network solutions
This Thursday,
ICANN will vote on next fiscal year's budget, and included in that is a provision to charge 20 cents per registration for domain names that are deleted during the grace period. There will still be a refundable grace period, but if the "level of deletions exceeds 10 percent of a registrar’s net new registrations in that month," the fee kicks in—in effect,
making front running uneconomical. Network Solutions is urging ICANN to approve it, and has said that it will stop
pre-registering domains if the provision is approved.
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registrars
Earlier this year we noted that Network Solutions is "front running" domain names—that is, automatically purchasing domain names that customers search for and holding them for four days before releasing them again. During that period, the only way customers can buy the domain names is through Network Solutions for 3 to 5 times more than what you can pay elsewhere. Now "search engine expert" Chris McElroy has
filed suit against them, named
ICANN as a defendant, and is seeking class action status.
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go daddy
Godaddy really tipped the dildo cart over on this one.
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internet
The Chinese — weary of America's control and insistence on Roman characters for domain names — have decided to set-up their own competitor to ICANN for domain names.
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Consumerist
domain names
