ICANN Finds No Wrong Doing in Domain Front Running

eldavojohn writes "Remember the investigation ICANN did in domain name front running? Well, it turns out that there was no wrong doing going on at all. What went wrong? Domain name 'tasting', which involves a free five day trial of a domain name, was the big culprit. From the article: 'In some cases ... the committee found that a separate practice of domain name tasting may be causing problems. That refers to someone testing the financial viability of a name for up to five days and then returning it for a full refund, using a loophole in registration policies. Domain tasting can tie up millions of Internet addresses, including ones someone checks but does not buy.' If you check for availability of a website and someone sees you do it and they reserve it before you, it's fair play."

Comments

Nice.

[Creepy Crawler]

Predatory domain name "Owner" finds no wrong with predatory practices.

Captain Obvious to the rescue!

I guess it's high time to support truly free DNSes, rather than the corporates. All they do is scam and then hide.

Re:Nice.

[gujo-odori]

No kidding. Besides being in IT, I also hold a real estate license, and if I were to do - or even attempt to do - the equivalent of front-running, I would be at risk of discpline from the real estate commissioner's office and the board of realtors, possibly up to losing my license, as well as wide open for a lawsuit (real estate is a more litigious business than even the patent industry).

An example: I'm acting as your agent, or you are considering retaining me as your agent. There's a property you're interested in that appears to be a great deal. You tell me about it and ask my opinion. I tell you I'll check it out and get back to you by tomorrow. Recognizing that it is indeed a great deal, that evening I put in an offer to buy the property myself and leave you out in the cold.

That is both unethical and illegal, and is essentially the same thing that NetSol or any other registrar does when they practice front-running (they're in the position of being your agent, or prospective agent). It's hard to see how ICANN sees nothing wrong with that. True, it may not be illegal or against ICANN's rules, but it certainly ought to be.

Yeah, but how exactly are they "seeing" this?

[transporter_ii]

If I go to register a domain host and see if a name is available, I should be the only one who can see that. Especially if you are checking on a domain register that has ssl. I could see checking on some odd web site, that was actually set up to farm domain names, but if you go to somewhere mainstream, it should be a given that nobody sees the lookup but you.

Transporter_ii

It certainly is deceptive...

[jea6]

I think the practice is certainly deceptive and should be explained by the registrant ahead of time. But I agree that the real problem is domain tasting. I don't see too much of a reason for refunds beyond, say, 12 hours. That's plenty of time to recognize a typo and correct it. The financial hit for a legitimate registration is much less than what it used to be. So, when NetSol was the only game in town and was charging $100/year for a registration, I'd probably want a refund. When it went down to $30/year but there were other players, I'd still want a refund. But for legitimate purposes (and I'm not including landing pages in that category) there is no reason that an uncorrected typo shouldn't have some consequence. The domain tasting practice is a lot worse for the community at large.

Re:It certainly is deceptive...

[techno-vampire]

Trust me, there'd still be typos. For some people, an OK button has an irresistible attraction; if they see one, they can't resist clicking on it, without looking at what they're agreeing to.

> I used to do telephone tech support for software. I quickly learned that if there's an OK button on the caller's screen, I never said OK, because the odds were that the caller would click on it. I can easily see this type of person clicking OK five, or even ten times on a typoed domain name without bothering to read the message even once. No, if you want to avoid typos, have them type the domain name twice, like many programs do with setting passwords and not continue unless they match. Yes, people can always use copy/paste to get around that, but if there's only so much you can do to protect people from their own missteaks.

Not even "fair" here.

[khasim]

Because the people who can "see" the domains you research have access that YOU do not have.

If they were randomly guessing domains and "tasting" them, who would care?

It's when they have info that you do not have that this becomes a problem.

Re:Not even "fair" here.

[moderatorrater]

Since domain tasting actually doesn't cost them anything, there would be no harm for them to taste every possible domain, regardless of whether it's actually useful or not. That's the real problem with domain tasting. If it cost $1 every time, then at least they would have a financial incentive not to do this bullshit. As it stands now, they can get away with just about anything.

Re:Not even "fair" here.

[ciscoguy01]

' If you check for availability of a website and someone sees you do it and they reserve it before you, it's fair play."

The solution to all this is for registrars to be prohibited from selling domain names, they should only be in the business of providing their "clerical" service, registering your domain name and putting your numbers in the root nameservers.
By their buying and selling domain names themselves they have created a giant conflict of interest.
I don't say they shouldn't be able to buy and sell domains, just not while they are a registrar.

They should give up their registrar business, or only own the domain name they operate under. And no others.
Registrars have a special position, they have access and knowledge that others do not.

Like the real estate agent mentioned in the parent- he has knowledge he gains due to his position that professional ethics prohibit his using for his own gain.

Similarly registrars have knowledge that others do not, and by their using it for gain they are cheating everyone who is not in their special position. Unfortunately they have no ethics so they have no problem using their special position to screw everyone else.

It's a conflict of interest.

We need to give them ethics by prohibiting their trading in the commodity they have their special position in. Domain names.

Whew

[ShakaUVM]

Whew, I'm glad they realized there's no conflict of interest between internet registrars and internet registrars stealing domains from people who go to them to register domains.

That's a load off my chest!

Bullshit

[Zorque]

"If you check for availability of a website and someone sees you do it and they reserve it before you, it's fair play." The hell it is. That's the exact opposite of fair play, that's being underhanded. If someone sees you typing in your PIN and drains your bank account, is that "fair play"?

Re:Wow, I just got hit by this today.

[robo_mojo]

The logic went something like this - some "unethical third party" could be snooping on my connection, and, seeing that I was looking into a domain purchase, they could snap up the domain and then try to sell it to me at an inflated rate.
Isn't that exactly what happened?

What a surprise

[bjorniac]

And vampires think that sucking blood is fair game.

Possible solution?

[zygotic mitosis]

Write a script that will request randomly generated domains. The predators' bills will run up significantly

What ICANN should do

[surmak]

The only legitimate reason for reserving a domain is to protect a buyer who is purchasing multiple, related domain names (e.g. foo.com, foo.net, and foo-xxx.com, and wants to be certain that all the domains can be obtained. If they cannot, the buyer would choose a different value.

To support this usage model without the kind of abuse we are seeing, reservation should be limited to one hour and should cost the registrar a small amount (maybe 1-20 cents) per reservation. If the customer eventually purchases the domain, the cost of the reservation will not have a ssignificant inpact on the profitability of the transaction.

A simple no refund policy will eliminate the domain kiting scams that are getting happening.

The other place where abuse can occur is when a domain expires. I would propose the following procedure to insure that nobody can lost their domain without really trying:

Once the domain expires, the DNS record is removed from the top level server. After this happens, the (former) owner will have the exclusive right to renew the domain for a period of 45 days. This renewal will be at the normal price, but will start at the expiration date, and not the renewal date. (Thus you lose the time that the DNS was disables.) The 45 days will allow the domain owner to notice that something is wrong, and should be plenty of time for a domain holder to notice their web site or email address no longer works.

After the 45 days, the domain becomes available via an auction which will last at least 15 days. The reserve price of that auction is the normal domain registration fee, with the domain's registrar receiving the proceeds of the auction (to encourage them to not game the system) The auction should have some mechanism to avoid ebay style sniping -- maybe the auction does not close until 1 full day after the last bid is received.

If the auction fails, then the domain returns to the pool, and is available on a first-come first-served as any unregistered domain is.

Re:Did not examine Network Solutions

[generica1]

Maybe I Googled "domain name registration" and used the "I'm feeling lucky" button but I already have another registrar in mind. Maybe my preferred, inexpensive registrant, has an excellent interface on their website but a crappy WHOIS client that's overloaded and runs slow. Conversely, maybe I really really really like the WHOIS tool that is on your site because I can select multiple TLDs, but I find NetSol's prices to be too high (which I do, not that it matters).
 
Or maybe it's because YOUR WHOIS SERVER IS ON THE PUBLIC INTERNET AND WE SHOULDN'T HAVE TO HAVE A REASON.
 
If you don't want non-customers to WHOIS on your server than make people pay for WHOIS requests, and we'll see how the free market reacts to that. You're telling me NetSol with its higher prices and HUGE legacy customer base can't compete with the cheap-o registrars to the extent that they will tie up someone's domain name in order to gain a competitive edge against .. their customers? It doesn't sound like you are a very good domain name registrar if people using your web site for WHOIS lookups is actually a serious business concern that has effected the bottom line enough to be this greedy about it.
 
Even just considering what intelligent observers who register a lot of domain names would think of a dick move like this should be enough for a large company to consider the public relations problems that come with deceiving potential customers like this.

Re:What ICANN is

[BlueStrat]

Or roll your own root. The only reason ICANN is on power is because they control the legacy root zone. If nobody used it any more, they would fade into the sunset where they belong.

And how long do you think it would take them, if this became widespread, to demonize it as a tool of "terrists", "hackers", and pedophiles and outlaw it? The powerful do not relinquish power easily.

Cheers!

Strat

Alonzo Meatball convinced me

[uassholes]

At first Network Solutions seemed to be doing something unethical, until I read A Meathead's post about how he used NS for the search then went to Cheap Charlie for the purchase.

Now I see why NS does it, and it seems a perfectly reasonable business practice.