I have owned the domain name “harnlist.com” for a very long time now. I purchased the domain from a UK (actually, Scottish) company called Easyspace way back in the previous century…or maybe it was early this century. No matter, suffice to say it was years and years ago. Days and days and more days, even!
Unfortunately, a couple of years later—around about the time I purchased a heap of new domains from them—they underwent an ownership change. They suddenly became very expensive, and very hard to work with. Overnight, it became incredibly easy to transfer a domain name from another hosting service to them, but impossibly difficult and incredibly expensive to transfer domains away from them (eg, it took me three hours to just find the page which allowed transfers away from them, and then it started to get difficult).
I have let lapse a number of domains I had with them, and transferred the three domains I really wanted to keep (including Lythia.com) away from them to my current hosting service and registrar (Dreamhost). I still gag at the cost! Should I ever want to, transfers away from Dreamhost are free, and easy to do. So why does Easyspace make it so hard? I don’t know, and I no longer care (although I suspect greed plays a big part).
But one domain that I didn’t bring across, and which is now in a “redemption” period is “harnlist.com”. This was always just the domain name for the website which supported the HârnList (ie, the email distribution list) itself, but the information it once held has long since been ported to Lythia.com. The mailing list itself was always “harnlist@lythia.com”. I don’t know why I thought I might need the domain, frankly, but I bought it and kept it going for many years. And now it’s time to let it go…
Fly free, little domain name! Keep clear of domain squatters and spamvertisers…if you can.
In other words, people, don’t go to this domain anymore, because I don’t own it or control it. And at a cost of £99, I’m not going to redeem it, either.