ICANN Tries to Put An End to Domain Tasting and Opens the Door to New gTLDs

It is an exciting time for the development of the Internet, and it has gone almost unnoticed.  A number of developments in the domain name world have occurred today.  ICANN has paved the way to outlaw domain tasting at its Paris meeting this afternoon.  In April 2007, a supermajority of the GNSO (Generic Names Supporting Organization) council voted to discourage domain purchase grace periods in which refunds are given for the purchase of a domain within a set number of days, typically five.  In May 2007, ICANN's at-large advisory committee again asked the GNSO to look at the domain tasting issue, and they came up with five problem areas to address in regards to domain tasting.  Today, ICANN enacted a proposal that will prohibit those registrars that offer the grace periods from offering a refund for domain names that exceed 10% of the registrar's net registrations for the month or, alternatively, 50 domain names, whichever is greater. 

Additionally, the ICANN board voted to approve a massive expansion to the available domain names.  This new expansion, which must still be ratified by the ICANN board (expected in 2009), will allow applicants to the gTLD process to select their own suffixes.  This recommendation paves the way to allow trademark holders to select more marketable suffixes, e.g. diet.pepsi or pumps.reebok, and it allows cities to apply for suffixes (e.g. .newyork & .chicago).  It will be interesting to see how this affects trademark holders, and how it will affect the value of the current premium TLDs such as .com. 

Domain Taster's Days Are Numbered: ICANN Marches Forward With Changes to AGP

Internet squatters facing eviction - International Herald Tribune

Arbitrators like the World Intellectual Property Organization and the National Arbitration Forum attribute the record number of international trademark disputes last year to domain tasting. Since this form of domain name tasting emerged in 2005, for example, the number of disputes to come before the WIPO has risen 48 percent, to 2,156.

For companies like Microsoft, domain tasting creates the constant headache of chasing after typo-squatters  those who create and register Web sites with misspelled variations of the Microsoft name. For individual users, it means that millions of names are tied up in a constant churn of registering and returning names before fees are charged.

.... "We call it a billion-dollar industry," said Phil Lodico, an Internet strategy consultant and vice president with the coalition. "Initially squatters were just individuals who could be located anywhere by their personal computers. They're still out there, but there are also these companies that have invested heavily in technology. They're just canvassing the net by registering hundreds of thousands of domain names. And these folks are well-funded."

... The top three, Capitoldomains, Belgiumdomains and Domaindoormain, are registrar companies that each registered and dumped more than 11 million domain names in one month alone last year, according to Icann.

All three share the same address in Miami, with a contact number for a lawyer, Nancy Cliff, who did not respond to repeated messages. The Web sites for the three companies note though that they are fighting a lawsuit filed by personal computer giant, Dell, which is pressing "cybersquatting" lawsuits against the three.

Technorati Tags: domain tasting, icann, wipo, naf

ICANN Unanimously Votes to Change Policy To End Domain Tasting

John Levine has noticed something incredibly important in the latest ICANN Board Meeting minutes. ICANN may make their .20 cent fee for registration non-refundable, subject to both Board approval and registrar approval of this fee.  Currently, tasting domain is free, making it economically viable for  tasters to register large chunks of expiring domains, taste them for 5 days and decide which ones to keep.  Domain tasters do have to pay the initial registration fee so they need to bankroll the initial payment.  But they currently get a full refund for all domains returned within the Add Grace Period (AGP).  The number of domains deleted after the AGP is estimated to be 95%.