About Bill Hartzer and this site

Who this is

My name is Bill Hartzer. I have worked in the domain name industry since 1996, on the technical side of how domain names are registered, transferred, resolved, monetized and lost.

That work has two halves. One is operational: registration data, DNS, hosting and the systems that record what happens to a name. The other is evidentiary: taking that record, establishing what it is, and explaining what it shows and what it does not show to people who have to make decisions on it.

I have testified in domain-related legal cases, and I have provided expert witness reports in other cases. Those two sentences are the whole claim this site makes about my engagement history, and the omission is deliberate rather than coy — naming matters, counting them or characterizing their outcomes would be the wrong thing to publish on a reference site, and the current record belongs somewhere it can be kept current.

Who this site is written for

Two audiences, in this order.

Attorneys and law firms evaluating whether a domain matter needs a technical expert, and what such an engagement would actually involve. The material here assumes legal literacy and no technical background: it assumes you know what a subpoena is and does not assume you know what a registry status code is, so every technical term is defined where it first appears and no legal term is.

Parties to a domain-related legal case trying to understand what an expert would do for them, what records exist, and what those records can and cannot establish before anyone spends money finding out.

Everything here is written for someone with a live matter. It is not written for browsing, and it is not written for the domain industry — there is a great deal of good material elsewhere about how domain mechanisms work, and this site deliberately covers the same subjects only as evidence: what those mechanisms leave behind, who holds it, how long it survives, and what an expert does with it.

What this site does not do

It does not give legal advice. It describes what published policy and rules say, what records exist, and what technical evidence bears on the questions a proceeding asks. It does not characterize any reader's position, does not say what anyone should file, and does not predict how any court or panel would decide anything. Where a matter touches procedure, counsel is required.

It does not name cases, courts, parties or firms — including matters of public record. It does not publish counts of engagements, reports or testimony, and it does not make outcome claims of any kind. It does not publish fees or rates.

Material that is specific to United States law — the federal anti-cybersquatting statute, in rem jurisdiction over a domain name, the Federal Rules of Evidence — is flagged as US-specific wherever it appears, because a great deal of domain policy is worldwide and a great deal of the litigation framework is not.

Contact and the current record

hartzer.com is the actively maintained record of credentials and engagements. This site describes the practice; it does not attempt to keep an engagement list current, and the credentials page here says so explicitly rather than publishing a list that will quietly go out of date.

For a live matter, contact through counsel is the appropriate route. The contact page carries a single email address and nothing else — there is no form that stores anything, no account system and no scheduling tool.