In Bad Taste: John Levine on 'Domain Tasting'

["Fergie" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

John Levibe does an excellent job of summing up the problems
introduced by ICANN's "Add Grace Period (AGP) of five days
(during which a registrant can delete a newly registered
domain and get a full refund)" -- this has led to major abuses.

Great article, John.

Via CircleID.

[snip]

So-called domain tasting is one of the more unpleasant developments in the domain business in the past year. Domain 
speculators are registering millions of domains without paying for them, in a business model not unlike running a 
condiment business by visiting every fast food restaurant in town and scooping up all of the ketchup packets.

Since 2003, the contract between ICANN and each unsponsored TLD registry (.biz, .com, .info, .net, .org, and .pro) has 
added an Add Grace Period (AGP) of five days during which a registrant can delete a newly registered domain and get a 
full refund. Although this provision was clearly intended to allow registrars to correct the occasional typo and 
spelling error in registrations, speculators realized that this allows them to try out any domain for five days for 
free.

As soon as the speculators (who call themselves “domainers") figured this out, they started using automated software to 
register domains like crazy. They put up web pages full of pay-per-click ads, keep the few that make money during the 
five days, and refund the rest. Many of the speculative domains are expiring ones, since those might already be indexed 
in Google and have some traffic, others are slightly misspelled versions of existing domains to catch traffic from 
people who make typing errors.

[snip]

More here at CircleID:
http://www.circleid.com/posts/domain_in_bad_taste/

Or on John Levine's blog:
http://weblog.johnlevine.com/ICANN/tasting.html

- ferg


--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg () netzero net or fergdawg () sbcglobal net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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