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

KISS

[Amorymeltzer]

Good.

(all other posts after this are either wrong or repeating)

Re:KISS

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Actually, IMO, KISS was highly overrated. Gene Simmons is a marketing genius, though.

Network Solutions

[Kagura]

Network Solutions recently released a comment on their supposedly unscrupulous business practices. They claim that their automatic registration of domain names that were searched for was an effort to stem the problem of domain tasters. I have a hard time believing that.

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: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.

Is this really about domain tasting

[morgan_greywolf]

Or domain kiting? In tasting, customers register the domain for 5 days and use that up and then let it expire. In kiting, they delete the domain before the grace period is up and then re-register for another 5 day grace for the same domain.

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:Is this really about domain tasting

[morgan_greywolf]

Well, of the two practices, kiting is perhaps the more harmful practice, since the lather, rinse, repeat cycle essentially allows people to skate on paying, but still holding onto the domain.

Where's the tag?

[Aladrin]

I expected to see a 'suddenoutbreakofcommonsense' tag on this one, but maybe I saw it before it had time to be tagged.

In this case, it doesn't seem to be a sudden outbreak, though... Reading the notes (yeah, I RTFA) I can see that with the possible exception of Bruce Tonkin (who dropped off the call because of possible conflict of interest, thus making him a good guy no matter his opinion on this matter) everyone agreed that any measure except removing of the Add Grace Period (AGP) would be ineffective and only cause other harm to the community.

It's also obvious from the notes that they've spent no little time thinking about this, and they had their arguments ready. And when talking was done, they were ready to do the right thing. All of them, unanimously.

It was unclear whether the 21-day period was in effect, though... They talked about having to notify the public of policy changes 21 days in advance or more. Even if it is, 3 weeks is pretty short.

Re:Where's the tag?

[morgan_greywolf]

For those that don't know, Bruce Tonkin holds shares in Melbourne IT, which is an ICANN-approved registrar. Hence his conflict of interest.

They could deal with an actual problem instead...

[damn_registrars]

Is domain tasting really the most important problem that ICANN could sink its teeth into?

I say no.

ICANN has the role of accreditation of domain name registrars themselves (particularly for .com, .net, .org, .info domains). But yet they chose to remain toothless in all but the most very extreme cases of bad registrar services.

Bad registrars, such as pacnames.com, yesnic.com, and more recently mouzz.com, are willing partners in the international spamming epidemic. They have or still do sell domains to computer criminals, willingly accepting bogus data from these criminals in exchange for a kickback.

If ICANN really wants to make a positive difference on the internet, they need to flex their muscle and make use of their ability to un-accredit bad registrars. Why they continue to neglect the opportunity to do so is beyond me.

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.

Impact on registrars like GoDaddy?

[StringBlade]

I wonder what impact this will have on registrars such as GoDaddy.com who (according to Wikipedia) have 55.1 million domain names registered a year of which 51.5 million are canceled and refunded just before the 5 day grace period.

While GoDaddy.com doesn't get to keep that money, it does generate a revenue flow. That is, GoDaddy.com must return the money, but there's no requirement to cut a check that day. It may be a week or three before GoDaddy.com has to cut a refund check. In the meantime they have money to work with much like banks do. Most businesses operate on revenue flow and not strictly the net balance they have available at any one time.

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.

IANAA, but I think that this decision will have the most impact on large registrars. Perhaps a one day grace period for people who honestly made a mistake would have been more appropriate. One day is not enough to get a domain properly "tasted" because it takes about that long for the DNS entry to propagate through the network, and by the time it was out the domain would either be permanent or gone.

ICANN says

[Ranger]

Don't taste me, bro!

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: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.