Web 2.0.11562 beta

So long overdue, the domain tasting system that has been exploited by outfits like this, has finally been straightened out. ICANN has now voted to impose their twenty cent fee on every domain registered. Actually they’re no longer going to be allowing registrars to be refunded the fee during the Add Grace Period but it’s easier to just think of it as now applying to all registrations. This would apply whether or not the registry allows registrants to return the domain for a refund.

This small fee completely changes the economics of domain tasting. For the average Joe, it means you can change your mind about a domain you registered and get almost a complete refund. I’ve seen the need for this when customers of mine accidentally register typos late at night.

For the predatory companies out there who register domains people are actively searching for on registrar sites in the hopes of extorting a large profit to surrender the domain, this is bad news. And for Network Solutions’ latest PR black eye over scalping searched-for domains - this removes the monetary incentive. Three cheers for ICANN!

Let me take up the position that nobody wants to hear - Verisign deserves this increase and fought hard to win it as a consolation prize. They implemented a scheme whereby non-registered .com and .net domains typed in inadvertantly would resolve to what amounted to a basic parking page. Monetizing typo traffic by taking advantage of their position as registry for .com and .net.

People became insensed with jealous rage and ICANN stepped in and forbade it. Most people feel that it’s unfair for Verisign to have a permanent monopoly in the lucrative .com market, even though they are unaware of how we got to this situation. In the early days Verisign stepped up and did what it took to make the DNS system happen. No it’s not enough to have BIND, and to have ISPs setting up nameservers - it required some infrastructure that someone had to provide.

Here is my letter sent to my local congressmen and senators earlier today, in reaction to ICANN moving up their next meeting date when this issue will presumably be discussed. Not that I think the US congress should seek legislative solutions to force saneness on the part of ICANN, but the mere threat of action to pressure the commerce Dept. should help to compel ICANN to include language that people are more comfortable with. The main goal should be to find reasonable ways to allow registries to profit without putting the users if the system at such a high level of risk.

Read on to see the text of the letters. More to the point, if you agree please write to your congresspersons. You can do so at http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/alert/?alertid=9002726&content_dir=ua_congressorg

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Say what you will about the shortcomings of ICANN, and the United States’ continued oversight function, but let me be the first to say that there is not a viable alternative. The United Nations is demonstrably incompetent when it comes to any sort of governance, technical or not. I think that’s the main obstacle to a transition to another governance model - the distinct lack of any credible choices.

ICANN has launched its new Registry Request Service stocked with industry insiders who seem poised to deal with new and sometimes innovative requests from all comers. Registries in particular will find exciting ways to drive increased registration, so one easy prediction influenced by a recent Verisign report: the number of registered domains will never again be reported to be less than 100 million!

So much hoopla over proposed changes to WHOIS records. Spammers have sent bots out to harvest email addresses from the public records for years now. But there are many benefits to open records that outweigh the alledged benefits of a tiered access system of recordkeeping.

Even worse than bots colecting email addresses, I noticed a few years back that when I transferred domains away from Network Solutions I suddenly got a HUGE spike in junk mail. The relationship was easy to deduce since I used dedicated email addresses to register names there (registrarName@myDomain.) Cause and effect or incredible coincidence?

In the realm of real property public access to ownership information is considered important, so I’m not sure why it should be any different for domain names. People that want to hide property ownership behind a corporate veil can do so, just as people can use inexpensive “private’ registrations to have some other company name show up on the WHOIS record.

The good folks at ICANN met this week in Marrakech, Morocco. They wanted a less comfortable location than the Wellington, NZ site where they met last time, or the Sao Paulo, Brazil location for their next meeting. One thing that happened there was that the “Domain Tasting” practise was attacked, as it has become a vehicle for abuse via controlling names without buying them and for trademark typo-squatting and the like. Who is controllng these names without paying for them? No, not the domainers who usually get blamed for things - certain registrars who are acting like unpaying registrants. Registrars try out names they suspect may have type-in traffic, or residual traffic from previous websites, and test their value with PPC ads. If they turn out to be lucative they will (eventually) renew them, meaning they never get back their $6 deposit from Verisign.

Bob Parsons, from GoDaddy is the most vocal opponent of this, saying that there’s been 32 million names used but not paid for as resut. Nice going Bob, now how about changing the industry’s most abusive specific behavior, GoDaddy’s hostile policy of not allowing transfers for 60 days after a change is made to the WHOIS record.

The largest registrars are in dire need of reformation. They control expired domains for ever longer periods of time, extorting huge fees from legitimate registrants whose names have lapsed, and continue to find new ways to monetize names without adding any value for registrants. Some proposed schemes are so mind-numbing it’s hard to believe anyone could think they were even viable, let alone a good idea. Unfortunately I think increasing regulation is what the future holds for registrars, who will begrudgingly pass along the increasing costs to registrants.