ICANN Moves To Disable Domain Tasting

jehnx writes "Following Google's crackdown on 'domain tasters', ICANN has voted unanimously to eliminate the free period that many domain buyers have been taking advantage of. At the same meeting they also discussed Network Solutions' front running but took no action on it."

Comments

Re:Network Solutions

[tritonman]

Yea I think they are full of crap. I tried this myself, I searched on network solutions for some random domain name like kljihsd2342.com, it said it was available, then I decided that I would maybe go with register.com (we do have freedom of choice right?) and it said the domain was unavailable, it was registered by network solutions. This is most certainly abuse of power.

Re:Is this really about domain tasting

[Aladrin]

I RTFA. Their main concern was Domain Tasting, but Domain Kiting would be attacked by the same action they took, so it doesn't matter.

Re:Network Solutions

[badfish99]

So the solution is simply to do your searches on register.com if you're going to buy from them, and not to go to networksolutions.com at all.

Although: if ICANN eliminate the free tasting period, so that it costs network solutions some money for each domain they "protect from domain tasters" in this way, it would surely be fun to go to networksolutions.com and do a few hundred more searches for random domain names.

What is interesting to me...

[bleh-of-the-huns]

Is the fact that last night I was searching for a sprayfoam insulation company in maryland (using google), and the very first link that came up, was a domain taster domain registered 3 days prior to yesterday, that only had ads and click through sites on it...

It was most annoying, but the fact it came up as the first link, means google really should do soemthing about sites abusing the ranking systems and not just people abusing the adsense program.

cyber squatters

[Tusaki]

Its a good move, but im still waiting to see some more action against domain squatters. It is so infuriating to have a good idea for a website, only to have 99% of the possible/good domain names being taken and being part of some advertizement network. And I just refuse to pay them.

Ofcourse, in economic terms, it would probably be worth it in the long run if you have a very good idea to pay some extra for the better domain name. But its like paying for "protection" money because the alternative is worse...

Re:They could deal with an actual problem instead.

[morgan_greywolf]

Why they continue to neglect the opportunity to do so is beyond me. Well, as they always say, follow the money.

If pacnames, yesnic and mouzz are getting kickbacks from the criminals, maybe they are sending a cut to ICANN.

Don't worry about the name

[Comboman]

It is so infuriating to have a good idea for a website, only to have 99% of the possible/good domain names being taken and being part of some advertizement network.

If you have a good idea for a website, pick a unique, memorable name, not an obvious one. Who's the number one auction site; auction.com or eBay? Who's the number one on-line bookseller; books.com or Amazon? What is an ebay anyway? What does a river in Brazil have to do with books? Nothing, it doesn't matter, most people are going to find your website through Google anyway rather than typing in a URL.

Re:Impact on registrars like GoDaddy?

[IBBoard]

GoDaddy.com who (according to Wikipedia) have 55.1 million domain names registered a year of which 51.5 million are canceled and refunded

As you said, they can't do that any more so they'd have either 55 million domains registered with 0 cancels, or 3.5 million domains registered for legitimate reasons and 51.5 million domains that weren't registered because the registeree couldn't get a temporary freebie.

If ICANN drops this grace period and domain tasters drop away (possible if unlikely) that leaves GoDaddy.com with 51.5 million domains at $10 per domain (or $515 million) in revenue flow that just dried up. That's a lot of money to just disappear from your business finances.

It's also a lot of revenue to be relying on when a good proportion of it will be from suspect activities (spammers/squatters) who could be restricted by decisions such as this at any moment.

At the end of the day if GoDaddy vanishes then it's no big loss. All the smaller registrars will survive without the 'ill gotten gains' money and registrars will continue. It happens with .uk domains, so it can happen with .coms. NIC.uk's FAQ page doesn't even have any reference to returning a domain.

Re:Overall a great decision, but . . .

[SnapShot]

I understand your anecdote, but considering that a domain name only costs $9 I'm still on the side of banning the practice.

ICANN says it pretty eloquently:

Whereas, it is apparent that the AGP is being used for purposes for which it
was not intended;

Whereas, abuse of the AGP is, in the opinion of the majority of respondents
whose statements were collected by the GNSO Ad Hoc Group on Domain Name
Tasting (4 October 2007 report), producing disadvantages in the form of
consumer confusion and potential fraud that outweigh the benefits of the
AGP;

In other words, your experience has become the exception (by a factor of millions) not the rule and a few bad apples have ruined it for the rest of us.