Canadian Trademark Blog

Domain Tasting in Decline

In an update to an earlier post regarding domain name tasting, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recently reported that the number of names registered and deleted during the Add Grace Period (AGP) declined from approximately 17.6 million in June 2008 to 2.8 million in July 2008 – a decline of approximately 84%.

Regular readers of our blog will know that an AGP is a five-day grace period between the date of domain name registration and the date of payment for such registration.  Registrants can delete a domain name registration during the AGP at no cost.  The purposes of an AGP Limits Policy is to reduce domain tasting — that practice whereby registrants take advantage of the AGP by generating ad revenue for newly registered domains by linking to active websites and then deleting the registrations for domains that did not generate sufficient revenue within the grace period.

ICANN first introduced a short-term solution to end domain tasting as part of their budgetary processes in June 2008.  Under the AGP Limits Policy, a gTLD operator that offers an AGP would be prohibited from refunding any domain name deleted during the AGP that exceeds 10% of its net new registrations for a month, or 50 domain names, whichever is greater.  The policy also provides that an operator may seek an exemption for a particular month upon documented showing of extraordinary circumstances.

Still willing to allow input, ICANN opened a public comment period for the draft implementation plan for the proposed AGP Limits Policy. This consultation period runs until November 20, 2008.  Once the policy is implemented, ICANN will submit a report at the end of a two-year reporting period as to the success of the policy.

In this respect, ICANN has referenced the experience of Public Interest Registry (PIR) (.org domains) as a factor that may be considered when measuring the success of ICANN’S AGP Limits Policy.  Notably, PIR implemented an excess deletions fee service in May 2007 and apparently AGP deletes decreased from 97% in May 2007 to 15% in May 2008 following implementation.

This entry was posted by Karen Monteith on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 5:23 pm and is filed under Domain Names. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.