Summary of public comments

[Olof Nordling <olof.nordling@xxxxxxxxx>]

Summary of public comments to the Initial Report on Domain Tasting

Background

In line with the GNSO Policy Development Process (PDP) rules, the Initial 
Report on Domain Tasting has been posted for public comments, to provide input 
for the subsequent steps in the ongoing PDP on Domain Tasting.

Public Comments Received

In total, 67 public comments were registered, whereof 1 clearly off-topic. The 
contributions can be grouped as follows:

a) Short email contributions from individuals, calling for measures to stop or 
reduce the practice of domain tasting, some suggesting measures like cancelling 
the AGP, introducing a waiting period, limiting the number of allowable AGP 
deletes, auditing of registrars, restricting registrar activities and 
blacklisting of tasted domains. Some comments address the proposed introduction 
of the ICANN registration fee for all registrations (i.e. not making it 
refundable for deletes within the AGP) and question such a measure's 
effectiveness in curbing domain tasting. In total 50 contributions: JW, JB, RM, 
TB, BS, BB, IP, JM, DD, SV, FE, ML, DF, GK, MT, KA, BK

b) Documents from groups and associations, notably CADNA, AIPLA, APWG, INTA and 
ICA. The constituency statement from the Registrars' Constituency (RrC) was 
also posted here, since it was submitted after the Initial Report was posted. 
Key content in these contributions:

CADNA -  After analyzing the applications and implications of a handful of 
proposals including restocking fees, ratios, and accreditation revocation (as 
it pertains to notorious tasters), CADNA contends that abolishing the AGP is 
the safest and most practical solution to implement.

AIPLA - Effective measures should be adopted to curb the practice of domain 
tasting.
The "business model" of tasters is built around trademark abuse. Even 
infringements that last only 5 days are harmful to trademark owners.

APWG - A study on the use of domain tasting by phishers shows minimal such use 
in the time the study was performed. It should be noted, though, that members 
of the anti-phishing community have had to increase their infrastructure to 
account for the much larger number of potential phish sites that are being 
registered by tasters, and this impedes anti-phishing efforts and increases the 
cost of detecting and mitigating fraudulent behavior.

INTA - Methods that ICANN should implement to eliminate domain name tasting, in 
descending order of preference: 1. Eliminate the AGP 2.  Redefine AGP to 
significantly restrict the percentage of Deleted names to which it applies 3.  
Impose the ICANN fee.
4.  Endorse imposition of a Registry fee.

ICA - Support for the imposition of a nominal non-refundable registration fee 
by ICANN, perhaps enhanced by individual actions by gTLD registries.

RrC - Preferred - To recommend that ICANN make the transactional fee component 
of the variable Registrar fees apply to all new registrations except for a 
reasonable number that are deleted within the AGP. Acceptable but not preferred 
- To encourage gTLD Registries to only allow AGP refunds on a reasonable number 
of new registrations, noting that such action is affective only if all gTLD 
registries apply it, and do so in a reasonably consistent manner.

c) Comments objecting to a service recently launched by NSI. These comments 
were prompted by the actuality of that particular topic and do not relate to 
domain tasting in the strict sense but rather to what is called "domain name 
front-running". In total 18 contributions: AP, ZE, CS, EJ, JW, SZ, PU, JPo, DA, 
TT, EB, JPl, SC, CW, LG,

d) Comments from a couple of threads on the GA (General Assembly) mailing list, 
introduced by list members copying their mails to the public comment address. 
These comments fall into the categories a) and c) above, and some individual 
comments do depend on the thread context for understanding. Recent GA list 
email exchanges can be found in archives at 
http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/ga-200709/ . In total 29 
contributions: JW, DF, GK, KA

Contributors, in order of first appearance, with (abbreviation) and [nbr of 
postings if > 1]:

Anders Petersen (AP)
zejms (ZE)
Chris Stith (CS)
Ed Jones (EJ)
Jeffrey A. Williams (JW) [18]
Steve Zembek (SZ)
Peter Ubriaco (PU)
Joe Portner (JPo)
Jimmy Bresee (JB)
Ryan Meyer (RM)
Tyler Barton (TB)
David (DA)
Brad Staszcuk (BS)
Ben Bradshaw (BB)
Tim Triche (TT) [2]
Ed Bindl (EB)
Ian Patterson (IP)
John Maxwell (JM)
Dave Drager (DD)
Scott Vallance (SV)
Jonathan Plona (JPl)
Scott Converse (SC)
Christian Winebrenner (CW)
Frank Ellermann (FE)
Matt Ledingham (ML)
Dominik Filipp (DF) [5]
George Kirikos (GK) [4]
Dwayne Rowland (DR)
Larry Grubbs (LG)
McTim (MT)
Karl Auerbach (KA) [2]
Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA)
American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA)
Registrar Constituency (RrC) [1 plus correction]
Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG)
International Trademark Association (INTA) [2, repeat]
Internet Commerce Association (ICA)
Bill Kerney (BK)