How much to stop 'domain tasters'? ICANN thinks 20 cents a try

IDG News Service - A proposal by the overseer of the Internet's addressing system could cut back on the practice of "domain tasting" and make it easier for people to reserve the domain names they want for their Web sites.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is considering keeping the annual fee it charges for a registered domain name, even if the domain name is forfeited during the five-day Add Grace Period. ICANN currently charges 20 cents per domain per year.

The move is intended to stop domain tasting, a practice in which thousands of domain names are purchased at a time and monitored to see which get the most traffic during the grace period, said Jason Keenan, media adviser at ICANN.

The grace period is intended to let people get a refund if they make a spelling mistake while registering a domain. But rogue registrars have been abusing the grace period by setting up thousands of Web sites stuffed with advertising links on newly registered domains.

The domain tasters then keep the ones that generate the most click-through advertising revenue and forfeit the unprofitable domains for a refund before the grace period expires. Some registrars have been known to repeatedly register and unregister domain names as the five-day grace period expires, essentially never paying for use of a domain.

Domain tasting is a problem for users because domains they want to purchase may be temporarily or permanently unavailable. It also results in more low-quality Web pages on the Internet that are designed only for generating advertising revenue.

The imposition of a fee would make it a lot more expensive for domain tasters, Keenan said.

"Right now, you can go and register a million different names for five days, and the cost is zero," Keenan said. "If this [proposal] comes through, the cost is $1 for five [domains]. It really changes the fiscal model of tasting."

A study released earlier this month by ICANN shows how bad the problem has become over the past two years. In January 2005, there were 1.7 million .com and .net domains registered. Of those, 700,000, or 41%, were deleted during the grace period, for a total net increase of 1 million domains.

During January 2007, 51 million domains were registered, but 48 million were deleted, or about 94%. "There was a net increase of 3 million names, but most of the rest were just being 'tasted'," the report said.

The fee is also expected to put the brakes on another practice, known as "front running." Some Internet service providers and registries sell records of what domain names people have searched for, and those domains will end up being "tasted," said Susan Wade, spokeswoman for registry Network Solutions LLC.