I have a friend that said "when you buy whois protection the registar becomes the legal owner" Is this true?
No, as far as I know it really doesn't... From the opinion I get, its like when actors don't put their address on the internet, instead they put their agency's so that people can't send them unsolicited stuff. It doesn't mean that everything the actor does belongs to the agency... if my random similie makes sense.
Thanks for the current replies He backed it up with this quote - "Registrant's contact details, such as address and telephone number, are made easily accessible to anyone over the internet for most top-level domains. Although some registrars offer private registrations (where the contact information of the registrar is shown), under ICANN rules the registrar or "private registration" company is then legal owner (lessor) of the domain."
Umm...yeah... I am this "friend" of Peter Brown. I did say this and I do believe it to be factually correct. If it is not then I apologise for the misunderstanding. The above quote that Peter Brown has posted (which I did show to him) is from Wikipedia. I know some people might think that Wikipedia is unreliable, but I have also asked some of my friends who know more about this area of law then I do and they tend to agree with me. I have emailed ICANN to ask them to clarify this issue and I am awaiting their response.
Well, I do admit that I was more guessing than knowing, but would it not be somewhat fraudulent for these hosts/registrants to offer you privacy, if in doing so they were also actually registering the domain for themselves. Also reccently, when I had to update all of my .co.uk domain data through nominet, it did say that you couldn't change the details on there to transfer the domain, so does that not mean, that the owner is a fixed induvidual regardless of the actual whois info? Its quite an interesting thing, and I look forward to seeing the reply from ICANN.
Most registrar services have a TOS disclairmer stating that you remain as the owner so the service is only intended to protect your privacy. Nothing to worry most of the time.