High negativity and abuse potential by allowing the Registry to make commercial use of traffic data
Just noticed this amazing benefit to PIR in the proposed agreement: "Nothing in this Agreement shall preclude Registry Operator from making commercial use of, or collecting, traffic data regarding domain names or non-existent domain names for purposes such as, without limitation, the determination of the availability and health of the Internet, pinpointing specific points of failure, characterizing attacks and misconfigurations, identifying compromised networks and hosts and promoting the SALE OF DOMAIN NAMES" This appears to give PIR.org authority to test traffic potential of all registered and unregistered org's and then offer the unregistered ones based on the traffic data they are privy to, and/or use the data to price renewals. In fact, on already registered name if the registrant fails to pay their sky high renewal bill the central registry gets the name back (as they already do now, assuming the registrar also does also not pay the huge renewal bill) and then possibly re-offer the name for sale themselves based on the traffic data they have been collecting on the URL over time. For example, travel dot org gets say 25k visitors/day, PIR sees that (using their ICANN granted rights to collect traffic data) so they price the renewal at say 100k/year, owner does not pay as he is use to paying $10/yr so feels ripped off at 100k), PIR advertises the 25k/day traffic domain and sells it for say 150k to a different travel firm, or possibly a big domain firm for its PPC revenue and/or sale of travel and vacation services, which income they hope will exceed the huge cost they paid. Another example is TopTravelAgent dot org which is unregistered (no need to look as I checked that already with only the com taken). PIR uses their traffic data mining and sees it gets say 50/type-in visits/day. So they advertise that and sell it for say 5k to a domainer, thus depriving a real travel agent of the name who was going to register it but discovered it was taken last week by the domainer who got it for its traffic value only. ICANN should be fired for letting PIR.prg (and others) attempt to pull this amazing pocket-lining scheme off and timing it during an extremely slow time of the year with so many webmasters and domain owners still on vacation or busy winding down vacations, or back to school issues with the kids. They should also be fired for authorizing a new agreement 2-1/2 years before the current one expires. What is the purpose of dates on the current agreement if it can simply be voided and replaced by one clearly NOT in the Public Interest? This agreement is complete BS. Shame on the Registries, ICANN and its employees. ICANN needs to be shut-down and replaced by government regulation by a new govt department devoted to the Internet. From, Trader Dave |