A recent blog entry by Jay Westerdal again points to institutionalized theft of domain name research -- see http://blog.domaintools.com/2007/03/stealing-domain-name-research/ Many registrants have complained that when they attempt to research the availability of a particular domain name, that domain name is invariably registered by another party within hours. Jay argues that one culprit in the process may be ISPs that are collecting Non-eXistent Domain (NXD) Data that results from an address-bar search. He states: "I personally talked with a representative that gave me her business card and quoted me a six figure number for access to their NXD data." We now have registry contracts (such as .com) that specifically allow for the collection of such data: "Traffic Data. Nothing in this Agreement shall preclude Registry Operator from making commercial use of, or collecting, traffic data regarding domain names or non-existent domain names" I also suspect that many registrars are selling the results of search queries performed on their sites that don't result in immediate registrations to third parties. Whatever the case may be, I view these actions collectively as a threat to what should be an inviolate domain name registration process. I urge the ALAC to initiate an investigation into this phenomenon and to advise the ICANN Board accordingly of the results of your research. ____________________________________________________________________________________ The fish are biting. Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing. http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_v2.php