Bret, below you will find language that I submitted to the NCUC Policy Committee for Review; perhaps you may find it of value... The Noncommercial User Constituency Proposal to Eliminate the Add Grace Period The Add Grace Period is an ICANN invention unsupported by RFC requirements. It is first described by the IETF in Scott Hollenbeck's September 2004 RFC 3915 as follows: "In March 2003, ICANN published a task force report describing other domain registry grace periods related to EPP operations. This mapping describes extension status values to note the grace periods described in the report, including: An "add grace period" after the initial registration of a domain name. If the domain name is deleted by the registrar during this period, the registry provides a credit to the registrar for the cost of the registration." The Add Grace period was originally introduced so that inadvertent typographical errors made during the domain name registration process by domain name registrants could readily be voided. [note: See comments made by Chuck Gomes in Sao Paolo for a better historical perspective]. With all the confirmations and re-confirmations now built into the domain name registration process, innocent typographical errors by typical registrants are now rare in the extreme. During the course of the last eighteen months, the Add Grace Period has been put to a new and unintended use as a vehicle that allows for domain name "tasting" (the quantification of domain name traffic potential). Domains are being registered and parked during the Add Grace Period with advertising content that is semantically derived from the domain name; should potential revenues from such advertising exceed the domain name registration costs the domain is registered, otherwise it is returned to the pool of available names. During the month of May 2006, the following quantity of domain names were deleted in three major TLDs: .com -- 30,287,411 .net -- 3,826,675 .org -- 1,937,485 Over 36 million domain names were registered and not paid for in these three TLDs during this single month. Those engaged in offering professional domain name tasting services have recently adopted new tactics (as discussed on the Registrar Discussion List and elsewhere) that allow for names to be registered seemingly in perpetuity without payment through an automated process of registration/deletion/re-registration/re-deletion etc. The Noncommercial User Constituency views these practices as odious and recalls the commentary in the 5 June 1998 "Statement of Policy, Management of Internet Names and Addresses," 63 Fed. Reg. 31741(1998): "The failure to make a domain name applicant pay for its use of a domain name has encouraged cyberpirates and is a practice that should end as soon as possible." The Noncommercial User Constituency recognizes that an epidemic of typosquatting has resulted in conjunction with the proliferation of domain name tasting services and seeks to curb this ongoing abuse of the domain name system. Accordingly, we call for the elimination of the Add Grace period. P.S. I would also point you to the recent INTA submission at http://www.icann.org/correspondence/reidl-to-icann-16nov06.pdf regards, Danny ____________________________________________________________________________________ Want to start your own business? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business. http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/r-index