RE: Re[2]: [ga] domain tastinmg comments

[Shane Kinsch <shane.kinsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Karl –

I’m referring to a broad scale and wide abuse of the AGP.  This situation is 
more of an “opportunity” they are exploiting you with and has nothing to do 
with tasting domains, unless they actually parked it and analyzed the 
traffic/revenue over a 1 year period w/o contact the .org/.net registrants.  
The people (not Registrars, but possibly) that have engaged in the activity of 
registering .com versions of your .org or .net and contacting you see what 
they’re doing as a benefit to the .org/.net registrant.  More often, and it’s 
almost a guarantee, the speculator will just register the .com version of a 
.net/.org and call it good, park it and making no contact with the other TLD 
registrants unless they wanted to flip it.

Overall, the people that pay the $295 “acquisition fee” in my opinion actually 
want the .com variant and it possibly was registered previously when they 
choose the .net/.org/.tv/.ws/.cc, etc. that is now available.  Keep in mind, 
there is a minimum backorder fee for NameJet ($65 for some) and SnapNames ($100 
for some) and possibly go to auction at much higher than $295.

The act of registering the .com to flip it to the registrant of a .net/.org is 
not domain tasting.  Domain tasting overall is at a grand scale, not minor.  
It’s the major players that have abused this, or I should say .. found a 
weakness and exploited it.

Removing the AGP all together without providing for a means where a Registrar 
can recoup their expenses from fraudulent activities won’t work and is wrong 
(double opt-in won’t work either).  The gaps need to be filled and filled with 
discouraging fines or overhead expenses that break the abusers business model 
without distressing legitimate Registrars.

Shane

 

From: owner-ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
Karl Peters - TLDA
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 11:54 AM
To: ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx; Shane Kinsch
Cc: jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re[2]: [ga] domain tastinmg comments

 

 

> In general, you pay a fine of $2,851,200 just to sample 18,000,000 domain 
> names in a year and keep only the ones that barely pay for themselves.  Thats 
> not good business sense anyway you look at it.  I would estimate a much 
> higher drop rate such as 90+%.

>  

> If ICANN would enact a penalty as such, that anything over a nominal 
> percentage is charged $0.20/drop would take care of this and everyone else.  
> The legit registrars are happy and the tasters/kiters will go away.  Its not 
> feasible for them to keep operating.

 

So you want to talk about numbers and feasibility instead of right and wrong? 
OK...

       Let's say a scammer picks up 500 domains under this tasting policy and 
sends out solicitations as we have described and discussed to sell them at $295 
per domain for people to "complete" their registrations of the major TLDs' 
domains of their name. 

       Let's say that of these five hundred names that are tied up and 
unavailable for consumers for a week (perhaps the one time they will try for 
that name for some time to come, if they are not sufficiently skeptical and 
aware of the effects of tasting), they successfully sell 2 of them, but for 
less than advertised. 

       Let's say they settle for $500.00 for the two registrations they sell 
and then return the other 498 domains at $0.20 each penalty, or $99.60. This 
scammer just made a profit of $400.40 for one week of free e-mails based on 
improper marketing of unregistered domains and I still have no example of any 
corporation who has used this program as it was intended.

 

-Karl E. Peters