RE: [ga] ICANN Board can intervene to stop domain tasting for 1 year

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

--- Dominik Filipp <dominik.filipp@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> malicious in result as domain tasting itself. If not stopped, it is
> likely that other registrars will be encouraged to do the same as
> this
> practice currently gives NSI an advantage over other registrars. As a
> result, the registrants will become victims impelled to register
> domains
> at registrar at which they did the first (and last) whois lookup.

Right, the arms race would escalate and be destabilizing to the
registration system. Just as an example of some numbers, more than
50,000 domain names were reserved yesterday, making NSI #2 for most
active nameservers:

http://www.dailychanges.com/
http://www.dailychanges.com/detail/?ns=RESERVEDDOMAINNAME.COM&date=2008-01-10&net=49807&changes=50162&act=n
 
> Both practices have one thing in common, exploiting the AGP.
> Elimination
> of the AGP seems to be more and more the most effective solution to
> avoid both and all similar AGP-related practices. That is something
> we
> both can agree upon.

And I believe NSI wants this too. According to PC World:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/141256/network_solutions_stands_by_name_policy.html

"Mitchell added that if ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers), the organization that oversees the domain name system,
would move to cut down on these type of scams, then his company
wouldn't have to engage in this kind of automatic search registration.
"We would be perfectly happy to end this process if ICANN or the
registries would do something to protect small businesses or other
small users," he said.

A US$0.25 non-refundable domain name registration fee would probably be
enough to make domain tasting or front running unprofitable, he added."

I'm glad Mitchell agrees that making it uneconomic for automated
abusers is the way to go. Whether it's a non-refundable fee, or some
other method that would impose a real economic cost in a different way
(similar to how CAPTCHAs attempt to reduce spam), in case a
non-refundable fee doesn't fly (or violates a contract). E.g. forcing
registrars to receive deletion requests on a domain by domain basis
(above a certain fractional basis relative to kept domains), 1 piece of
physical 8.5"x11" paper per request, signed by the registrant or the
registrar,  and have those requests available for ICANN inspection,
stored for 7 years, would do the trick. An abuser deleting 1 million
names would have to store 1 million pages of paper for 7 years. That'd
take up a lot of space! :) And imagine the time spent individually
signing 1 million pages of paper? (i.e. make rules that one can't use
an automated signature, but it has to be a pencil/penl) :) I'm sure we
can brainstorm equivalent CAPTCHAs to knock out abusive
deletions/frontrunning.

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
http://www.kirikos.com/