Domain parking is not a new issue for At-Large. We have a long and interesting history related to this topic.

In 2007, there was a prevalent practice among a number of registrars and domainers called "domain tasting" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting). In short it was a completely legitimate (that is not against any rules) proactive which allowed a domain to be registered and monetized, and if it did not prove profitable, to cancel the registration at no net cost (ie free). This allowed the "tasting" on many millions of domains per month. The practice was also used to some extent for disposable domains for generating spam (it was before phishing was common). If I remember correctly, less than 1% were kept because they proved profitable (often typos of real domain names). The ALAC requested a GNSO PDP to stop the practice. Once the new policy was developed and adopted, it made tasting to expensive to be practical in the general case.

The issue of parked monetized pages also arose when we were requesting a PDP on ensuring the rights of registrants who accidentally let their domain expire. It was common for the registrar to monetize the page at expiration or soon after, allowing them to make some extra money, and also gauge whether the domain was "valuable" or not. If it was valuable, they could take  over the registration (virtually all registration agreements let them do that) and then use it themselves or auction it off. We ultimately decided to not object to the practice, since doing so would impact the registrars revenue stream and would make it much more difficult to achieve the real aims of the PDP. This proved to be a correct analysis. We did ensure that the monetized page clearly said it was an expired domain and told the registrant how to get it back. And made sure the price did not go up immediately due to what was learned during monetization.

Interestingly we also in a few cases probably increased the monetization because it was the practice in some cases to NOT interrupt the domain and monetize it. This allowed the domain to work as if it was still owned by the original registrant until it was too late to renew the registration (generally 30 days) and then the registrar could take it over without any way for the registrant to get it back at a reasonable price.

This is a discussion that we could have, but I think it rather unlikely that ICANN would stop the practice, as it directly goes to how the domain is being used and its content. The only real issue within ICANN's current remit is that in many cases, a parked domain is one that is found by incorrectly typing a URL. A few years ago it was common to his monetized pages through a search engine, but these days the search sites seem pretty good at filtering them out - or at least that is my experience (largely with Google).

Alan


At 21/05/2017 03:11 AM, Kan Kaili wrote:

Hi again,
 
This article may have nothing to do with Google.  Sorry for that ...  (although Google did provide the platform for these activities)
 
However, it also tells how to make money at the end-users' expense quite a few years ago.  Over time, according to some research, this has already grown into an industry by itself.
 
This is one of the reasons why the At-Large community needs to look into domain parking.
 
Kaili
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
To: alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org
Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2017 2:50 PM
Subject: Re: [ALAC] Fw: Interesting article about parked domains

Dear Kaili,

that article dates from 2010. Google has since retired Adsense for domains.

https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/2456470?visit_id=1-636309457565105321-703054909&ctx=as2&rd=1

Kindest regards,

Olivier

ps. the author is the owner of GroovyPost which has nothing to do with Google.

On 21/05/2017 08:22, Kan Kaili wrote:
Hi,
 
Thanks a lot for sharing.  Just read the article titled "Make Easy Money from Your Parked Domains with Google AdSense for Domains". 
 

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/google/google-adsense-for-domains-review-make-money-from-parked/                

This article by Google itself teaches you how to make money from parked domains, although at the expense of consumers and end-users.
 
I am used to think of Google as "DO NO EVIL".  Well, maybe not always ...   :(
 
Kaili
 
 



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