[At-Large] ALAC Draft Statement on Domain Tasting and Domain Monetization - V. 1.3
Izumi AIZU
iza at anr.org
Wed Mar 28 13:59:29 EDT 2007
2007/3/29, Wendy Seltzer <wendy at seltzer.com>:
>
> 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.
Woops, because we voted yesterday to write a request to
ICANN Staff for Issue report. No one reminded the Vote on March 6.
Which one should we follow?
izumi
--Wendy
>
> Nick Ashton-Hart wrote:
> > Just one comment down below of a technical nature:
> >
> > On 28/03/07, Izumi AIZU <iza at anr.org> 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.
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> ALAC mailing list
> >> ALAC at atlarge-lists.icann.org
> >>
> http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org
> >>
> >> www.alac.icann.org
> >> www.icannalac.org
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Wendy Seltzer -- wendy at seltzer.org
> 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/
>
>
--
>> Izumi Aizu <<
Institute for HyperNetwork Society
Kumon Center, Tama University
* * * * *
<< Writing the Future of the History >>
www.anr.org
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