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Domain Tasting: Is it even allowed?
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October 3rd, 2007 by 
Jay Westerdal
Domain Tasting has been going on for years however Ross Rader of Tucows recently raised the point that Domain Tasting may not even be allowed under section 3.74 of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement. ICANN has a poor history of enforcement on certain section and clauses. ICANN picks its battles careful, there are just too many provisions and rules to enforce. Mr. Rader has formally asked ICANN staff if they have ever enforced the provision that states, “3.7.4 Registrar shall not activate any Registered Name unless and until it is satisfied that it has received a reasonable assurance of payment of its registration fee.” An answer by ICANN Staff is expected sometime this month and it could lead to enforcement of the clause.
Mr. Rader points out:
The issue is not whether someone theoretically can pay for the registrations they’ve tasted, but that they will if the registration is activated. The second a registration gets transmitted to and accepted by the registry as a valid transaction, a fee is payable to the registrar. The clause in question clearly states that the registrar must be satisfied that the Registered Name Holder will pay for the registration and that such payment is final and non-revocable. In other words, a registrar is not permitted to issue a refund to a registrant for cancellations made during the Add Grace Period according to the terms of this contract. Generally, this reads that ICANN is not concerned as much with whether the registrant *could* pay the bill, but whether they *will*. Under all tasting implementations imaginable, the answer is clearly “no, they will not be paying that bill”.
The simple act of enforcement of 3.7.4 of the RAA may shut Domain Tasting down. A lot of arguments can be made against this but clearly a habitual user that preforms domain tasting can be isolated and told they are violating section 3.7.4 and that it is not allowed or the registrar could be discredited by ICANN. The issue is not about random domain owners and registrations that happen and then get deleted it is habitual users that clearly violate section 3.7.4 repeatably.
UPDATE: ICANN has gotten back to Ross. During any enforcement of this clause Registrars have responded to ICANN that they do collect payment during domain tasting. There is no minimum fee that is required to be paid so a valid defense is a registrar could charge $0.00001 for a domain per day. So if registrant registered 1,000,000 a domains the Registrar would be charge $10 a day. The registrant could then delete 999,900 of them before the AGP ended and the Registrar would charge the registrant $7 per domain for the 100 domains that were kept.
Payment is received and given so there is nothing in there that violates the clause in the contract. I guess this clause will do nothing and is actual rather pointless.
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Posted in Domain Tasting, ICANN |
13 Comments »
October 3rd, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Don’t activate the domains for 60 days coz visa/mastercard can always take back the money. Do not activate the domains for 45 days when paid by paypal coz customer can always file a dispute and get the money back.
Damn! What a lame justification, Ross. Get a Life!
October 3rd, 2007 at 1:34 pm
I don’t have a problem with domain tasters since it’s part of the whole domain name business. I guess that’s because I wish I could grab a domain for a couple days and see if it has any traffic before buying it.
But it seems unfair that the same “bunch” ties up a domain for years without paying any registration fee and I can’t touch it when I or someone else has the cash to register it. That isn’t very fair. But the only fair solution is to make it “Money up Front” and no refunds. Or maybe set a flag that says a domain can’t be re-registered if it’s been “tasted” unless it’s then “Money up Front”. That would put the domain name back out here where I can play.
“a habitual user that preforms domain tasting can be isolated and told they are violating section 3.7.4 and that it is not allowed or the registrar could be discredited by ICANN.”
That doesn’t seem fair to single out certain tasters but allow others to continue. It needs to be across the board or not at all. Or a mechanism in place to stop repeated tasting of any single domain name.
October 3rd, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Very interesting. Similar to domain stealing! Good info.
October 3rd, 2007 at 7:59 pm
spambait85738 – When you say the same bunch, you mean like Domain Doorman, Wan-Fu and Domain Contender?
Domain Doorman being the worst of them all.
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Okay there has to be a grace period for legitimate Errors and FRAUD.Now
the way to FIX Domain tasting in as far as im concerned is if a Domain is Registered/Tasted and Dropped it goes into a specific pool of such Domains that are PARKED and ICANN/Verisign runs this splits all profits from parking BUT all these Domains are FOR SALE on a FIRST COME FIRST SERVED basis at a nominal Registration fee of say $9.99us this stops tasting,also creates an area that can catch those elusive Trademark Floating Domains and Trademark Owners can pick these up or possibly get them tagged Trademarked/what country/whatproduct to give warning to any would be purchasers if the Trademark owners didnt want them for themselves.Yes
this would create in effect the worlds largest Aftermarket but it would i believe STABLIZE the Industry giving credence to an AFTERMARKET plus though not stopping ABUSE of Domain Name Registrations but bringing an order to the CHAOS of what i think of Merry-go-Round Shell Game CyberSquatting sice these people/companies dont really pay for the domains they really are Squatting them from people who are willing to pay and someday use the Domain this i think would also limit the bad press of Parking Pages since they wouldnt be equated with some amorpheous DomainVacumCleaner of GhostDomains but that Domains are actually OWNED by somebody or some Company somewhere.And
in no way will this make all happy(think the statement through its JUST an EXAMPLE) heck whats it say in the Bible 2/3 of the residents in Heaven werent happy with GOD so there was a WAR in HEAVEN ? so there is NO chance mere mortal men will ever make EVERONE happy but im a Dreamer id like to think we can make more happy than not.
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:27 pm
And the pop quiz…
Read this sentence:
“3.7.4 Registrar shall not activate any Registered Name unless and until it is satisfied that it has received a reasonable assurance of payment of its registration fee.”
The word “it” appears in that sentence three times.
Re-write the sentence without using the word “it” (i.e. by replacing the word “it” with whatever you think “it” is).
LMK what you come up with.
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Ross,
Are you still canceling people’s domains that “you” feel could be potential trademarks without notice? Just curious!
Steven
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Well, I’m not sure who it is, and I’m not finger pointing as I’d like to be able to do the same inorder to check a domain name’s potential traffic. Well, maybe someday.
What I am saying is it seems unfair that I might have an interest in a certain domain name and the cash to register it but each time it drops it gets picked up again before I get a chance at it. And whoever does grab it repeats the cycle again and again.
I have had some success in getting names I wanted though after the first or second drop. Probably my ability to grab a domain name is a sign it might not be that valuable except to me or who ever I grabbed it for.
Have to actually layout cash to register a domain name would level the playing field for me since I, at this stage, do register and hold the domains I get or else transfer them to a client.
October 4th, 2007 at 12:39 am
John Berryhill i would substitute the word Registrar for it which to me would preclude the “Art,Practice,Policy,BS,insert word here for Domain Tasting” just my opinion on the matter
October 4th, 2007 at 12:46 am
Ross is one of the good guys. Tasting seems like a good idea, but over 90% of all registrations are unpaid tasting. Some people keep cycling the same domains through the tasting process, collect any revenue, but never actually pay for the domain name registration. For all those with a really short attention span:
http://blog.domaintools.com/2007/04/ex-icann-board-member-says-com-costs-014
October 4th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Here goes:
“3.7.4 Registrar shall not activate any Registered Name unless and until registrar is satisfied that registrar has received a reasonable assurance of payment of registrar’s registration fee.”
Did I understand that right?
October 4th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
“and that such payment is final and non-revocable”
Where does the clause say anything about the payment needing to be final and non-revocable? I can’t really see the argument in all this since obviously at time of tasting the registration fee has been paid for.
October 4th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
That’s just it, whois27106, the fee doesn’t change hands so the domain name gets dropped after 5 days. The taster controls the domain name for those few days without paying the fee.