Re: [At-Large] ALAC Draft Statement on Domain Tasting and Domain Monetization - V. 1.3
Izumi,
Did you intend this to be for ALAC internal use or a statement to be put
out? The language suggests internal use. We need a shorter more compact
statement if Jacqueline is going to present it at the Public Forum.
Siavash
> Hi,
>
> Here follows and attached is the third version. I messed up with the
> wiki, changing the link page title made it impossible to keep the
> history - thus this is a kind of new page now.
> I will try to find ways to fix it... in the mean time. I changed the
> title from "Comments" to "Statement". We still need more inputs and
> reactions from you guys!
>
> Thanks,
> izumi
>
> Here is the wiki URL:
> https://st.icann.org/alac/index.cgi?al_2007_r_1
>
> ALAC STATEMENT ON DOMAIN TASTING AND MONETISATION AND THEIR IMPACTS ON
> THE INDIVIDUAL INTERNET USERS
>
> Version 1.3, Mar 28
>
> On behalf of the ordinary Internet users, the At-Large Advisory
> Committee (ALAC), with inputs from the worldwide At-Large Structures
> and other friends, would like to make the following statements on
> Domain Tasting and Domain Monetization.
>
> We think Domain Tasting and Domain Monetization are two different
> issues, though certain areas may have some relationship, and therefore
> we like to discuss them separately.
>
> The need to articulate the issue first for Domain Tasting
> We assume that Domain Tasting utilizing the existing Five-day Add
> Grace Period is an abuse that results in confusion of the ordinary
> Internet users and gives an unfair advantage to speculators.
>
> At this point of time, we feel there still needs more concrete
> information to prove these problems actually exist and are affecting
> the ordinary users and their experience in using the Internet.
>
> ALAC will draft a formal request shortly to ask ICANN staff to prepare
> the Issue Report. At the same time, we like to work together with
> other constituencies or groups who share the similar concern to come
> to a consensus position.
>
> Upon receiving the Issue Report by the staff, GNSO must make the
> decision whether a formal PDP is necessary or not.
>
> In addition, here are some possible actions you can do voluntarily now:
>
> With the User Consituency, business and non-commercial:
> Find the best ways to protect the interest of the end users, as
> registrants as well as just as general users who do not register
> domain names but just use domain names to communicate each other or
> find useful information on Internet. How to provide safeguard for the
> domain names they registered, what are the rights of the registrants,
> for example.
>
> With the Registrars Constituency:
> Finalize and implement Registrars Code of Conduct that prohibits
> unfair speculation and exploitation on Domain name registration
> including the use of five day Add Grace period. In case full consensus
> is difficult to achieve, some voluntary Code of Conduct or Best
> Practice or some kind of Self-certification may be a good alternative
> to assure user confidence.
>
> With Registry Constituency: gTLD and ccTLDs
> Consider how to avoid user confusion and unfair practices by
> abolishing the five day add grace period. Adding small fee, such as 25
> cents per Domain to those registrants who kept their names using add
> grace period may be another solution.
>
> With ICANN Board:
> We suggest ICANN Board to consider how to prohibit unfair speculation,
> enhance consumer trust to Domain Name registration system, for
> example, initiating a third party study on the impact of Domain
> Tasting and Domain Monetization/speculation to the ordinary Internet
> users. ALAC is more than happy to assist such study,
>
>
> On Domain Monetization
> We note that there is a meaningful difference between Domain Tasting
> and Domain Monetization. Monetization is a straightforward arbitrage
> between the cost of domain registrations and the revenue from as much
> pay-per-click traffic as the domain owner can get from people who
> visit web sites in the domain. It's a fundamentally sleazy business,
> since the web sites have no useful content and the way they get the
> traffic is basically by tricking people, either via typos or recently
> expired domains. More importantly, the presence of such website makes
> web-surfing by ordinary users far more difficult and confusing than
> they should be.
>
> We do not think it is appropriate in this case to make ICANN as a
> regulator to watch and prohibit the Domain Monetization practices per
> se. Instead, on behalf of ordinary Internet users, we call upon those
> commercial enterprises such as Google or Overture to take appropriate
> measures such as to stop paying for clicks on pages with no content,
> thereby dealing with a problem that is not limited to typo and expired
> domains. We've seen click arbitrage, people buying Google ads to drive
> traffic to pages that are simply other Google ads. This kind of
> self-generating traffic for pay-per-click advertising is confusing and
> unnecessary for ordinary Internet users and, in the long run, not
> healthy for the development of Internet as a whole.
>
> Since Domain monetization is a relatively new phenomena, the impact to
> the ordinary users and the wider Internet community is hard to measure
> at this point. It seems clear, however, that it does not improve the
> user experience at all. We think it is worth to keep watching on how
> it develops and may seek for specific actions when we have clearer
> understanding of measurable impact.
>
> Background and Rationale on Domain Tasting
> "Domain tasting" is the term used to describe the use of the five-day
> add grace period to register domains without paying for them and find
> those domains which generate certain traffic for pay-per-click
> advertisements. We think these are unfair acts: somewhere between
> larceny and extortion, because the registration cost is zero and the
> purpose of these registrations is just to make money by taking
> advantage of automated bulk registration to exploit the domain names,
> which are in essence 'public goods', and not the real property of
> anyone.
>
> As many people have noted, this practice is exploiting a loophole that
> shouldn't exist in the first place. There was a great deal of debate
> both in the ICANN community about the deletion grace period, but none
> at all about add grace which was apparently tossed into the package by
> an ICANN staffer without asking anyone. So says Karl Auerbach, who was
> on the board at the time, and we haven't seen anything to the contrary
> from any other board member.
>
> As Bob Parsons, CEO and Founder of Go Daddy, wrote in his blog:
> Millions of good .COM domain names ? on any given day over 3.5 million
> and climbing ? are unfairly made unavailable to small businesses and
> others who would actually register and use them in ways for which the
> names were intended. Many times businesses accidentally let their
> domain names expire. When they go to renew them, they find they have
> been snapped up ? and taken away with a huge expensive hassle to
> follow ? by an add/drop registrar.
>
> The usual explanation of domain tasting says that the registrars
> register millions of domains, watch the traffic, and then after 4.9
> days they delete the ones that don't seem likely to make back the
> US$6.00 registration fee. Often they just delete them all and then
> reregister what they can a few minutes later until they find the
> domains that produce enough traffic to yield a return well above the
> registration fee.
>
> The add grace period is just a mistake. The problem it purports to
> solve is not and never was an important one. If you let an important
> domain expire, you risk losing the entire investment made in that
> domain over many years. But if one registers a domain by mistake, the
> most one risks is the ten or twenty dollars you paid to register it.
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