Domain tasting

This is a place holder page for Domain Tasting. What are the pros and Cons of Domain Tasting.

History and Analysis: http://www.circleid.com/posts/historical_analysis_domain_tasting/

Assumption for a Domain Taster:

If a domain can generate over $6.00 a year in PPC revenue then someone will register it and someone will place PPC advertising on it.

Cons:

• People who try to register a domain name may get caught up in a large domain taster. If over 1,000,000 domains are held up in domain tasting each day then people trying to register some of those names will suspect someone is spying on their domain queries.

• Shady whois records that have been appearing during Domain Tasting period.

• Registries claim there is a technical issue.

• It gives registrars and "big players" an unfair advantage. This is similar to what Verisign tried to do when they put up parking pages for all mis-typed domains.

• Speaking as a geek, I find the process moderately reprehensible. It's exploiting a loophole in the rules to perpetrate massive attention theft. Now, by all rights the loophole should be closed. How long till that happens?

• http://www.circleid.com/posts/domain_tasting_target_of_us_federal_cybersquatting_lawsuit/

• There is no real need for allowing tasting in the first place. Once someone files for a registration they should be required to pay for the registration without permitting a refund. As a private individual I can't get registration on a 5-day "test basis", or on any means allowing me to change my mind and not have to pay for the domain. There is no real reason to allow this except to allow people to "game the system" and grab up millions of domain names, then cancel registrations on over 95% of the registrations. This is basically the same thing as spam all over again; since it costs them nothing to register these domains if they don't keep the registration, this will encourage this sort of activity. Domain registrations should be non-refundable.

• In no other sort of operation or registration or commercial system is it likely, expected or condoned where upwards of 95% of all transactions are cancelled, and it costs the person who starts the transaction nothing. Were the transactions permanent for the full year, a large percentage of this sort of activity would cease. With the basic cost of a registration below US$10, there's no real need for a "cooling off period". When domain names were $35 a year, making a mistake on several domains could be expensive, but with the cost now very low, there's no real need for this feature.

Con Rebuttal:

• People who get caught up in a taster have no expected right to the name in the first place.

• Shady whois records are their own problem across the industry, not just tasting. This is a red herring.

• Where's the documentation that this is a technical issue? No registry has said so. Verisign has said nothing about tasting in terms of technical issues being problems.

Pros:

• In a free-market economy, who is to tell anyone how they may conduct business? ICANN has made the rules, and tasting plays by them. Period.

This page and this term were coined by Jay Westerdal.

Con Rebuttal rebuttal

• There is zero checking done to these domain registrations in terms of trademarks. They are breaking the rules as far as ICANN has set up. Just because they obey the rules that are convienient for them does not mean they are obeying all the rules.