Below is the 'news alert' from ICANN about the effect of the budget measure designed to mitigate commercial domain tasting, by imposing the .20 ICANN fee on every domain deleted over the threshold of 10% of any registrar's net adds in a month. There has definitely been a positive impact, with AGP deletes down 84% overall. Unfortunately, ICANN does not mention that one registrar - NameKing -- accounted for nearly 40% of the .com AGP deletes in July (956,000, vs. 12,000 adds). Another family of registrars - eNom - accounted for approximately 25% of them (559,000 vs. 203,000 adds). See Verisign registry report here: http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/monthly-reports/com-net/verisign-200807.pdf It is particularly glaring that just two registrars accounted for 1.5 million AGP deletes in .com in one month, apparently disregarding the will of the Council and ICANN Board, entirely. Neither ICANN nor Verisign have mentioned why it is taking so long for Verisign to implement the GNSO Council resolution that might mitigate the NameKing and eNom domain tasting business model, as was clearly intended by a supermajority of Council and the ICANN Board. Fwiw, many in the Business Constituency are interested to have some indication of when the resolution will be implemented, and why it has not been implemented to date. Thanks, Mike Rodenbaugh _____ From: ICANN News Alert [mailto:communications@icann.org] Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2008 3:49 PM To: icann@rodenbaugh.com Subject: ICANN News Alert -- AGP Deletes Down by 84% <http://www.icann.org/> ICANN News Alert http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-13nov08-en.htm _____ AGP Deletes Down by 84% 13 November 2008 In June 2008, the ICANN Board approved the FY09 Budget that contained a provision on AGP deletes. The provision is that domain names deleted during the AGP will be included as transactions if they exceed the maximum of (i) 10% of that registrar's net new registrations in that month, or (ii) fifty (50) domain names, whichever is greater. Therefore the per-transaction fee, currently US$0.20, will be assessed on all AGP deletes that exceed the defined threshold. This provision was adopted as a short-term solution to address excessive AGP delete activity until the consensus policy on domain tasting, now referred to as the AGP Limits Policy, is implemented. The Policy and draft implementation plan were posted for public comment on 20 October 2008 (see, http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-20oct08-en.htm) and are expected to be announced for implementation in early December. Following implementation of the Board approved budget provision that affects the "domain tasting fee," names added and subsequently deleted during the five-day AGP declined from approximately 17.6M in June 2008 to 2.8M in July 2008. Of the 2.8M AGP deletes in July, approximately 2.6M were subject to the registrar-level transaction fee defined by the provision. Therefore, it is expected that the quantity of AGP deletes will continue to decline until few or none are subject to the transaction fee. ICANN will continue to provide updates to the community on AGP delete activity following the three-month confidentiality period for gTLD monthly reports. These reports may be viewed at http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/monthly-reports/. _____ Sign up for ICANN's Monthly Magazine <http://www.icann.org/magazine/> This message was sent from ICANN News Alert to icann@rodenbaugh.com. It was sent from: ICANN, 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330 , Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6601. You can modify/update your subscription via the link below. <http://www.icontact.com/a.pl/144186> Email Marketing Software <http://app.icontact.com/icp/static/images/icons/email_manage_subscription.p ng> <http://app.icontact.com/icp/mmail-mprofile.pl?r=11033829&l=6333&s=PWHD&m=19 3464&c=165637> Manage your subscription <http://click.icptrack.com/icp/track.php?msgid=193464&act=PWHD&r=11033829&c= 165637>