[NA-Discuss] [Fwd: Re: [registrars] OUTCOMES REPORT OF THE GNSO AD HOC GROUP ON DOMAIN NAME TASTING]

[John L]

> What tweaked my interest was the combination of "reasonable assurance"
> and "non-revocable". Meaning that if a registration request is processed
> for a registrant, that the registrar is required to take money for it at
> some point. Simply deleting the transaction and telling ICANN "oh, we
> didn't really want those 4 million registrations" doesn't appear to be
> an option from my read - there was never a "reasonable assurance"

Let's say I want to do domain tasting.  On each daty of the month, I 
register 100K domains.  Starting on the sixth, each I delete all of the 
domains I registered five days earlier before I register the 100K new 
domains.  (We'll ignore the 73 domains a day that I decide to keep.)

In a steady state, I'm registering and deleting 3 million (100K x 30) 
domains a month, but I never have more than 500K registered at once.  So 
long as I have provided the registrar with a letter of credit to cover the 
cost of 500K domains, I'm all hunky dory.  I believe this is basically the 
same way that the money flows from registrars to registries.

If nothing else, this tells me that unless a registrar keeps its books 
unusually incompetently, nothing short of a full CPA style audit of 
each day's status of adds, deletes, payments, and outstanding credit will 
show whether the registrar is beyond its payment assurances, and even if 
there is, if it's only by a little bit a registrar could plausibly argue 
that it was a harmless mistake.

The other reason I doubt that you'll find registrars adding large numbers 
of unpaid domains is that they are in the same situation with the 
registries, so they'd be putting their own real money at risk.

R's,
John