ICANN to stamp out domain tasting

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 31 Jan 2008 at 10:22

ICANN is considering charging for domain names as soon as they're registered, as it attempts to put and end to "domain tasting".

The move would eliminate the five day grace period given to new registrations, which allows the organisation or person time to back out of a registration if they've made a mistake.

ICANN claims that removing the grace period could put an end to the practice of registering thousands of domain names simultaneously to test their profitability, then dropping the unprofitable ones without having to pay for their use.

The organisation highlighted the problem by referring to a study it conducted in January 2007, in which ten companies accounted for 95% of all deleted domain names.

"Domain tasting has been an issue for the internet community and ICANN is offering this proposal as a way to stop tasting," says Paul Twomey, ICANN's president.

"Charging the ICANN fee as soon as a domain name is registered would close the loophole used by tasters to test a domain name's profitability for free."

Google has also responded to this problem recently, announcing that sites less than five-days-old will not be able to generate revenue through AdSense.