From what i have read registrars don’t necessarily want to end the grace period. Many of the big guys would like to see domain tasting go away, but the 5 day grace period has proven to be useful to traditional registrars in cases of mistaken registrations, fighting fraudulent purchases, and the reservation services seen recently. An interesting proposal coming out of registries is to charge registrars for more than 10% of their deletions to net new registration ratio. Whatever happens there are many parties taking aim at domain tasting, and its sure to end soon.

My hope is that people understand UDRP disputes, fraud, trademark abuse, cybersquatting, and domain front running will not stop because domain tasting goes away.

just for clarification. Verisign is the current REGISTRY provider for .com and .net. They have not been a registrar since selling Network Solutions a few years ago.

I talked to Network Solutions about this when researching the article. I really think they meant well. Their intent was to stop a third party from swooping in and seeing the inquiry, then locking it up and extorting a lot of money from the registration. Of course, this had the side effect of meaning you could only use Network Solutions for the ensuing 4-day grace period (so on the upside, you didn’t pay more than what NetSol was charging, but on the downside, you couldn’t then go somewhere cheaper.)

They did this because of the very large numbers of complaints that were happening when someone checked out a domain on their site, and shortly afterwards found out it had been grabbed.

Why do I think they meant well? First off, they were pretty up front about doing it. But more importantly, they’re a proponent of the ICANN proposal to eliminate the grace period and pay the amount immediately, which will end their own practice (they were only parking the name with them for the grace period.) Their spokesperson told me they’d prefer the up-front ICANN payment (which costs them more money) to the current practice of locking it in (where they just ensure that if registered, it’s done through them.)

Frankly, the margins on domain registration are so slim — often sold at a loss — that these companies are focused on premium domains, hosting, and other higher-margin businesses these days.

An example: I looked up a domain on DomainDirect.com. I then went to NetworkSolutions.com and looked up the domain also to I could compare additional features with the domain (hosting, DNS management, etc.). I liked DomainDirect’s features better, so I went to register on DomainDirect, and lo and behold, NETWORK SOLUTIONS REGISTERED MY DOMAIN NAME AS SOON AS I LOOKED IT UP ON THEIR WEBSITE. DomainDirect then reported that the domain name had been registered. I did a WhoIs search, and the registered owner was Network Solutions.

Try it yourself!

I really wanted to register the domain before someone else did, and now I was forced to register with NetSol, paying about 3x as much.

Google “boycott Network Solutions” and you’ll find many other people taken by this immoral tactic.

Internet community unite and boycott Network Solutions. ICANN – respond to this bad behavior and fix this loophole.

Here’s a good article discussing this: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/10/network-solutions-using-questionable-tactic-to-sell-more-domain-names/

Yeah, seems like 2008 is going to be a bad year for everyone.

-k (previously hobnobLover).