this clause.

7.7 If the Transferee fails and/or neglects to fulfil its obligations as per the respective agreement, the Provider may terminate the agreement with immediate effect. Transferee acknowledges and agrees that it shall be fully liable to the Contractor and/or the Rentor for any damages resulting from its breach of the agreement.

7.8 Parties acknowledge and agree that the Contractor may terminate the Rental Agreement and/or Lease to Own Agreement with immediate effect upon written notice thereof if the Client:

1. institutes insolvency proceedings;
2. has a receiver appointed;
3. has been declared bankrupt;
4. is dissolved;
5. has any attachment levied on a substantial part of its assets.

7.9 Notwithstanding the foregoing, if the Provider has been declared bankrupt and the first instalment has been paid by the Transferee, the domain name shall be transferred to the Transferee immediately unless prohibited by applicable law or bankruptcy order.

7.10 After termination of the Rental Agreement or Lease to Own Agreement, as applicable, the Provider may rent or sell the domain name to any party, including competitors of the Transferee. If the Lease to Own Agreement has been terminated by the Provider, the Lease to Own Ageement will retroactively be considered to be a Rental Agreement and all instalments paid are to be considered as rent.

7.11 Client agrees to relinquish its right to invoke the recission (“ontbinding”) of the Rental Agreement or Lease to Own Agreement, on whatever grounds.

 

[QUAD DOMAINS]

Posted on Twitter as well.

Could you please clarify?

@James Iles @Paul Nicks

https://twitter.com/x/status/1679903388102799384

Based on the commission framework they've outlined, it seems domain holders will LTO their assets at their own risk. This means it's up to them to keep tabs on how the domain is being used and take whatever action they deem necessary if it's misused. Ultimately, this would imply a domain holder would need to set use terms in place before a LTO agreement is established; which would mean having some form of reliable contact with the leasing party. Considering GoDaddy likely won't provide the customer's contact information, the domain holder might find themselves out of luck if the value of the domain is diminished during the LTO term.

In a perfect world, GoDaddy would monitor how LTO domains are used; but they'll likely leave that to ICANN and others to deal with. They're probably fine with being called on to pull the plug on a domain's LTO dynamic at the request of their "overhead". Afterall, GoDaddy's goals probably don't expand too far beyond maximizing profits at every turn. Ensuring the integrity of domain use probably wouldn't benefit their bottom-line enough for there to be a strong investment in a system that would allow a domain holder to withdraw from a LTO agreement if their asset is being misused. Then, you have the censorship issue that would be exacerbated if a system like this did exist.

It's ALL interesting to say the least....

Mel
QUAD Domains

 

[bmugford]

Based on the commission framework they've outlined, it seems domain holders will LTO their assets at their own risk. This means it's up to them to keep tabs on how the domain is being used and take whatever action they deem necessary if it's misused. Ultimately, this would imply a domain holder would need to set use terms in place before a LTO agreement is established; which would mean having some form of reliable contact with the leasing party. Considering GoDaddy likely won't provide the customer's contact information, the domain holder might find themselves out of luck if the value of the domain is diminished during the LTO term.

In a perfect world, GoDaddy would monitor how LTO domains are used; but they'll likely leave that to ICANN and others to deal with. They're probably fine with being called on to pull the plug on a domain's LTO dynamic at the request of their "overhead". Afterall, GoDaddy's goals probably don't expand too far beyond maximizing profits at every turn. Ensuring the integrity of domain use probably wouldn't benefit their bottom-line enough for there to be a strong investment in a system that would allow a domain holder to withdraw from a LTO agreement if their asset is being misused. Then, you have the censorship issue that would be exacerbated if a system like this did exist.

It's ALL interesting to say the least....

Mel
QUAD Domains

Regardless, I would like to see a copy of Afternic's LTO agreement.

If it is the same as Dan.com, I would probably not be that likely to enable it on a broad scale.

Brad

 

[Lox]

The invoice / contract

DAN
Seller <> Buyer reference

Afternic/GD
Seller <> GD (Afternic) reference ... does not generally include the buyer's details a.w. buyer doesn't see the seller details.

GD LTO will be on behalf of the seller / buyer or transparent?

AFAF

Regards

 

[bmugford]

The checkout process is via Dan.com and not GoDaddy or Afternic...Why?

It reminds me of how GoDaddy sends $5K+ sales via their auction venue to Escrow.com. It is a frequent failure point when you introduce another website.

 

[Lox]

In case of LTO , I would suggest to use your own Real-Time Domain / Website monitoring tool. You can't (can?) count on GD/DAN to do a proper RTM for you.


(if you don't know how to run RTM = external service = extra cost)

Regards

 

[ArielT]

In case of LTO , I would suggest to use your own Real-Time Domain / Website monitoring tool. You can't (can?) count on GD/DAN to do a proper RTM for you.


(if you don't know how to run RTM = external service = extra cost)

Regards

Can that monitoring be set to detect inappropriate content and get alerts?

Thanks

 

[phaethon]

I'm against LTO. With such low STR on average, GD will see their revenues increase, but LTO will be the end of many investors. Most businesses fail for various reasons, so why should someone keep paying for a domain they don't need? It might be good for expensive domains over 10K though.

 

[Lox]

Can that monitoring be set to detect inappropriate content and get alerts?

Thanks

Yes

 

[Lox]

Activated 1 DN LTO (Afternic) & GD chat assistant ... promising

 

[ArielT]

Yes

Ok, thank you

Any recommendation on a good monitoring tool for this purpose?

 

[Peter45]

7.3 In the event of purchase of a domain name by way of Rental Agreement and/or Lease to Own Agreement, the Transferee shall only use the domain name in accordance with any applicable law and regulation, and with all duty and care. For the avoidance of doubt, the Transferee is banned from using the domain name in case such use:

1. is in breach of any applicable law, statute, or regulation;
2. is fraudulent, criminal or unlawful;
3. promotes racism, bigotry, hatred or physical harm of any kind against any group or individual;
4. infringes or breaches the patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, right of publicity or other intellectual property) rights of any Third Party;
5. contains video, audio photographs, or images of another person without his or her permission (or in the case of a minor, the minor's legal guardian’s permission);
6. provides information on any illegal activity (including, but not limited to, instructional information on acquiring or fabricating illegal weapons or drugs, privacy violations or distributing computer viruses);
7. publicizes or promotes commercial activities an/or sales without our prior written consent such as contests, sweepstakes, barter, advertising, and pyramid schemes; or
8. involves the use, delivery or transmission of any viruses, harmful code, unsolicited emails, Trojan horses or any other computer programming routines that are intended to disrupt, damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information.

What if the owner/rentor believes that the domain usage is infringing any applicable law, statute, or regulation (of any country?) while the rentee disagree?

Now the owner/rentor claims the domain back.
Let's say Dan/Afternic decide against the owner/rentor.
In doing so, Dan/Afternic are taking responsibility - in front of the owner/rentor - for damages to the domain in case that that domain is indeed infringing some applicable law, statute, or regulation of some country.

Should we infer that those platforms will tend to acquiesce to the owner/rentor's opinion?

 

[wizard]

This is great I find most of my buyers want to pay lease to buy and I am happy for this option.

 

[GoDaddy]

This is great I find most of my buyers want to pay lease to buy and I am happy for this option.

We love to hear that! We are excited to provide Lease to Own for Afternic sellers!

The checkout process is via Dan.com and not GoDaddy or Afternic...Why?

It reminds me of how GoDaddy sends $5K+ sales via their auction venue to Escrow.com. It is a frequent failure point when you introduce another website.

Show attachment 242695

Dan.com's technology and capabilities with Lease to Own have continued to impress us, so we're leveraging Dan.com's expertise with Lease to Own to provide the service to our Afternic customers, too.

How do you point your domains to the right afternic landers for this?

When we launch fully, Afternic's Dan.com lander will provide you with Lease to Own capabilities. There's a guide here to set them up.

 

[Peter45]

It is possible to damage the value of a domain name, based on the usage.

The danger is not only value damage but also financial liability, in case the domain usage causes financial damage to a third party.
Do the lease agreement terms exclude any subsidiary financial liability of the domain owner/rentor?

In case of LTO , I would suggest to use your own Real-Time Domain / Website monitoring tool

If the domain owner/rentor is responsible for monitoring the domain usage, does it make him liable - on a subsidiary basis - for any financial damage caused by the domain usage to a third party?

 

[Constantin S]

If we use the ns1/ns2.dan.com is the LTO option still going to appear on the GoDaddy site when someone searches the domain? or we must use the ns1/ns2.afternic.com for that?