Re: [At-Large] [NA-Discuss] Gross Deletes
Danny: In your opinion, do you think it is due to registryfly going under? or can the significant increase in deletes be explained by some other factor. On 8-Jun-07, at 1:53 PM, Danny Younger wrote:
The latest monthly registry reports have been posted. This report sees an increase of almost 8 million gross deletes in .com/.net over last month's totals -- current monthly total is at 55,794,877 gross deletes.
http://www.icann.org/tlds/monthly-reports/com-net/verisign-200702.pdf
In your opinion, do you think it is due to registryfly going under? or can the significant increase in deletes be explained by some other factor.
Registerfly's failure was unlikely to cause any deletes at all, since the domains are all being transferred to Godaddy. That was widely reported on ICANN's web site, my blog, and many other places. The registrar stats at the end of the report say that in COM and NET there were 74,492,003 domains added and 55,794,877 deleted, for an average deletion rate of about 75%. If you look at the per registrar data, you will see that the deletes are distributed very unevenly. For example, Godaddy registered 13,685,225 domains and deleted 189,300, a deletion rate of 1.3%. Tucows registered 5,020,525 and deleted 75,208, a rate of 1.5% NSI registered 5,769,373 and deleted 46,945, a rate of 0.8%. Other familiar registrars have similar rates On the other hand, Domainsinthebag.com LLC, Domainsofcourse.com LLC, Domainsoftheday.net LLC, Domainsoftheworld.net LLC, Domainsofvalue.com LLC, Domainsouffle.com LLC, Domainsoverboard.com LLC, Domainsovereigns.com LLC, and DomainSprouts.com LLC each registered 1300 to 1400 domains and deleted over 7000, a deletion rate of 500%. (Presumably the other 400% of the domains were registered the previous month.) Capitoldomains LLC registered 1.1 million and deleted 9.5 million. Domaindoorman LLC registered 1.1 million and deleted 9.3 million. Nameking.com, Inc., registered 3 million and deleted 13.5 million. It's pretty obvious what's going on, I hope. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://johnlevine.com, Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.
At 10:50 PM +0100 6/8/07, John L wrote:
In your opinion, do you think it is due to registryfly going under? or can the significant increase in deletes be explained by some other factor.
Registerfly's failure was unlikely to cause any deletes at all, since the domains are all being transferred to Godaddy. That was widely reported on ICANN's web site, my blog, and many other places.
(snip)
It's pretty obvious what's going on, I hope.
To be honest, no it's not clear to me what's going on. And I expect it's not clear to many users. Would be helpful I think if ALAC explained. Thanks, Adam
Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://johnlevine.com, Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.
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To be honest, no it's not clear to me what's going on. And I expect it's not clear to many users. Would be helpful I think if ALAC explained.
The enormous number of deletes is due to domain tasting/kiting. With a 75% delete rate, that means there are three tasting registrations for every real one. The registrar info shows that most registrars hardly delete anything, on the order of 1%, and a handful do all the tasting. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://johnlevine.com, Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.
I agree that it's clear what's going on. The question is, 'is this something ICANN wants to prevent?' If yes, then we should discuss ways to prevent this activity. If no, then let's keep ignoring it. In what ways does this activity adversely effect the DNS? Is it a question of stability, or just someone doing something we don't like to see? Anything over a 2% deletion rate probably shows signs of foul play, if it is such. -Randy Glass A@L On 6/9/07, John L <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
To be honest, no it's not clear to me what's going on. And I expect it's not clear to many users. Would be helpful I think if ALAC explained.
The enormous number of deletes is due to domain tasting/kiting. With a 75% delete rate, that means there are three tasting registrations for every real one.
The registrar info shows that most registrars hardly delete anything, on the order of 1%, and a handful do all the tasting.
Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://johnlevine.com, Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.
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Is it a question of stability, or just someone doing something we don't like to see?
I certainly consider it to be a stability issue. Every month fifty million domains appear, sit parked for 4.99 days, then disappear. Most of them are typosquats, misspelling of established domains. Speculators have argued that all these squats provide a service: they usually have a paid link to the domain the user actually wanted, and if you land on the squat, you or your search engine must have made a mistake which they are helping you rectify for a small fee. I find this argument absurd. If I want my spelling corrected (which I do, being a lousy typist), I want to use a corrector of my choice, triggered off an NXDOMAIN response in my browser, not some random speculator. And, of course, the squats are of no help fixing typos in mail and all the other Internet services other than the web. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.
"Every month fifty million domains appear, sit parked for 4.99 days, then disappear." I agree that this is a stability issue. "Speculators have argued that all these squats provide a service: they usually have a paid link to the domain the user actually wanted, and if you land on the squat, you or your search engine must have made a mistake which they are helping you rectify for a small fee." I disagree that this argument is absurd. They are helping you correct your typing mistakes, and the fee is not charged to you, but if it is a paid link, paid by the advertiser, which the owner gets a very small portion. The more popular the site, the more spelling mistakes will occur. The webmasters should be the ones to advise the site owner on domain resolvability issues. I don't know how many times I've advised people to get all possible misspellings, and multiple extensions. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But at that point it's a fair game. -Randy Glass A@L On 6/10/07, John L <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
Is it a question of stability, or just someone doing something we don't like to see?
I certainly consider it to be a stability issue. Every month fifty million domains appear, sit parked for 4.99 days, then disappear. Most of them are typosquats, misspelling of established domains. Speculators have argued that all these squats provide a service: they usually have a paid link to the domain the user actually wanted, and if you land on the squat, you or your search engine must have made a mistake which they are helping you rectify for a small fee.
I find this argument absurd. If I want my spelling corrected (which I do, being a lousy typist), I want to use a corrector of my choice, triggered off an NXDOMAIN response in my browser, not some random speculator. And, of course, the squats are of no help fixing typos in mail and all the other Internet services other than the web.
Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.
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I disagree that this argument is absurd. They are helping you correct your typing mistakes, and the fee is not charged to you, but if it is a paid link, paid by the advertiser, which the owner gets a very small portion. The more popular the site, the more spelling mistakes will occur.
This only corrects spelling for sites that are willing to pay for traffic, and in cases where there are multiple sites lexically nearby, you get the one that pays the most. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I don't find any value in selling my eyeballs like that, and there are plenty of useful sites that don't pay for traffic at all. Look at my www.abuse.net, for example, with a budget of $0. R's, John
Is it a question of stability, or just someone doing something we don't like to see?
I certainly consider it to be a stability issue. Every month fifty million domains appear, sit parked for 4.99 days, then disappear. Most of them are typosquats, misspelling of established domains. Speculators have argued that all these squats provide a service: they usually have a paid link to the domain the user actually wanted, and if you land on the squat, you or your search engine must have made a mistake which they are helping you rectify for a small fee.
I find this argument absurd. If I want my spelling corrected (which I do, being a lousy typist), I want to use a corrector of my choice, triggered off an NXDOMAIN response in my browser, not some random speculator. And, of course, the squats are of no help fixing typos in mail and all the other Internet services other than the web.
John L wrote:
I disagree that this argument is absurd. They are helping you correct your typing mistakes, and the fee is not charged to you, but if it is a paid link, paid by the advertiser, which the owner gets a very small portion. The more popular the site, the more spelling mistakes will occur.
This only corrects spelling for sites that are willing to pay for traffic, and in cases where there are multiple sites lexically nearby, you get the one that pays the most. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I don't find any value in selling my eyeballs like that, and there are plenty of useful sites that don't pay for traffic at all. Look at my www.abuse.net, for example, with a budget of $0.
I'm old-fashioned, like John, and generally speaking I mistrust help unasked for. This "spellcheck service" reminds me of some places where if you ask the directions for a restaurant or a hotel, showing a piece of paper with the name and address of it, the answer is that they don't know such a place, but they can show you what is for sure the best restaurant and/or hotel in town... Nothing ethically wrong, but please don't sell what is purely a lucrative activity as a supposed service. Secondly, what's wrong with the good old 404? I'm told that the url does not exist, I double check, and hopefully get it right. Without having downloaded tons of useless bytes (in most parts of the world at a cost for me). And it works also for email addresses. Cheers, Roberto
Although I've raised this issue within the ALAC, while I served as the ALAC liaison to the GNSO, let me raise it here as well since we have many new participants in this ongoing discussion. As background, a number of registrants and registrars are using (or abusing, depending on your point of view) a registry rule that allows a registrar to register a domain name for five days without paying for it. The original purpose of the rule was as a protection for registrars against having to pay for erroneous new registration requests. Back in approximately 1999, at the registrars' request, the COM-NET-ORG registry decided that it would not bill a registrar for a name until five days had passed since the registration; in other words, registrars would have a five day "grace period" to correct their errors without getting a bill. If a name was added in error, a registrar could delete the name within five days with no charge. This was a nice practice. As pay-per-click ("PPC") revenue from domain name traffic increased over the years, however, the registration of massive numbers of domain names, all supported by PPC, became a viable business model. Any name that could generate more revenue from advertising than it cost in registration fees (ad revenue > $6.00) could generate a profit for the domain name registrant. Many of the businesses involved in PPC advertising began using the 5-day grace period to "try" a domain name before buying it. If during the five day grace period they noticed that a domain name had a lot of type-in traffic, generating PPC revenue, they would keep the registration. If it didn't, they would delete the name within the five day period, without charge. Some people have characterized this try-it-before-you-buy-it practice as "domain tasting" or "domain kiting." As John pointed out, the massive numbers of registrations and deletes are primarily driven by a handful of registrars who are trading in domain names for their own account. Many of the names are recycled, from one "taster" to another. After all, if I hold a name for four days and see that it does not generate traffic, that information is only mine. There is no transparency around my traffic data. So I delete the name, and now John tries it. He reaches the same conclusion, and now Adam decides to take a peak. You get the idea.... So the question I've raised with the ALAC is whether and why this is an At Large issue? I can understand how the registries would view this as an issue; after all, they have to bear the infrastructure burden of millions of transactions without compensation. How are users affected? If they are affected, is this an issue that we should let each registry address by itself (e.g. .ORG recently changed its policy so that this 5-day free period no longer exists) or should ICANN mandate a particular one-size, fits-all solution? Food for thought.... Bret
How are users affected? The user is the endpoint of this process. However, I don't think the users know they are affected. I feel they are affected in a couple ways, 1- the domain requested is more likely to resolve if it is parked at a ppc provider. 2- they may be misled by typos and the like (phishing), but not necessarily unique to this matter. 3- unreliability of the dns, one day it's here, next day it's not. If they are affected, is this an issue that we should let each registry address by itself (e.g. .ORG recently changed its policy so that this 5-day free period no longer exists) or should ICANN mandate a particular one-size, fits-all solution? To be more consistant, I think ICANN should introduce a one-size fits all for the different categories of TLD, meaining ccTLDs should have a set of rules and gTLDs should have a similar but unrelated set. -Randy Glass A@L On 6/11/07, Bret Fausett <bfausett@internet.law.pro> wrote:
Although I've raised this issue within the ALAC, while I served as the ALAC liaison to the GNSO, let me raise it here as well since we have many new participants in this ongoing discussion.
As background, a number of registrants and registrars are using (or abusing, depending on your point of view) a registry rule that allows a registrar to register a domain name for five days without paying for it. The original purpose of the rule was as a protection for registrars against having to pay for erroneous new registration requests. Back in approximately 1999, at the registrars' request, the COM-NET-ORG registry decided that it would not bill a registrar for a name until five days had passed since the registration; in other words, registrars would have a five day "grace period" to correct their errors without getting a bill. If a name was added in error, a registrar could delete the name within five days with no charge. This was a nice practice.
As pay-per-click ("PPC") revenue from domain name traffic increased over the years, however, the registration of massive numbers of domain names, all supported by PPC, became a viable business model. Any name that could generate more revenue from advertising than it cost in registration fees (ad revenue > $6.00) could generate a profit for the domain name registrant. Many of the businesses involved in PPC advertising began using the 5-day grace period to "try" a domain name before buying it. If during the five day grace period they noticed that a domain name had a lot of type-in traffic, generating PPC revenue, they would keep the registration. If it didn't, they would delete the name within the five day period, without charge. Some people have characterized this try-it-before-you-buy-it practice as "domain tasting" or "domain kiting."
As John pointed out, the massive numbers of registrations and deletes are primarily driven by a handful of registrars who are trading in domain names for their own account. Many of the names are recycled, from one "taster" to another. After all, if I hold a name for four days and see that it does not generate traffic, that information is only mine. There is no transparency around my traffic data. So I delete the name, and now John tries it. He reaches the same conclusion, and now Adam decides to take a peak. You get the idea....
So the question I've raised with the ALAC is whether and why this is an At Large issue? I can understand how the registries would view this as an issue; after all, they have to bear the infrastructure burden of millions of transactions without compensation. How are users affected? If they are affected, is this an issue that we should let each registry address by itself (e.g. .ORG recently changed its policy so that this 5-day free period no longer exists) or should ICANN mandate a particular one-size, fits-all solution?
Food for thought....
Bret
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The user is the endpoint of this process. However, I don't think the users know they are affected. I feel they are affected in a couple ways, 1- the domain requested is more likely to resolve if it is parked at a ppc provider. 2- they may be misled by typos and the like (phishing), but not necessarily unique to this matter. 3- unreliability of the dns, one day it's here, next day it's not.
Don't forget the loss of user choice. Before domain tasting, you could configure your software to use any typo correction system you want, or none at all. Now you get sold to the highest bidder.
To be more consistant, I think ICANN should introduce a one-size fits all for the different categories of TLD, meaining ccTLDs should have a set of rules and gTLDs should have a similar but unrelated set.
ICANN doesn't set rules for ccTLDs, and I'm not aware of any ccTLD with anything like ICANN's AGP so that's not at issue. I agree that in order to avoid putting some registries at a disadvantage relative to others, they all should have the same rule. If we can't get rid of the AGP, which never solved an important problem, I like Bob Parsons' suggestion to make the 75c ICANN fee nonrefundable. R's, John
John L wrote:
ICANN doesn't set rules for ccTLDs, and I'm not aware of any ccTLD with anything like ICANN's AGP so that's not at issue.
Nominet tightened up their rules on deletions last year. IEDR doesn't seem to have any rules covering it at present, though the documentation requirements etc., would make "tasting" practically impossible anyway. -- Mr Michele Neylon Blacknight Solutions Hosting & Colocation, Brand Protection http://www.blacknight.ie/ http://blog.blacknight.ie/ Tel. 1850 929 929 Intl. +353 (0) 59 9183072 Direct Dial: +353 (0)59 9183090 Fax. +353 (0) 1 4811 763
Michele Neylon :: Blacknight ha scritto:
Nominet tightened up their rules on deletions last year. IEDR doesn't seem to have any rules covering it at present, though the documentation requirements etc., would make "tasting" practically impossible anyway.
In Italy, you are still required to send a signed contract by fax - that's very effective against "non-serious" registrations (unfortunately, it's also effective against real ones). -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------
Vittorio Bertola wrote:
In Italy, you are still required to send a signed contract by fax - that's very effective against "non-serious" registrations (unfortunately, it's also effective against real ones).
Tell me about it :) Mr Michele Neylon Blacknight Solutions Hosting & Colocation, Brand Protection http://www.blacknight.ie/ http://blog.blacknight.ie/ Intl. +353 (0) 59 9183072 Locall: 1850 929 929 Direct Dial: +353 (0)59 9183090 Fax. +353 (0) 1 4811 763 ------------------------------- Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd, Unit 12A,Barrowside Business Park,Sleaty Road,Graiguecullen,Carlow,Ireland Company No.: 370845
participants (8)
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Adam Peake -
Bret Fausett -
John L -
Michele Neylon :: Blacknight -
RJGlass | America＠Large -
Robert Guerra -
Roberto Gaetano -
Vittorio Bertola