When a .com domain name is being registered, certain technical rules and policies require it to have a pair of nameservers. If you don’t supply your own or those given by your hosting provider, the domain name will use the registrar’s nameservers by default.

Many if not all registrars’ default nameservers display what are called “parking pages” or “under construction pages”. While there’s nothing seemingly wrong with that, there are 2 scenarios giving 2 reasons why they shouldn’t be used if it can be helped.

If you’re new here, you might be asking, “so what’s so special about that parking page or under construction page?” and/or “what’s so bad about it?”

While I won’t go into the sometimes lengthly (and sometimes ugly) “debate” on why parking pages are useless and all, what I will explain is why having your domain name using your registrar’s parking page might do more harm than good.

Many registrars’ parking or under construction pages display commercial links, although few offer users the option to use a non-commercial one, if any. When someone visits a domain name using its registrar’s parking page and clicks an ad, usually the registrar gets paid for that.

You read that right: the registrar gets paid for that. Well usually, anyway, depending on the arrangement between the registrar and its commercial partner or so.

Now you might be thinking, “does the registrar have the right to do that? Is that…ethical?”

The answer to the first question is unfortunately yes, especially if it’s stated in their registration or service agreement. Try to find the portion saying what happens if you don’t input a different pair of nameservers or if you choose to use theirs.

This actually reminds me years ago of someone who sued a registrar thinking he had “exclusive rights” to the domain name and the registrar didn’t have the right to put parking pages on it:

http://www.nycourts.gov/comdiv/Law%20Report%20Files/October%202001/zurakov.htm

While I’m obviously not an attorney, from what I understood so far the person lost. The reasons are that the court agreed the registrar’s contract never stated he had exclusive rights and what not, and that he was never deprived of any option to resolve this issue that time.

I haven’t seen any decision say otherwise since then. But if any lawyer found one that’s evenually said otherwise, feel free to comment and post it here for everyone to see.

As to whether that’s ethical or not, consider that it’s their resources they’re spending the costs for to give you the privilege to register a domain name in their systems. While no one has to agree with that, the registrar has full control over it and has legally covered their behinds on that as well.

In short, putting the registrar’s parking page on the domain name registered to you gives them an opportunity to possibly make money off without sharing it with you. I don’t know any registrar who might even consider “sharing” that except maybe Go Daddy’s, although they charge a fee to “use” their parking service.

Since many registrars’ parking and/or under construction pages contain advertising links, that can pose an even bigger problem: potential trademark infringement. If your domain name has a term that’s being used as a trademark, coupled with one of the ads on the page showing competing products, it could draw the mark holder’s wrath towards you.

Your registrar’s contract likely says they won’t check for possible trademarks and says it’s your responsibility to do that. Personally I agree with that since it’s just too difficult and inconvenient (both registrar and end user) to screen out domain names for such, not to mention trademark infringement isn’t necessarily simple.

Let’s say your domain name has the word tide and the parking page shows an ad to, of all things, competing detergents. The maker of that popular soap maker might see that and threaten you with trademark infringement, which can get quite unpleasant for some.

Fortunately most if not all registrars give users the option to change their registrars’ parking nameservers to another. In fact, I suggest you do that as soon as you can.

But for those who might not have a pair of nameservers on hand, one suggestion I can make is maybe using a free third party DNS service like afraid.org. I used it for a while and found it helpful, although it’s because I happen to know a bit about DNS.

What services like afraid.org do is give you a pair of nameservers to put into your domain name to make it go somewhere, especially a blank page or even another web address. However, I also suggest you check with the free DNS service if they’ll also put in their own commercial parking page, if any.

If anyone can suggest what’s more or less a “good” free DNS service like afraid.org or so, kindly share it here so we can try to discover more about it.

I decided to write about this because someone was being threatened with trademark infringement due to his domain name showing his registrar’s parking page. Given that I’m sure many people don’t know this at all, this puts them at an unnecessary and unwanted risk.

All in all, I don’t recommend you use your registrar’s parking nameservers at all. If you really need to , ask them if it’ll show links to ads or look around for DNS services to fill the blanks.

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