ICANN has released a draft plan for implementing its Add Grace Period (AGP) limits policy.

The policy is designed to end domain tasting. Registrars will no longer be able to claim refunds on domains less than 5 days old if the claim is for 50 domains or more than 10% of the registrar's monthly registration volume, whichever is the highest.

The draft implementation plan lists the AGP limits start-date as March 1, 2009.

As the AGP's reason for being in the first place was to enable registrars to deal with payment defaults, and not as a means of gaming the domain name registration system through domain tasting, ICANN has chosen not to do away with it altogether. Registrars can claim exemption from the AGP limits provided they are able to justify them. Exemption is only granted for the request made. There is no blanket exemption possibility which would in effect allow a registrar to "opt-out" of AGP limits.

Will this work, i.e. will it make domain tasting a thing of the past? ICANN will monitor the new policy for two years and then report on its effectiveness to the GNSO. Changes to the policy may at that point be considered.