ICANN to Add Anti Front Running Charge?

shashib writes to tell us that ICANN is considering a new $0.20 per-transaction fee for large numbers of domain registrations in order to curtail domain tasting abuse. Network Solutions, previously accused of front-running, is offering their support of the new approach and promises to remove the security measures that caused such a commotion back in January. "Because of the prevalence of these practices, earlier this year Network Solutions enacted an opt-in domain protection measure for our customers that reserves available domains for four days. If ICANN adopts the anti-tasting provision, Network Solutions will feel safe in discontinuing its service since the non-refundable fee will deflate domain taster's profits and provide a substantial blow to front runners who use and sell search data for tasting purposes."

Comments

In other words ICANN seeks to increase its profits

[ktulu182]

Domain tasting will not go away, because it is cheaper to taste domain by paying 20c instead of full registration price. ICANN will earn 20c for each domain tasted, which translates to tens of millions of dollars of additional profit per year for ICANN.

Re:Why not every time?

[arth1]

Because the fee for that transaction would be much larger than the bill itself, making it something they'd lose money on.

And no matter what altruistic reasons they have stated, the real reason for wanting to implement this is to make money.

What's their fee, then?

[khasim]

I have no problem with them making money as long as they're providing an honest service.

So what is the charge for them? $0.25? $0.50? $1.00? I'd pay it.

Fuck NS

[revmoo]

I think what bothered me the most about Network Solutions "protecting me" from domain tasters is that they were actually participating in the very behavior they were claiming to protect users from. Network Solutions are a bunch of assholes.

They actually fed me some wrong information on a domain the other day (they read back the right spelling but punched in the wrong spelling(on two separate phone calls)) leading me on a wild goose chase and wasting my entire day. So then I decided to transfer the domain to a competant registrar and they sent me an email saying that the domain was not eligible for transfer because of "fraudulent activity on the account."

Well, isn't the entire domain transfer process designed to protect against domain slamming already? And it works just fine if you ask me. Network Solutions are just trying to keep customers through whichever means necessary.

So instead of calling us and saying "Hey, we think someone is trying to steal your domain," they sent an automated email and then refused to respond to me (I sent 7 emails spanning two days and never got a single response). If they were truly concerned about fraud wouldn't they have picked up the phone to confirm the transfer rather than just blocking it outright?

Finally, the only way we were actually able to get the transfer to go through was by calling an Exec, whose number I found after some extensive research. What about the poor customers who can't find the magic "executive hotline?"

I reiterate my previous point; fuck Network Solutions. I will suggest to every client I have in the future to transfer their domains away from NS for their shady, shady business practices.

Re:Why not every time?

[InlawBiker]

Because the average end-user doesn't have the ability to domain-taste. Only weasels like NetSol do.

So it seems like ICANN is saying, "we can't stop you from domain-tasting, but we can charge you for when you do it." It "just so happens" that their method pretty is self-serving.

I suppose the massive number of domain registrations done by netsol has an impact on ICANN so they can justify the fee, and it also helps us poor users who just want our domain names. And God knows our legislators won't help. So go for it ICANN! Any enemy of Network Solutions is a friend of mine.

Domain Tasting

[wmbetts]

I worked for a company that did domain tasting on a very large scale. They made a killing off of it. Basically you throw everything at the wall and sees what sticks. They'd register $1mil worth of domains then at set intervals refund them. For example after 12 hours the ones that got x uniques or made x dollars they keep for another x amount of hours. At exactly 4.5 days they'd refund the ones that didn't make enough money then rinse, wash, and repeat. The trademarks they'd manage to snag that made money they'd then sell to off shore buyers, because they couldn't risk keeping them. Believe it or not there is a lawyer in India you can transfer your trademarks to and he takes a cut and makes sure you keep the domains. The $.20 fee would kill this "business model", because it would no longer be profitable. I'm all for the fee and maybe we can figure out how to kill domain parking while we're at it.