The MediaWizard’s Blog | mwzd.com

In all this hype and hoopla of new gTLDs being proposed by ICANN one major issue was completely overshadowed - that of domain tasting. ICANN has addressed it in this meeting and measures recommended to prevent it from taking place.

Domain tasting is the practice of registering domain names and ‘tasting’ the traffic before registering or dropping them. This is mostly done by the bigger players in the industry like registrars and drop services though some registrars do allow registrants to take benefit from this policy.

It is estimated that at any given time 20 million domains are being tasted by various individuals and companies on the web. This is done by manipulating the AGP or additional grace period provided by ICANN. With this being put to a halt, the whole economy of the domain world will be given a jolt with the surfeit of names that will drop starting from the 1st of July 2008.

What ICANN has done is that its put a ceiling on the number of allowable deletions per registrar at a max of 50 or 10% of new registrations. And a fee of $0.20c on domains deleted above that. This will change two things - the economy of the domain tasting business - 20c x 20 million = 4million dollars, every five days, certain to put a dent. Another thing this will change is that tasting will go completely out of the hand of registrants into the hands of registrars, why would they want to share their 10% quota?

This is, all in all, a good thing for the internet and also for domainers who stay on the ethical side and do not indulge in this practice at all. Now if only ICANN could remove the 10% allowance too, it would level the playing field entirely.

GNSO Recommendation on Domain Tasting
Whereas, ICANN community stakeholders are increasingly concerned about domain tasting, which is the practice of using the add grace period (AGP) to register domain names in bulk in order to test their profitability.

Whereas, on 17 April 2008, the GNSO Council approved, by a Supermajority vote, a motion to prohibit any gTLD operator that has implemented an AGP from offering a refund for any domain name deleted during the AGP that exceeds 10% of its net new registrations in that month, or fifty domain names, whichever is greater.

Whereas, on 25 April 2008, the GNSO Council forwarded its formal “Report to the ICANN Board - Recommendation for Domain Tasting” which outlines the full text of the motion and the full context and procedural history of this proceeding.

Whereas, the Board is also considering the Proposed FY 09 Operating Plan and Budget which includes (at the encouragement of the GNSO Council) a proposal similar to the GNSO policy recommendation to expand the applicability of the ICANN transaction fee in order to limit domain tasting.

Resolved (2008.06.26.06), the Board adopts the GNSO policy recommendation on domain tasting, and directs staff to implement the policy following appropriate comment and notice periods on the implementation documents.

Well tbh, I don’t subscribe to TLD bashing. Its a common enough pass time for trolls and others alike on most boards. Some people do it to downplay competition, some coz they want to push something else, some coz its just fashionable to kick something when its down. But a really small percentage do it for educating the sheep (aka followers) who’re being led down the garden path by people with vested interests (not to mention huge holdings) in a particular TLD.

Some of the hype and hoopla on some TLDs really hurts some new domainers and wannabe investors. Its the guys who put in the rent money or the kids college education fund in these domains who really lose the shirt off their backs at times. Because they buy as its ‘hot’ hoping to sell to some sucker who doesn’t know better. The problem is most of the times they’re the ’suckers’ and they don’t even know it.

Take .ASIA for example. (A few people asked my views on .asia, here they are)

Theres a mammoth scam going on at the moment. Some real smart businessmen have come out with the ultimate ponzi scheme. A legal way to rip people off. They realized they couldn’t get a leg up on .com or any other established TLD - so they created a nonsensical, non targetted, unusable extension for ’speculative’ purposes.

How its done:

• Build the hype.
• Reserve 10,000 or so top ones (the only ones to actually eventually make good ROI) to milk later for higher amounts through auctions.
• Get a few hundred suckers to buy the domains in large quantities or at least pre-order them
• Get another 1,000 sheep who’ll follow those suckers.
• Show about 50k names as ‘multiple registrants’ and send them to auction
• Add mysterious non-regs or predated regs to show ‘viability’
• I’m not even going to go in-depth on the on the ‘available domains’ that are suddenly not available, cancelled orders, rigging or sale of tms here, suffice to mention them.
• Then lead in the sheep for the slaughter. Sell them whatever you can, however you can. Leave them holding the bag, while they laugh all the way to the bank.

You have to give them something though, the execution is impeccable. Even mTLD looked like amateurs when it comes to comparison with dotAsia milking the extension. They’ve been slick, smart and licked the cream clear off before offering the cone to the gullible lot.

The whole logic of this extension is totally wrong:

• There is no Asia aside from the continent. Only americans and some Brits even call all the people from the subcontinent that. No local considers themselves as ‘Asian’… Chinese, yes; Indian, yes; Pakistani, yes; Russian, yes; Afghan, yes; Malay, yes; Phillipino, yes; Thai, yes. WTF is an Asian?
• Its as viable as .nsam would be - lets club americans, canadians, mexicans, columbians, brazilians and a few dozen other nationalities. Would it work? If your answer is no, why is it yes for .Asia?
• Since people living in Asia are so nationalistic (try clubbing Chinese and Japanese and you’ll know what I mean) what is the need for a separate TLD? The chances of an Asian Union or anything that resembles it are less than that of a snowball in hell.
• Almost 100% of the countries here have border or cultural disputes with their neighbouring countries, without resolution of that there is a certain degree of hostility between these and being clubbed together is not going to work.
• There is no single currency for this region, unlike for .eu, and we know what happened with that one also, same cycle - hype, hoopla, con and crash.
• There are very few ‘asia’ level companies, either they’re national or worldwide, I don’t see those who target only the continent. And even if there are a few, is a gTLD worth the effort?
• There are a lot of other TLDs that have gone down the same route, especially 4 letter extensions - .mobi, .info .name and of course .eu, .sc, .cc and even .us to some extent.
• Only about 7% of the names registered in total will ever be worthwhile and of those a large percentage are .com, followed by well known gTLDs (.net/.org) and some ccTLDs (.co.uk, .de, .in). .Asia comes up on the list last, if at all.

What’s even more amazing is that people are booking names in .asia where the .com is still available. Reality check - a domain does not become valuable just because you registered it. So good luck to .asia investors, I really hope you make a million with your names, but wouldn’t count on it.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1836227,0000.htm

You live and learn.

Aren’t events like a fashion week supposed to be covered by ALL media willing to do so?

What’s with the exclusive tie up? I wonder who the genius was who figured that was the way to go! Is it just one website or similarly one news channel and one newspaper, what’s next? One designer and one dress?!

Hogwash.

Only in India can they come up with stupid issues like this. And its all created / caused / hyped by the media. While hype is good in some ways, controversies are essentially bad business sense for what is primarily a showcase and sale event for the industry.

Only when a dress falls or when celebrities turn up does the media have glowing references to the collection, otherwise - oh, btw, so and so also showed a new niche line.

Jeeez!

Not that Sify is doing a bad job : check out the official LFW site here. It’s just that while for cricket it means more revenue with exclusivity, in a fashion week environment the losers of such an exclusive arrangement are the very people who are being promoted - the designers. After all, why stop any newspaper / magazine / channel who wants to give coverage to the event and thus the designers??

And one last kick in the b… even if you have exclusive rights to pictures / videos of any event and put them online for viewing by the general public, the viral nature of the internet will ensure a lot more people see it w/o visiting any official site!!

See http://www.nachbaliye2.net as an example of how its done.