Post-Expiration Domain Name Recovery
ICANN adopted statues specifically directed at "Domain Name Warehousing (4.1)", which don't appear to have ever been levied against any registrar. "...at the end of the Redemption Grace Period is the domain name permanently removed from the registry database and made a part of the pool of available names." There appears to be no mention of the full expiration process, especially prior to the Grace Period. This should be solidified, strictly enforced, and made comparable to any normal transaction involving property ownership. Registrars are merely transacting facilities for the registration of a domain name. They do not act as lessors, banks, or rental agencies in any manner. If a domain is really the property of the registrar, then registration agreements should reflect that. Presuming that they are merely a facilitator of a transaction, they should be as relative to the exchange as a real estate agent is to a home rental - it is never the broker's property. In the event of default, the tenant is moved out and the owner can call the broker to relist the property. Confusion here lies in ownership. In theory all names are owned by ICANN, and by proxy the public at large. The vast portion of the fee in registration goes to the ICANN body. So there should be no ownership by registrars, no right to hold and no right to scuttle names away under aliases and false names. Registrars should consistently allow names to be available to the general public. Whether this is a pre-release service with regulated fees or a public auction with formalized requirements for sale should not be the point of debate. What is critical is that registrars don't suddenly take on the responsibility for names which they never owned. More importantly, any person who has lost a domain due to expiration and finds that domain now the property of a registrar or one of its aliases instead of a real, public entity should have the right to reclaim these names in a clear and concise ICANN policy. Ed Muller - NameMon.com |