Anthony has already stated that he did it to highlight a flaw in Fasthost's system.
I can see why
@Murray feel strongly about this and why a lot of people will feel that this is wrong. I hope its wrong as this will destroy the business for a lot of people.
@Gill
You are right, domains belong to the registry, registrants kind of ease it until they chose to not renew it and at the point of delete it goes back to the registry. Registrars facilitates this process and registrars have to abide with registry Terms which are incorporated into their own term.
I don't want to tell anyone what they already know, just trying to add a bit of clarity to the discussion.
Registrars do a lot of dodgy stuff especially in the .com world. I have had a domain removed from my account and transfer to another account as soon as it reaches the redemption period. They point me to their terms which says that they can move domains from your account as soon as its expired not even redemption period. I had to complain to ICANN, forward them a copy and my name was returned even before I got any reply from ICANN.
Registrars will put terms that bends the rules of the Registry and for anyone to be able to transfer a domain name from another account to theirs without the consent of the current registrant must be wrong. This should not be facilitated by a registrar.
Also, if he did it just to show that what Fasthost is doing is wrong, why is one of the domain on auction?
I don't usually like to get into this sort of discussion because it sometimes goes into different directions and words can be translate to mean something else but on this one, its wrong and if Nominet terms allows it, then it must be rectified as this will give all the powers to large registrars. They already control who rules in Nominet now they will control and own majority of the assets as well.