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

["Nevett, Jonathon" <jnevett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dominik, George and others:

 

George is correct that if the tasting issue had been addressed, the
Front Running phenomena would not have been so acute and we would not
have felt compelled to protect our customers with this measure.  For 30
months, I have been advocating that ICANN should charge the Transaction
Fee on tasted names
http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/registrars/msg02941.html
<http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/registrars/msg02941.html>
.  We still support that approach to end tasting.

 

I also want to mention that we have made some enhancements to our
approach in response to many of the comments we have received.  We still
are evaluating some others internally.  Here is what we have done so
far:

 

1.      All new reserved names will not resolve to any page at all.

2.      We have addressed the concerns related to disclosure of zone
file and DNS server information of the reserved names.  This information
will no longer be available to anyone.

3.      We have removed our customer protection measure from our WHOIS
search page, so that no domains searched on this page will be reserved.


4.      We are providing additional customer notification of our
protection measure on our home and search web pages.

 

Thanks.

 

Jon

Network Solutions

 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Dominik Filipp
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 12:16 PM
To: George Kirikos; ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: twomey@xxxxxxxxx; roberto@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [ga] ICANN Board can intervene to stop domain tasting for 1
year

 

 

George,

 

well, agreed on many your counts here. Just one remark, we still can

distinguish between the NSI practice and standard domain tasting in that

NSI trades on the AGP to force potential registrants performing whois

lookup on their site to buy a domain of interest at them, for the NSI

standard price $35, though. Sure, some tasting registrars can misuse the

NSI-looking page (pharming) to grab names but this is relatively

unlikely unless you do not take care about the domain address of the

'pharmer'. After all, this may happen to many other entities, such as

banks, paypal, various private sensitive services, etc.

But the important difference here is that NSI does not utilize PPC

advertising, does not auction or otherwise speculate with grabbed names

and is eventually willing to sell such grabbed domains for standard NSI

prices. The problem is a new deceptive way of exploiting AGP, which is

forcing the victims to buy such domains only at NSI. Something we have

not seen before and something that may perhaps become similarly

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.

 

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.

 

Dominik