person one buys domain
person two pays for the hosting
who owns the ‘website’?

Whoever is registered in the WHOIS info? Which would be the one who bought the domain?

Dunno though, just speculating. 🙂

if by ‘website’ you mean the content then whoever paid for it to be built.

EDIT: assuming part of the contract included copyright transfer from the design agency

Define “website.” Do you mean the name or the content?

person one owns the domain name.
person two owns nothing – just paid for a service.

Whoever paid for the website build owns it. Or if it was a collaboration of ideas etc., and you can prove it then joint ownership could be proved – this could get expensive though if you have to go legal!

the website isn’t the domain name or where it’s hosted, it’s the code and content.

As above, whoever wrote it is likely to hold copyright.

the person who registered the domain owns that

the person who pays for hosting doesn’t really own anything.

Paying for a domain name does not mean you own it. Actually it’s not possible to own a domain name you actually rent them. Possibly getting into semantics there but just because you pay the charges does not mean it’s yours. For example, at work, we have legally taken ‘ownership’ of several domains that were in use (and paid for) by other people.

I’ve heard of an instance where someone brought a very successful website, but not the domain, so once the purchase went through the domain owner just redirected the traffic to a new website and carried on with making money.

New owner basically owned the old shop site code and database, with no way of getting traffic from it other than buying a new domain and starting from scratch.

Erm, not sure if this answers your question though…

I’ve just been through the process for client ho had used a 3rd party to design website including purchase of domain. The 3rd party registered the domain in their name even though the website clearly promoted the clients business. The 3rd party disappeared and the hosts blocked the website and email access. The host wouldn’t talk to the client as they weren’t the registered name on the domain.
We had to raise a dispute through Nominet to have the ownership changed which isn’t straight forward and really requires expert legal help. We provided all the invoices relating to the design of the website and domain registration whilst Nominet tried to contact the 3rd party for a response. They couldn’t make contact with the 3rd party and we awaited a judgement. We lost as we couldn’t prove ownership.Luckily the client had found on of the employees of the 3rd party who hadn’t been paid and gained access to the 3rd party office and taken anything he could get his hands on in lieu of payment. One of the computers removed had passwords required to transfer ownership of the domain to the client.

If you’d bought a Bomber instead of a Domain you could have easily owned the website – and the other guy as well.

I bought the domain name, I therefore own that, its a done deal.

Hosting is an ongoing cost to provide a service, I see no implication of ownership by paying for a service.

I could take your car (so long as it has the correct wheel brace and a good spare wheel 😉 )to the car wash and pay for it to be cleaned.
That doesn’t make me the owner of the car.

My clients problem was that he’d paid the 3rd party to set it all up, even though he’d paid for it all the name on the domain registration wasn’t his and the registered name trumps all in the eyes of the law.
For anyone who has had a website setup for them they ensure their name is the registered as owning the domain, it’s free to check on Whois or Nominet. If it’s not in our name then get it transferred into you’re name and ensure you have the account details/passwords (which of course you will change straight away) to control the domain.

We always buy names on behalf of clients but they are registered in their name with us set up as managers in order that we can manage renewals etc.

Anyone who buys client domains in their own name is an amateur or a charlatan who shouldn’t be trusted.

Yup it what ever is the owner on the WHOIS/Nominet records!

Rather than ‘owns’, who ‘controls’ is probably a better question; and the short/cheap answer is its whichever email is used in the domains’ registration.

Consequently always ensure that domain registrations are done with a ‘group’ email address, not a single user-name – as when they leave and the ‘repeat’ transactions gets bounced…

Rather than ‘owns’, who ‘controls’ is probably a better question

Exactly!

True

iDave – If you need specific advice on the domain side, let me know as domains and hosting is what I do