ALAC STATEMENT ON DOMAIN TASTING AND MONETISATION AND THEIR IMPACTS ON THE INDIVIDUAL INTERNET USERS
Version 1.3, Mar 28
On behalf of the ordinary Internet users, the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC), with inputs from the worldwide At-Large Structures and other friends, would like to make the following statements on Domain Tasting and Domain Monetization.
We think Domain Tasting and Domain Monetization are two different issues, though certain areas may have some relationship, and therefore we like to discuss them separately.
The need to articulate the issue first for Domain Tasting
We assume that Domain Tasting utilizing the existing Five-day Add Grace Period is an abuse that results in confusion of the ordinary Internet users and gives an unfair advantage to speculators.
At this point of time, we feel there still needs more concrete information to prove these problems actually exist and are affecting the ordinary users and their experience in using the Internet.
ALAC will draft a formal request shortly to ask ICANN staff to prepare the Issue Report. At the same time, we like to work together with other constituencies or groups who share the similar concern to come to a consensus position.
Upon receiving the Issue Report by the staff, GNSO must make the decision whether a formal PDP is necessary or not.
In addition, here are some possible actions you can do voluntarily now:
With the User Consituency, business and non-commercial:
Find the best ways to protect the interest of the end users, as registrants as well as just as general users who do not register domain names but just use domain names to communicate each other or find useful information on Internet. How to provide safeguard for the domain names they registered, what are the rights of the registrants, for example.
With the Registrars Constituency:
Finalize and implement Registrars Code of Conduct that prohibits unfair speculation and exploitation on Domain name registration including the use of five day Add Grace period. In case full consensus is difficult to achieve, some voluntary Code of Conduct or Best Practice or some kind of Self-certification may be a good alternative to assure user confidence.
With Registry Constituency: gTLD and ccTLDs
Consider how to avoid user confusion and unfair practices by abolishing the five day add grace period. Adding small fee, such as 25 cents per Domain to those registrants who kept their names using add grace period may be another solution.
With ICANN Board:
We suggest ICANN Board to consider how to prohibit unfair speculation, enhance consumer trust to Domain Name registration system, for example, initiating a third party study on the impact of Domain Tasting and Domain Monetization/speculation to the ordinary Internet users. ALAC is more than happy to assist such study.
On Domain Monetization
We note that there is a meaningful difference between Domain Tasting and Domain Monetization. Monetization is a straightforward arbitrage between the cost of domain registrations and the revenue from as much pay-per-click traffic as the domain owner can get from people who visit web sites in the domain. It's a fundamentally sleazy business, since the web sites have no useful content and the way they get the traffic is basically by tricking people, either via typos or recently expired domains. More importantly, the presence of such website makes web-surfing by ordinary users far more difficult and confusing than they should be.
We do not think it is appropriate in this case to make ICANN as a regulator to watch and prohibit the Domain Monetization practices per se. Instead, on behalf of ordinary Internet users, we call upon those commercial enterprises such as Google or Overture to take appropriate measures such as to stop paying for clicks on pages with no content, thereby dealing with a problem that is not limited to typo and expired domains. We've seen click arbitrage, people buying Google ads to drive traffic to pages that are simply other Google ads. This kind of self-generating traffic for pay-per-click advertising is confusing and unnecessary for ordinary Internet users and, in the long run, not healthy for the development of Internet as a whole.
Since Domain monetization is a relatively new phenomena, the impact to the ordinary users and the wider Internet community is hard to measure at this point. It seems clear, however, that it does not improve the user experience at all. We think it is worth to keep watching on how it develops and may seek for specific actions when we have clearer understanding of measurable impact.
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Background and Rationale on Domain Tasting
"Domain tasting" is the term used to describe the use of the five-day add grace period to register domains without paying for them and find those domains which generate certain traffic for pay-per-click advertisements. We think these are unfair acts: somewhere between larceny and extortion, because the registration cost is zero and the purpose of these registrations is just to make money by taking advantage of automated bulk registration to exploit the domain names, which are in essence 'public goods', and not the real property of anyone.
As many people have noted, this practice is exploiting a loophole that shouldn't exist in the first place. There was a great deal of debate both in the ICANN community about the deletion grace period, but none at all about add grace which was apparently tossed into the package by an ICANN staffer without asking anyone. So says Karl Auerbach, who was on the board at the time, and we haven't seen anything to the contrary from any other board member.
As Bob Parsons, CEO and Founder of Go Daddy, wrote in his blog:
> Millions of good .COM domain names – on any given day over 3.5 million and climbing — are unfairly made unavailable to small businesses and others who would actually register and use them in ways for which the names were intended. Many times businesses accidentally let their domain names expire. When they go to renew them, they find they have been snapped up – and taken away with a huge expensive hassle to follow – by an add/drop registrar.
The usual explanation of domain tasting says that the registrars register millions of domains, watch the traffic, and then after 4.9 days they delete the ones that don't seem likely to make back the US$6.00 registration fee. Often they just delete them all and then reregister what they can a few minutes later until they find the domains that produce enough traffic to yield a return well above the registration fee.
The add grace period is just a mistake. The problem it purports to solve is not and never was an important one. If you let an important domain expire, you risk losing the entire investment made in that domain over many years. But if one registers a domain by mistake, the most one risks is the ten or twenty dollars you paid to register it.
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This is the statement on Domain Tasting/monetization just read by our Chair, Jacqueline, at the Public Forum 5 minuts ago. I think the transcription soon to be released will be the best record.
On Domain Tasting and Domain Monetisation
These are 2 different issues, only one of which we believe falls within ICANN's purview, namely domain tasting. We believe the 5-day add-drop loophole is being exploited to the instability of Internet addressing resources. However, we recognize that more rigorous research is required to establish this effect in a completely convincing manner. ALAC is therefore taking the necessary steps to formally request the initiation of a PDP by GNSO on this matter. I am happy to report that we are actively working on this with several constituencies within the GNSO. At the same time, we invite any other constituencies and groups who share our concern on this issue to work with us on achieving a common consensus position.
While many of us believe that domain monetisation may cause confusion and does not benefit user experience, some of us consider it a content issue and hence outside the realm of ICANN regulation.
contributed by iza@anr.org on 2007-03-29 09:44:54 GMT
