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BIZ and INFO take aim at Domain Tasting
Thursday, February 7. 2008
A the moment, it seems not a day goes by without a new Domain-Tasting-killer scheme appearing. This time it's .BIZ registry Neustar and .INFO registry Afilias taking aim at everybody's current fave villain.
Accredited ICANN registrars were told this week that both registries have submitted what is called a "funnel request" in Icanneese jargon: the registry submits an official request to change part of its contract with ICANN. In this case, Neustar and Afilias have both made the same request to modify the Add Grace Period.
They propose to introduce a rate limit for the number of AGP deletions – that's names deleted within 5 days of their registration – a registrar could do for free. "This limit would be determined each month, with a maximum of 50 per month or 10% of that registrar's net new monthly domain name registrations, whichever is greater," as its written in the proposal Neustar and Afilias sent to ICANN.
Based on the discussions I've seen so far within the Registrar Constituency, most registrars agree that a rate limit is a good way to go after Tasting while preserving the AGP. A kind of selective vaccine that would target the virus that is Domain Tasting but not harm the host cell, in this case the AGP. 10% of monthly registrations is deemed high enough to cover any registrar's legitimate deletion needs (for names that were paid using fake credit cards for example), while being low enough to effectively render Tasting impossible.
Both registry requests have now been made public by ICANN, which awaits public comment before deciding to approve them or not. I expect the Tasting issue will be a major one in Delhi next week, but I also expect to see the various anti-Tasting schemes adopted. As such, it can only be a matter of time before the largest of all registries – Verisign for .COM and .NET – comes out with an anti-Tasting measure of its own.
At this point, I have to admit that Tasting's life expectancy appears severely compromised. I also have to say that I'm surprised how quickly the anti-Tasting movement has moved in recent weeks, after years of apparent standing still in this issue.
