Domain Tasting is only allowed by one Registrar in Australia (possibly the world?)

Domain Tasting is currently ruining the Australian .au domain name system (according to ICAAN concerns listed below) and auDA know about it. You can read what is happening with Domain Tasting in Australia right now at this link.

Domain Tasting is when a Registrar allows hundreds or thousands of domain names to be registered in a single day, either for themselves or a customer, and then “parking websites” are quickly turned on with each domain, and then if each “website will produce more than $6 of advertising revenue over the course of a year, then the domain name will be profitable, and the registrant will maintain the pay-per-click website. If, however, it turns out that the website will not generate enough pay-per-click revenue (i.e. it will generate less than $6 per year), the registration is abandoned.” (Quote comes from Scott Long’s auDA Review Submission 2017). Registrars are given 3-5 days “credit” from their domain Registry, which means, any Registrar that wants to perform Domain Tasting Services, for themselves or their customers, don’t have to pay for the domains they “hand back” if they do it in a matter of days.

According to this ICAAN document from 2008, The practice of domain tasting has five areas of concern for Internet users:

1. Destabilisation of the domain name system through excessive operational load on registry systems.
2. Creation of consumer confusion as names quickly appear and disappear, or as users are redirected to advertising or otherwise confusing sites
3. Potential increased costs and burdens of legitimate registrants and service providers
4. Facilitation of trademark abuse, where existing dispute resolution mechanisms may not be sufficiently timely or cost-effective for trademark holders to use against short-term infringement;
5. Facilitation of criminal activity including phishing and pharming.
6. Reduces the number of available names to, for example, potential business owners who would use a name to describe their business rather than extract advertising revenue from Internet traffic.

In 2006 Nominet (the auDA of UK), “identified a small number of registrars who were potentially abusing the domain delete facility.” They went on to say, “we also clarified that any deletion of domains that we believe is not for the purpose of correcting mistakes will be dealt with under our contract with registrars. The sanctions may include reduced credit limits, suspension of registrar access etc.”

So, it’s clear the .UK doesn’t allows Domain Tasting, and they handled this nearly 2 decades ago!

How about here in Australia?

In the auDA Board Minutes 2007, auDA wrote about Domain Tasting:

It’s 17 years later now auDA, how’s your monitoring on Domain Tasting going?

I’ll tell you how it’s going. “SEO Web Recovery” just registered 1238 domain names in a single day which was 84% of all expired domain names that day, all through the “auDA Accredited Registrar – Drop.com.au“.

In the meantime, auDA have done nothing about it, and to this day, they allow their own Accredited Registrar “Drop.com.au” to continue doing it.

I’ve reached out to Synergy Wholesale and TPP wholesale (Popular Australian Registrars) and they both replied they do not allow Domain Tasting on their Registrars.

WebCentral.com.au also see it as abuse and breach of policy as:

In summary, as you can read above, Domain Tasting is seen by every Australian Registrar, and ICAAN and Nominet (UK) and worldwide as an abuse of the domain name system, and has been, since around 2007.

However, Drop.com.au seem to LOVE “Domain Tasting” and in fact, the “director” and the “effective director” declared earlier this year that Domain Tasting is a “good strategy” and “Tasting Domains is allowed in Australia!” (see the screenshots)

Drop.com.au are owned by a company called Trellian (and Trillion), which also owns a “Domain Parking Monetisation” company called “Above”.

No other domain authority or country in the world seems to allow Domain Tasting, but auDA don’t seem to have a policy against it and allow Drop.com.au to do it with some of their customers, including “SEO Web Recovery” and possibly Raja Jata.

This is how slow, stagnant and out of touch auDA (au Domain Administration) have become with (auDA CEO) Rosemary Sinclair in charge. So out of touch, they have now clearly broken many of their Terms of Endorsement by the Australian Government.

Why does auDA continue to allow Drop.com.au to be the one and only monopoly expired domain auction platform with Registry access for the past 3 years?

Why does auDA allow Drop.com.au to be the ONLY Registrar in Australia (and possibly the world?) to register thousands of .au domain names in a single day, Domain Tasting, and then hand over 90% of them back without having to pay for them?

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