Anonymous writes "Many of you are already aware of ICANN's impending AGP Limits Policy. The links are here:

http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement -20oct08-en.htm
http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/agp-draft-20oct08-en. html

See below for synopsis of the policy, which is intended to stop "domain tasting" (using the 5-day grace period to see if domain receives enough traffic to be profitable).

Looking through the public comments, it seems no one has noticed that this policy won't end tasting. Rather, it will simply change who "wins" the race for domains. Specifically, large high-volume registrars can utilize up to 10% of their registrations for tasting. Why should they have this advantage? Some of these large registrars have used tasting to front-run registrations, while others are connected to a "house" portfolios.

As it stands, the $0.20 fee has eliminated the most egregious practices, i.e. "kiting". But the new Limits Policy just gives large registrars an unfair advantage.

Am I missing something here?

beste,
dnswatcher

Disclaimer: It makes no sense to defend squatting on trademark typos, nor all of the other problems like phishing and spam that are made simpler by the AGP. However, I would argue that registering a typo of a generic term (or any other speculative phrase that is not a trademark issue) is not an unethical practice.

SYNOPSIS: Quote from the policy:

Period ("AGP") shall be restricted for any gTLD Operator (hereinafter referred to as "Operator") that has implemented an AGP. Specifically, for each Operator: (a) During any given month, an Operator may not offer any refund to an ICANN-accredited registrar (hereinafter referred to as "Registrar") for any domain names deleted during the AGP that exceed (i) 10% of that Registrar's net new registrations (calculated as the total number of net adds of one-year through ten-year registrations as defined in the monthly reporting requirement of Operator Agreements) in that month, or (ii) fifty (50) domain names, whichever is greater, unless an exemption has been granted by an Operator."