Re: [policy] When Tech Meets Policy...

[Steve Atkins <steve () blighty com>]

On Aug 15, 2007, at 12:38 PM, Al Iverson wrote:

> On 8/15/07, Barry Shein <bzs () world std com> wrote:
> > > I am not sure tasting is criminal or fraud.
> >
> > Neither am I, we agree. I meant if there's subsequent criminality or
> > fraud that should be dealt with separately.
>
> Dumb question, not necessarily looking to call you or anyone out, but
> I'm curious: What valid, legitimate, or likely to be used non-criminal
> reasons are there for domain tasting?

Working out which domains tend to get a lot of traffic, so that
you can put profitable content on those that tend to have people
stumble across them.

This is definitely not criminal. It's certainly a valid, legitimate
business approach under the current domain registration
model.

> Then my next question is, what reasons are there where it'd be
> wise/useful/non-criminal to do it on a large scale?

It's only likely profitable to do the above if you can amortize
your fixed costs over a fair number of profitable domains, and
you'll likely need to measure traffic on a large number of
domains to find those.

(My understanding was that most, if not all, of the "domain
tasting" churn was actually done by registrars, either directly
or using a "partner" to do the grunt work. That would mean
that the costs were offloaded onto the registry. ICBW.)

Cheers,
  Steve