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Domain Tasting will die in 2008
January 29th, 2008 by 
Jay Westerdal
The ICANN board just passed the following motion to end Domain Tasting, “THEREFORE, the Board resolves to encourage ICANN’s budgetary process to include fees for all domains added, including domains added during the AGP, and encourages community discussion involved in developing the ICANN budget, subject to both Board approval and registrar approval of this fee.”
It did not directly deal a death blow to tasting, but it was a definitive motion that will kill it this year. This policy is expected to go into effect when the new budget is approved, and that process typically happens in the summer.
http://www.icann.org/minutes/prelim-report-23jan08.htm
It seems all the heat on Domain Tasting in the last few weeks is causing everyone to take action, from Google to the ICANN Board. I applaud the decision to kill the abusive process of millions of free domain names, but I would caution the original use of the Add Grace Period (AGP) is still needed. The AGP was originally designed for very legitimate reasons: erasing domains purchased with a spelling error or for testing the registry computer system.
When the ICANN staff implements the new policy, there are specific things they should allow. Each registrar should have a testing limit of drops in the AGP, possibly 10,000 per month or 3% of all adds, whichever is greater.
One way to keep domain registration prices low is to not increase the domain registration costs for registrars. Bad credit cards are one of the reasons the AGP is needed. Registrars are severely affected when they purchase a domain from Verisign for $6+ and that purchase turns out to be from a stolen credit card. If the average margin on a domain is $1.00, it will take six legitimate registrations to pay for that one fraudulent domain purchase. Keeping costs low for registrars is a good thing. Domain Tasting should end, but registrars still need some use of the free AGP. The board made the motion to include the following language:
Whereas, it is the Board’s view that abuses of the AGP should speedily be halted, while the positive benefits of the AGP to consumers should be retained; Whereas, the positive benefits of the AGP may include, among other things,avoiding fraud and monitoring, testing and development of registrars’ provisioning, production and/or merchant gateway systems;
I am extremely happy Domain Tasting will end. I do feel a bit sad, though, since I coined the term Domain Tasting and now the phrase will be only used historically.
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Posted in Domain Tasting, ICANN |
28 Comments »
January 29th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
It’s about time they got off their asses and did something about it. Funny that a company like Google had to do something first. Good riddance to it when it’s finally gone. I agree too that the AGP CAN have a reasonable use, but there needs to be some way to limit it such that tasting cannot occur on a widespread level.
-Steve, http://doma.in
January 29th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
It has it’s uses, but as almost everything it can be abused.
10,000 or 3% a month seems a reasonable volume number for someone outside…
Nuno Oliveira
CentralDomain.com
January 29th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Crooky: I have no doubt Icann has been discussing this for months, if not years. But just like any bureaucracy, even the smallest things take ages. Where I live the light rail station at the airport isn’t even expected to be started until 2020. Yet when a 500 meter Union Pacific trestle burned down, UP had it rebuilt in less than three weeks. Sure they worked around the clock and had materials shipped in from across the world so that trains could get through again, but the fact is organizations like Icann are just not efficient.
January 29th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Good news, indeed. Hope it really comes to fruition.
Best,
Ms. Domainer
January 29th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Definitely glad that ICANN finally is doing something to reach the original intent of the AGP and killing the avenues for the illegitimate use. I will withhold any final celebration, though, until it finally works its way into implementation and we actually see the daily volume of adds start to reflect the “real” number of registrations.
MHavoc
January 29th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Maybe the term “domain tasting” will need a new meaning after ICANN changes the system. I’d imagine any domain name that was registered using a fraudulent payment method has a good chance of being a good valuable name. Maybe the registrar has to pay for these then hold them as registerable for the standard fee but only re-registerable for the price and term of the original registration. Then when someone does register the domain (and pay for it) the registrar recoups all their money back and could monetize them in the meantime.
This may sound unfair to some registrars but fraud is a cost of doing business. To make up for that maybe testing and misspellings could be held by the registrars or dropped as they see fit. Any unpaid registrations are again, either fraudulent to some extent or done on purpose anyway by the registrar and should be a cost of doing business for them.
As to “Domain Tasting”, maybe they could rent the names from the “registered/unpaid pool” to any customer for a month for a small fee with option to register if the name suits their purposes. Then anyone could taste a domain for a small fee for however many months they wanted it. The registrars make some money and it levels the playing field while giving domainers and people looking for a domain a good pool of previously registered domains to look at.
January 30th, 2008 at 1:14 am
Jay,
Several of the Registrars are also Domain Squatters? What is to be done when the crooks run the bank? Until ICANN imposes an enforceable code of ethics on Registrars and stops insider-trading, I suspect that loopholes will continue to be found.
Mike
January 30th, 2008 at 6:36 am
Now is time for the registrars to put their money where there mouth is. If GoDaddy and ENOM do not approve the proposal, it does not pass. (Represent more that 33% of the fees) Both gain a lot of registrations through tasting pick-ups. Lets also not forget that the tasting registrars are also pretty large as well. Will be a lot closer that everyone thinks and no “Slam dunk”
January 30th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Jay, with all due respect, we were using that term long before you uttered it.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:58 am
limiting AGP is quite nice. ICANN fee for AGP is best up to certain extent. Now only i know that registrars are losing because of wrong credit cards. Dealing this domain tasting with in 5 days is very nice. I am astonished with this fast move.
B.K.Saravanan
,
For http://www.collisiondomains.com
January 30th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
“I do feel a bit sad, though, since I coined the term Domain Tasting and now the phrase will be only used historically.”
LOL!
Look at it this way: At least you didn’t pay alot of money to acquire Domain-Tasting.com
!!
;D nmw
January 30th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
‘Jay, with all due respect, we were using that term long before you uttered it.’
!!’
‘At least you didn’t pay a lot of money to acquire Domain-Tasting.com
A quick check with well-known registrars confirms that the following non-hyphenated domains are currently registered:
domaintasting.com
, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .mobi, .us., .ca, .cn and .de. There may be more …
Anyone wanna renew?
= TiKi =
January 31st, 2008 at 9:07 am
Tiki says:
“A quick check with well-known registrars confirms that the following non-hyphenated domains are currently registered:
domaintasting.com
, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .mobi, .us., .ca, .cn and .de. There may be more …”
The dot cot version redirects here and was created on July 12, 2005.
Ms Domainer
January 31st, 2008 at 5:47 pm
“The dot cot version redirects here and was created on July 12, 2005.”
I meant dot-com; didn’t mean to invent a new TLD.
January 31st, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Sent a bad tasting note to ICANN a while back that ended with this….
If some level of intelligence was a requirement to be a registrar
then Network Solutions would seem to no longer be qualified.
Just today I have this reply…..
Thank you for your email.
ICANN-accredited registrar Network Solutions, LLC notified ICANN
this week that it had begun registering some domain names at the
time a user performs an availability search for the names, whether
or not the customer requested that the name be registered.
ICANN’s Contractual Compliance Department is investigating Network
Solutions’ new registration practice to determine whether it is in
compliance with the Registrar Accreditation Agreement. If it is
determined that Network Solutions is violating the terms of the
Registrar Accreditation Agreement, Network Solutions will be
notified in accordance with ICANN’s compliance investigation
procedures posted at
http://www.icann.org/compliance/compliance-flowchart.htm.
Best regards,
ICANN
January 31st, 2008 at 10:48 pm
remove that period after the htm…..sorry
http://www.icann.org/compliance/compliance-flowchart.htm
February 4th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Its about darn time they do something about tasting.
Lost a couple good names to the practice and had to settle for a less then generic term for my current site to this bull crap. Domain is still floating around the same 5 shell Registrar’s.
Be nice to see a rule prohibiting Domain Registrar’s from jacking the price of a domain renewal during the redemption period also. It amounts to extortion.
February 5th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Domain tasting, this news is a Good riddance to bad rubish
Chao’ Martin
May 30th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Don’t know if this will have a big impact on tasting, just might change the game.
With all that data that Verisign has, being where they are in the food chain, couldn’t they use that to give a pay-per-click guys visibility into which names will work. This would actually reduce tasting, wouldn’t it? At least theoretically? If you don’t have to taste a whole bunch but know in advance what’s what? More money to Verisign, off course.
Wonder if anyone has heard of something like this.
November 14th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Hi Jay,
Here is the proof you were right!
http://adscriptum.blogspot.com/2008/11/rip-domain-tasting.html
Jean-Marie