User:Adrianeu/Info237/Drafts

User:Adrianeu/Info237/Drafts

Domain sniping

Domain sniping, also known as drop catching, is the practice of an individual registering a domain name whose registration has lapsed in the immediate moments after expiry. This practice has largely been stopped by the the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), with an addition to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) of the Redemption Grace Period (RGP), which allows registrants 30 days to reclaim their domain name.[1] By law there are no perpetual rights to domain names after payment of registration fees lapses, aside from trademark rights granted by common law or statute. ICANN's RAA requires registrars to delete domain registrations once a second notice has been given and the RGP has elapsed.

Although domain registrars often make multiple attempts to notify a registrant of a domain name's impending expiration, a failure on the part of the original registrant to provide the registrar with accurate contact information can make an unintended registration lapse possible. Unless the original registrant holds a trademark or other legal entitlement to the name, they are often left without any form of recourse in getting the domain name back. It is incumbent on registrants to be proactive in managing their name registrations and to be good stewards of their names.

Prior to the RGP, individuals could engage in domain sniping in order to extort money from the original registrant to buy the name back. The addition of RGP has largely abated the ability to "snipe" domain names. The competition for expiring domain names has since become a purview of the domain registrar. Retail registrars such as GoDaddy or eNom retain names for auction through services such as TDNAM or Snapnames. These drop catch services are performed by both ICANN-accredited and non-accredited registrars. Currently, ICANN has no policy for how to handle expired domain names after registration has lapsed past the RGP.

Domain name warehousing

Domain name warehousing is the practice of registrars obtaining control of expired domain names already under their management with the intent to hold or “warehouse” names for their own use and/or profit. The Registrars Accreditation Agreement (RAA) currently does not disallow this practice. However, the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) community has open calls for policy changes to limit warehousing, which is perceived as unfair to potential registrants. Also see domain name front running, [drop catching] and domain tasting, related business practices employed by registrants.

Typically this practice occurs after a domain name has expired and the previous registrant has not exercised his/her right to renew the name within the allotted time frame; usually 45 days following expiration. A domain's expiration date and time can be calculated based on the expiration date in the [[1]] and the redemption grace period of the registrar managing the domain registration.

According to the Generic Names Supporting Organization Council (GNSO) Deletes Task Force Report (2003), a council organized under ICANN, three specific modes of warehousing have been identified:

   1. The registrant allows the domain name to lapse, but registrar fails to delete the domain name during the grace period, resulting in a paid renewal to the registry. The registrar subsequently assumes registration of the domain name.
   2. The registrant purchases the domain name through fraud and the registrar assumes registration of the name to resell in order to minimize losses.
   3. The registrar registers the domain in its own name outright.

When the phrase "Domain Warehousing" was coined in the late 1990s, ICANN registrars were two dimensional entities that served registrants of domain names. The concern at that time was that a registrar would register available domain names and then offer to re-sell those registrations at a "higher than registration" price to potential registrants. By 2006 the name space had clearly matured and the line between registrars, media companies such as AOL.com (who operate ICANN accredited registrars to manage their name portfolios) and large scale commercial registrants (who operate ICANN accredited registrars as security measures) had blurred. It has been hypothesized that by 2010 many large corporations or commercial registrants of domain names will operate an ICANN accredited registrar as a security measure to protect and manage valuable name and trademark inventory. (I can't find any sources for this conjecture - Adrianeu (talk) 02:22, 21 October 2012 (UTC))

The primary concern today with the practice of Domain Warehousing is that retail registrars, which have historically focused on serving individual and small business registrants, are now actively collecting lapsed domain names and offering drop catch services that conflict with the concept of fair access to domain names.

An additional concern is that companies pooling scores of drop registrars for additional registry connections will stand at the expiring domain spigot conducting domain tasting without paying, and then warehouse those that meet traffic criteria while denying the broader community a fair opportunity to compete for those expiring names. (I can't find any sources for this conjecture - Adrianeu (talk) 06:25, 21 October 2012 (UTC))

As of yet, ICANN has not amended the RAA with policies to limit domain warehousing and related practices. Registrars are in a unique position to impact domain name pricing by introducing competitive bidding or auctions for expired domain names. Fair access to domain names is further impacted when registrars opt not to market the warehoused domains immediately, delaying the recycling of warehoused names indefinitely.

Domain tasting

Domain tasting is the practice of a domain name registrant using the five-day Add Grace Period (AGP) at the beginning of the registration of an ICANN-regulated second-level domain to test the marketability of the domain. During this period, when a registration must be fully refunded by the domain name registry, the registrant conducts a cost-benefit analysis on the viability of deriving income frompotential advertising on the domain's website.

Domains that are deemed "successes" and retained in a registrant's portfolio often represent domains that were previously used and have since expired, misspellings of other popular sites, or generic terms that may receive type-in traffic. These domains are usually still active in search engines and other hyperlinks and therefore receive enough traffic such that advertising revenue exceeds the cost of the registration. The registrant may also derive revenue from eventual sale of the domain, at a premium, to a third party or the previous owner.

In January 2008, ICANN proposed several possible solutions, including that the exemption on transaction costs (US$ 0.20) during the five-day grace period be abandoned, which would effectively make the practice of domain tasting not viable.[1] The ICANN operating plan and budget for Fiscal Year 2009 included a section intended to deal with the problem of Domain tasting. The transaction fee of $0.20 will be applied to domains deleted in the Add Grace Period where the number of such domains exceeds 10% of the net new registrations or 50 domains, whichever is greater. The "net new registrations" is defined as the number of new registrations less the number of domains deleted in the Add Grace Period. The ICANN operating plan and budget was approved at the ICANN board meeting in Paris, France on 26 June 2008.

Starting in April 2009, many top level domains (TLDs) began transitioning from the $0.20 fee for excess domains deleted to implementing a policy resulting in a fee equal to registering the domain, generally several dollars in cost.[2][3]

In August 2009, ICANN reported that prior to implementing excess domain deletion charges, the peak month for domain tastings was over 15 million domain names. After the $0.20 fee was implemented, this dropped to around 2 million domain names per month. As a result of the further increase in charges for excess domain deletions, implemented starting April 2009, the number of domain tastings dropped to below 60 thousand per month.[2] However, these statistics only represent reports from the generic TLDs; ICANN does not set policy for the country code TLDs (ccTLD).

Domain tasting should not be confused with domain kiting, which is the process of deleting a domain name during the five-day grace period and immediately re-registering it for another five-day period. This process is repeated any number of times with the end result of having the domain registered without ever actually paying for it.

Controversy Unbalanced scales.svg This article's Criticism or Controversy section may compromise the article's neutral point of view of the subject. Please integrate the section's contents into the article as a whole, or rewrite the material. (June 2009)

The practice is controversial as practitioners typically register and delete many hundreds of thousands of domain names under this practice, with these temporary registrations far exceeding the number of domain names actually purchased.

In April 2006, out of 35 million registrations, about 2 million were permanent or actually purchased. By February 2007, the CEO of Go Daddy reported that of 55.1 million domain names registered, 51.5 million were canceled and refunded just before the 5 day grace period expired and only 3.6 million domain names were actually kept.[4]

Claims have been made that domain name registries such as VeriSign and the Public Interest Registry have turned a blind eye to the practice as it has dramatically increased the number of registrations secured and renewed.[5] However, there are proposals by registries to introduce measures that would reduce or eliminate the practice.[6] (Deleting paragraph due to bad reference links - Adrianeu (talk) 02:22, 21 October 2012 (UTC))

In January 2008, Network Solutions was publicly accused of this practice when the company began reserving all domain names searched on their website for five days,[7] a practice known as domain name front running.

Google said in 2008 that their AdSense program will now look for domain names that are repeatedly registered and dropped. They say they will drop these domains from the AdSense program.

Reverse domain tasting

A number of registrars routinely change a domain's name servers to those of their own, or a parking service, when a domain has gone past its expiration or renewal date. Domains continue to resolve for up to 30 days or more after their registration and redemption grace period have expired. The advantage of this 'reverse tasting' is that the registrars or parking services can determine which domains have traffic before they are deleted, and hence maintain a list of domains that they might re-register (or even transfer) after the deletion date, as part of drop catch services.