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Re: [At-Large] ALAC Draft Statement on Domain Tasting and Domain Monetization - V. 1.3



I like the substance of the comment, but the procedure is wrong.  We
voted at our March 6 teleconference to commence the PDP, so this is the
statement to be sent to the GNSO requesting it.

--Wendy

Nick Ashton-Hart wrote:
> Just one comment down below of a technical nature:
> 
> On 28/03/07, Izumi AIZU <iza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 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.
>>
> 
> This paragraph is still slightly out of kilter with what the process
> in the Bylaws actually requires.
> 
> What you are actually to do is raise an issue by transmitting a
> request to the GNSO Council to commence a PDP.
> 
> Then 15 days after receiving a "properly supported motion from an
> Advisory Committee"  the staff will create an issues report.
> 
> "properly supported" according to Dan Halloran means supported by the
> committee in the normal way it resolves on questions of substance -
> e.g majority vote.
> 
> You can find the details here: http://www.icann.org/general/bylaws.htm#AnnexA
> 
>> 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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>>
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>> www.icannalac.org
>>
>>
> 
> 


-- 
Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@xxxxxxxxxxx
phone: 718.780.7961 // fax: 718.780.0394 // cell: 914.374.0613
Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School
Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html
http://www.chillingeffects.org/

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