[ga] The End of Domain Tasting and its Consequences

[Danny Younger <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>]

Contract provisions written into the ICANN-approved
.com registry agreement and into the registry
agreements for .biz, .org and .info allow for mining
traffic data associated with non-existent domains.

Domain name speculators will no longer have to test
domains for traffic potential, soon they will be able
to buy the data that reveals which unregistered names
received the greatest number of hits.  

As the namespace has its fair share of bad actors one
can expect a flash flood of typosquatting of
unprecedented magnitude immediately upon the release
of such data.

This will have the effect of sending many parties into
the courts in an attempt to deal with the
typosquatting onslought.

ICANN has Articles of Incorporation that state: "the
Corporation shall... pursue the charitable and public
purposes of lessening the burdens of government and
promoting the global public interest..."

By allowing this set of events to transpire ICANN will
be increasing the burdens of government and will
assuredly not be promoting the global public interest.

Rampant typosquatting is in no one's best interest.

We need to discuss all aspects of this issue further.

For example, what if VeriSign and/or others decided to
sell this data for a high price to a single speculator
that had a relationship with a single registrar. 
Would this violate current registrar equal access
requirements created to ensure competition?  Probably
not, as the registry would be selling data to a third
party and not directly to the registrar community.

What if these registries decided to put all their data
(including data on existing domains) up for auction? 
Most likely a single party such as Google or Yahoo
would prevail at auction.  Is it appropriate for a
single entity to have exclusive use of such registry
data?  

Those favoring business rights would argue that as
long as free market processes were used there are no
grounds for complaint.  On the other hand, there will
be those that will argue that such data more
rightfully belongs in the public sphere as property of
the Internet commons.

My point is that ICANN has rushed into signing the
.com agreement without consideration of the
ramifications of some of these contract clauses. 
These same clauses now appear in other registry
contracts, and these clause do raise public policy
concerns (think GAC).

I think it's time to step back and ask the ICANN Board
to consider invoking a "temporary specification" to
put a freeze on these types of developments until the
ICANN policy-advising bodies can tender
well-considered policy recommendations.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com