Domain Tasting comments

["Winebrenner, Michael C" <WinebrenMC15@xxxxxxx>]

The point of purchasing domains has never been one whereby which someone 
"checks" to see if they can monetize the domain from just slapping ads on it; 
indeed, even if it was, it's highly unlikely that a potential owner of a domain 
could accomplish this "tasting" in the short period provided.  Thus, it would 
seem that allowing tasting provides for a negligible, at best, benefit to the 
community.

On the other hand, behavior like that most recently exhibited by NSI whereby a 
registrar instantly registers all domains that are queried via WHOIS, 
especially when the company in question has such close ties to the registry for 
the TLD in question, causes significant harm to the community.  A large part of 
the purpose of decentralizing the domain registration process into registries 
and registrars was to provide for more competition - something that is most 
certainly NOT occurring when NSI goes ahead and registers a domain you query 
via their WHOIS system, effectively forcing you to register it at their 
(higher) price or wait and hope that no one else takes it whenever it gets 
released again.

In light of such behavior, the potential for abuse of the "tasting" process 
seems high, with little to no benefit for consumers, and I feel it should be 
discontinued, or that the registrar that is "tasting" a domain should have to 
pay the significantly more - between half and all of the registration rate - to 
the registry, even if they release it later, in order to discourage abuse.

Regards,

Christian Winebrenner