Domain Tasting

It's the act of aquiring millions of expiring domains names every week, in many cases by the Registrar themselves. They then test the domains for traffic, and return those without traffic for a full refund before the 5-day grace period ends.

The ICANN grace period was never meant to be used this way. It was designed to be a short window where registration errors could be corrected.

In one of the first actions taken to prevent or slow Domain Tasting abilities Public Interest Registry (PIR), the operator of the .org extension, said it will start charging an "excess deletion fee" on May 26, 2007. If the total number of deletions within the grace period for a given month are greater than 90% of the registrations added, there will be an excess deletion fee of five cents assessed per domain deleted within that month.

My question is wether or not 5 cents is enough. If you are buying millions of expiring Domain Names a month then it would add up quick. But if you are only buying up a thousand names a month and deleting 900, thats only $45. And you have 100 Domains with traffic that you decided to keep.

I think maybe they should ban customers deleting more than 90% of the registrations added, not just fine them. Does GoDaddy or any other Registrar really have 50% of customers deleting domains within the 5 day grace period every month?

I think its doubtful.