Dear list Members and associates,

Since 2005 the Interent Society of Australia has been a certified At  
Large Structure (ALS) in the Asia Pacific Regional At Large  
Organisation (APRALO) please see http://alac.icann.org/applications/

The APRALO in turn feeds into the policy development and processes in  
the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) within ICANN. please see  
https://st.icann.org/asiapac/index.cgi?

As a condute therefore for for individual Internet users who want to  
be involved in issues that affect their use of the Internet's domain  
name system, we are hoping to elicit your *urgent* responces, comments  
and feedback on the following *early and provisional draft resolution*  
which in its however modified form will be on the Agenda for  
consideration by the ALAC at this months ICANN meeting in Lisbon 26 -  
30 March.

We apologise for the short time available to react to this important  
document, and we will forward, as part of our general reply, links to  
all articles and archives found within the auDA website which shows  
the public comment process, the opinions lodged, and outcomes of, our  
ccTLD's recent review which resulted in the allowance of Domain  
Monetization as a bon fide business purpose for the licencing of a  
particular domain name, with the note that under our eligability rules  
content still must relate to that name ->(which goes in my opinion, a  
long way towards countering the very negative comments regarding this  
practice at the end of the draft text, where is it outlined as a  
sleazy and misleading activity)... So you do not need to cover points  
and arguments already made in that set of documents.

If possible, could any opinions, reactions or comments on the follwing  
draft be disussed on these lists and within your constituancies, as a  
matter of urgency. With final feedback forwarded to me at  
treasurer§isoc-au.org.au by COB on Wed 21st this week... I will then,  
on Thursday/ Friday compile a commentry / report to return to Izumi  
for contribution into the ALAC meetings in Lisbon.



Kindest regards,

Cheryl Langdon-Orr



Quoting Izumi AIZU <iza&#167;anr.org>:
Dear ALAC/RALO/ALS people,

At the last ALAC conference call, I volunteered to write some draft
resolution for ALAC on Domain Tasting (and Domain monetization).

With my limited knowledge, I rather hesitate, but put forward the following
as a very crude draft. I owe much part to John Levin's comment (on internal
list months ago), who unfortunately left ALAC recently. I hope John still
watch this open list and make further contribution, together with all others.

I repeat this is very very crude, and I am aware that some porposals may not
be readily accepted by you guys, especially in the area of domain  
monetization.

I still feel that the speculation is not for the interest of ordinary users,
perhaps OK with Domainers as new and innovative industry. For that, I really
like you to come up with clear and convincing ideas and solutions.  
This draft is just a step stone for that.

Thanks,

izumi



*Draft Resolution on Domain Tasting
ICANN AtLarge Advisory Committee (ALAC)

V. 0.8
Mar 12 2007*

On behalf of the ordinary Internet users, AtLarge Advisory Committee

(ALAC)
would like to propose the following actions to be taken by the ICANN
Community on Domain Tasting and Domain Monetization.

*To gNSO Council:*
Start a Policy Development Process on Domain Tasting. We believe that  
Domain Tasting is an abuse of existing Five-day Add Grace Period which  
results
confusion for the ordinary Internet users and give unfair treatment to
peculiar speculators. We propose to abandon the five day "Add Grace period".


*To Registrars Constituency:*
Finalize and implement Registrars Code of Conduct that prohibits  
unfair speculation and exploitation on Domain name registration  
including the use of five day Add Grace period.


*To Registry Constituency:*
We request the registries to consider how to avoid user confusion and  
unfair practices by abolishing the five day add grace period. Adding  
small fee, such as 25 cents per Domain to those registrants who kept  
their names using add grace period may be one solution, but we are not  
fully convinced.


*To ICANN Board:*
We request ICANN Board to seriously consider how to prohibit unfair
speculation, enhance consumer trust to Domain Name registration system, by
a) Initiating a third party study on the impact of Domain Tasting and  
Domain Monetization/speculation to the ordinary Internet users.
b) Initiating review of Registry ? Registrar Contract that will  
promote the fair trade and restrict unfair speculation.



*Background and Rationale:*
Domain tasting uses the five day add grace period to register domains  
without paying for them. We think they are unfair acts: somewhere  
between larceny and extortion, because the registration cost is zero  
and the purpose of these registrations is just to make money taking  
advantage of automated bulk registration to exploit the domain names  
which are the public goods in essence.

As many people have noted, it's exploiting a loophole that shouldn't  
be there in the first place.  There was a great deal of debate both in  
the ICANN community and on the ICANN board about the deletion grace  
period, but
none at all about add grace which was apparently tossed into the package by
an ICANN staffer without asking anyone. So says Karl Auerbach, who was  
on the board at the time, and I haven't seen anything to the contrary  
from any other board member.

As Bob Parsons wrote in his blog:
*Millions of good .COM domain names ? on any given day over 3.5 million and
climbing ? are unfairly made unavailable to small businesses and others who
would actually register and use them in ways for which the names were
intended. Many times businesses accidentally let their domain names  
expire. When they go to renew them, they find they have been snapped  
up ? and taken
away with a huge expensive hassle to follow ? by an add/drop registrar.

*(http://www.bobparsons.com/adddropscheme.html)

The usual explanation of domain tasting says that the registrars  
register millions of domains, watch the traffic, and then after 4.9  
days they delete the ones that don't seem likely to make back the  
US$6.00. Often they just
delete them all and then reregister what they can a few minutes later until
they find the ones which produce enough traffic that yields well above  
$6 cost.

The add grace period is just a mistake. The problem it purports to solve is
not and never was an important one. If you let an important domain expire,
you risk losing the entire investment made in that domain over many  
years. But if one registers a domain by mistake, the most one risks is  
the ten or
twenty dollars you paid to register it.



*On Domain Monetization*
We note that there is a meaningful difference between domain tasting and
domain monetization. Monetization is a straightforward arbitrage  
between the cost of domain registrations and the revenue from as much  
pay-per-click traffic as the domain owner can get from people who  
visit web sites in the
domain. It's a fundamentally sleazy business, since the web sites have no
useful content and the way they get the traffic is basically by tricking
people, either via typos or recently expired domains.

We do not think it is appropriate in this case to make ICANN as a regulator
to watch and prohibit the Domain monetization practice. Instead, we like to
ask those commercial activities such as Google or Overture to stop paying
for clicks on pages with no content, thereby dealing with a problem that is
not limited to typo and expired domains. We've seen click arbitrage,  
people buying Google ads to drive traffic to pages that are simply  
other Google
ads. This kind of self-generating traffic for pay-per-click  
advertising is confusing and unnecessary for ordinary Internet users  
and, in the long run, not healthy for the development of Internet as a  
whole.

END


-- 
                      >> Izumi Aizu <<

             Institute for HyperNetwork Society
             Kumon Center, Tama University
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