Reusing domain names

I have a friend who is "giving" his domain name to another person. Is that possible?

Well, you could always break in his house, and then force him to conduct business through money...or we can accept that transactions can be acheived without monetary exchange

OH BLAST IT! Slashmire has revealed my plan!

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Sig: Before I post on Domain Social, I read the rules!

I wonder how someone would go about doing this...can you just transfer it over as a gift or something?

The transfer process is independent from the payment process. You can transfer as many of your domains as you want, to whoever you want. There is no check on whether money was exchanged. In the view of the registrar, you are just changing ownership though changing the account of the domain; in the view of ICANN and the regional registers, you are changing ownership through changing the WHOIS info.

In a sale, generally, the buyer pays the seller, and then the seller transfers the domain. The payment process can be done through whatever means is agreed upon: paypal, check, money transfer, escrow, a barter of potatoes, etc.

If NO payment is to be made (and the domain is a gift or another non-monetary exchange), then the domain is simply transfered without waiting for money.

Hope its clear that the two processes are independent (which is why, until escrow for domains, it was very risky transfering domains, and high price transfers were usually conducted under legal accords).

Zach

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Sig: Before I post on Domain Social, I read the rules!

However, I would guess that legally, you...would have to declare it as a "gift" to the IRS and all....maybe charge him a penny or so.

Yeah Zach covered it completely. This is very easy and painless. Most registrars allow you to set up accounts for free, so just have the second person sign up at the same registrar and transfer them over. In a lot of cases you don't even need to extend it out a year when you transfer.

They have no record of money being exchaned for the domains! It can be a gift for free and the IRS does put it down as a gift. Very interesting and I don't think you can do that for houses.

Thanks Zach. The guy getting the gift is my brother and the giving the gift is my cousin who tends to be not so honest.

Then you might want to check and make sure there's no pending litigation or criminal action against the domain!

Seriously, though, when transferring domains there is the (usually remote) risk of taking on liabilities related to the domain, so always do a little due diligence.