rss feedThe Demise of WriteSafe.Com?
WriteSafe.Com is was a repository for writers to upload their scripts, stories and other writing related materials with a goal to time stamp them for intellectual property protection. It’s not legally very powerful from the standpoint of a copyright or even a Writer’s Guild registration, but it did serve as a way to protect one’s work if one was budgetary conscious.
You may recognize the domain/service if you’ve ever submitted the short to Inktip.com‘s short’s division. I have several shorts online with Inktip.com in which Writesafe.com is used to validate ownership because it’s a pain in the wallet to register shorts with the WGA or copyright office.
This week I noticed the domain had expired in February which leads me to believe:
- a) someone isn’t at the wheel and forgot to renew the domain (tsk tsk tsk)
- b) the site is closed down for good
I’m leaning towards answer “a” because even if you were closing down a business, you’d create a press release, inform users of it’s impending closure, and renew the domain with a simple holder page for a year so that everyone knows what is going on with respect to shutting down the service. Right?
There’s nothing on the internet I can find about the demise of this service, so it leads me to believe that the domain is simply expired. Simple is really the wrong word to use, if you weren’t already familiar with how domain registration works, let me give you a quick lesson in how important it is to renew them in a timely manner.
When you register a domain, most if not all registrars will remind you 6 months, 1 month, and then weekly that your domain is about to expire. Many people use their ISP email addresses when they buy the domain, this is a HUGE mistake. Why? Because a year from now your ISP could either change names or you could change services. Once that happens, all reminders are useless because they bounce back to the registrar. You lolligag about your life not realizing that a shit-storm is about to befall you.
Most registrars give you a day or two to catch your mistake and renew a domain, and lucky you if that happens. After that point, you might as well say goodbye to your domain, your domain email, your hard earned google placements, everything… ESPECIALLY if your site garners any significant traffic. After your domain is expired it enters “Domain Jail” where You the Owner and Joe Schmo Internet Squatter cannot touch the domain. Well, that isn’t true. The owner of the domain can retrieve and renew the domain name but for an exorbitant hostage like fee around $80.00 – $150.00.
If you refuse to pay the Registrar (it’s actually ICANN holding them hostage) the high price, you have to wait 90 days before you can attempt to purchase your domain again at normal rates.
If you have a site with no traffic, this is always the best course of action because it’s rare a squatter will snap up a domain (I’ve had several clients use this method successfully). But if you have a decent domain name or good traffic, you pretty much have to mark 90 days from your expiration date down to the month, day, hour, and second to make sure you purchase it before a squatter does, and even then if they used a back order service, I’m not sure you’d get your domain back. A back order service may trump any tries at re-purchasing your domain.
The TL;DR message to all of this is: ALWAYS KNOW WHEN YOUR DOMAIN EXPIRES AND RENEW IT IN A TIMELY MANNER.
(If anyone knows what happened to the site, chime in, I’d like to know. I really enjoyed the service.)
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Thanks Ed,
I found the domain expired in Feb of 2013, it was caught in ICANN jail for 90 days and someone recently either regained ownership or snapped it up in April. But yes, doesn’t look like there are any plans for it. There’s always WriteVault.Com as the alternative.
any other info on the status of writesafe or if past customers can download their info?
No there is not. Information left on writesafe.com is gone forever :(. Rest assured, Write Vault consciously goes out of their way to protect and back up your data in the event of an emergency server shut/break down.
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No, it seems to be gone. The domain name doesn’t expire until next year (it’s easy to look up if you know how).