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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."
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.
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
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
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.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
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.
"The ICANN committee said cases suspected of front running often turned out to be coincidence, with multiple parties interested in the same names."
That, of course, is a load of horse feathers. There were countless examples of the practice being exposed by people searching for domains like NETSOLSUCKSALOT12300091.COM. Were there really many parties interested in that domain?
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
"The report, brought before the ICANN board in New Delhi on Friday, did not examine a controversial practice by domain name seller Network Solutions LLC of grabbing names that people search for on its Web site but don't immediately register."
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!
"ICANN fails to find own ass with both hands."
Film at 11. If we can find it.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
FTA:
"The report, brought before the ICANN board in New Delhi on Friday, did not examine a controversial practice by domain name seller Network Solutions LLC of grabbing names that people search for on its Web site but don't immediately register."
I wonder why -- that should be the hot topic of the meeting. NetSol is using another loophole in the ICANN process (after previously being responsible for wildcard *.com records scandal, then under Verisign name) and ICANN has other topics to talk about? WTF?
This is kinda ironic, because I just got hit by this today. I used Network Solutions lookup tool to search for a domain - simply out of habit - and then when I went to buy the domain at my usual discount registrar, I was told that the domain name was already taken. Then I went back to Network Solutions, did the lookup, and lo and behold, it's still available! Confused, I did a whois lookup, and saw that the site was apparently registered to Network Solutions. So I called up the customer service line for NS, and I was like, "hey, do you know what's going on?" And here's the kicker - the guy tried to make it sound like NS was doing me a favor!
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. Of course, if they were to buy the domain from Network Solutions, nothing would stop them. But if they tried to buy it somewhere else, good old NS has my back. Isn't that swell of them?
Fortunately, the guy was reasonable, and released the hold on the domain. He then tried to upsell me on some stupid hosting service, and I'm like, "Umm, no, I do my own development. And I'm going to buy this domain someplace that doesn't charge $30 a freakin' domain."
On the other hand, if it really is front-running, charging for formerly-free tasting will reduce it a bit (because the front-runner will need to spend actual money, not just kited money), so you'll only get ripped off by people who think it's worth gambling the proposed 20-cent ICANN fee or maybe the whole $6 on selling you the domain name.
It's easy to work around that, though - if you think of a name you might want to use, and want to check if it's available, just buy it from your favorite registrar rather than checking; if it's already in use you'll get rejected. That's less helpful if you want to buy the
Also, of course, if front-running sticks around after there's a fee for tasting, it's much more effective to run an automated check-lots-of-names bot that costs front-runners money on gambles that always lose than if it's only costing them free kiting. (There are ways to fight back - captchas on name queries, for instance - but there are also name-grabbers who use DNS/Whois queries, and you can keep querying those without captchas, and not only do those people deserve to lose even more than registrar name-grabbers, but the DNS operator for the
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"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"?
And vampires think that sucking blood is fair game.
ICANN went through three stages of evolution. At first it was bunch of - by their own admission - clueless board members picked in secret by the US government, specifically Ira Magaziner, Clintons senior science advisor, and Roger Cochetti from IBM.
... the "domainers" and registration people. That's who goes to ICANN meetings and populate the various ICANN committees.
.web or whatever. His employer, USC/ISI would not back him up. Jon died of heart failure 3 years later.
Next they were taken over by intellectual property attornies from multinational corporations. Once they'd had their way with internet law and policy came...
Is it any wonder they didn't find anything wrong with the practice they invented and make money from?
The US Government mandate ICANN operates under says they must be "open and transparent" and are not to create policy, but to determine the consensus of the Internet community and implement policy based on this. I have personally watched them chnage their bylaws retroactively to prevent the "wrong" poeple from being a part of the organizatin. I've personally watched them kick people out of meeings advertised beforehand as "open to anyone". I've personally wathced them adopt policies where only 13 out ot 1000 people agreed with the policy. I can go on for hours about things like this.
They are one of the most secretive Internet organizations to ever exist. Does anybody else remember Karl Aurbach, when elected to the board had to sue just to see the books? How many organizations do you get to be a board member off but the corporate books are kept secret from you? Why would you need to keep those books secret in the first place.
ICANN was supposed to be a "membership organization". A decade has gone by. Can you find any way to become a voting member of ICANN? Nope. Doesn't exist. You know why? They're scared they'd be voted out of office and for damn good reason.
ICANN runs on a $60M a year budget and it a beurocraic nightmare more complex than the UN in terms of its org chart. (cf. Rutkoswki's brilliant diagram of same. It does NOT fit on a regular sized piece of paper). Now keep in mind the job it does used to be done by Jon Postel as a part time task ("IANA") for $15,000. a year.
When Jon announced there would be new tlds coming ("300 at least, 75 in the first year") the intellectual property attornies made his life a living hell and he sought a legal entitiy as IANA had no legal personality and he himself did not want to assume personal legal liability for adding
If you think ICANN is the best and the brightest of the internet you're sadly mistaken, and if we, as the internet community cannot do better than this, then shame on us all, squared.
Scrap ICANN. Make something useful.
A good starting point would be the consensus points from the last IFWP conference - this was to have been ICANN before thart effort, and a years work to reach that consensus, was scuttled by the actors operating in the shadows who have controlled it ever since in a regime where only they benefit.
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.
If Linux computers used a different set of root servers, who cares what Microsoft and ICANN did.
Read this: http://iconia.com/before_the_dns.txt
Need Mercedes parts ?
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.
Unfortunately, and I have known this for years, buying a domain name involves just a little bit of slumming. It's truly a nasty business laden with unethical people extorting money out of others.
About the best you can hope for is:
1) Get a good domain name.
2) Hope that the registrar does their job to protect anybody from stealing right out from under you.
I have always recommended to my clients to have a couple of meetings beforehand and choose several names very carefully. Take their time and think it through. When they are ready to get the domain names, I have described it as being similar to sniping auctions on eBay. Be prepared to hit "click" as fast as possible.
Basically, don't be searching for a domain name. Already have an idea and be prepared to make a decision right there on the spot. That's the only way to truly stop domain tasting.
If you dont want people to support the Mafia, Jihadists, vigilanty groups and various kinds of thugs hitting people with baseball bats, drilling kneecaps with electric drills, or randomly killing and calling it "summary justice", then you have to have a better legal system. If people cant get redress for this kind of thing through the law, you can expect they will take the law in their own hands.
In short, its governments that behave like this that create third world countries.
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