CircleID

The best solution would likely be for VeriSign to send an email to all registrars announcing a restocking fee effective next-week. Even a 2 cent restocking fee (trivial for real errors) would be enough to curb tasting dramatically.

And they could do it. From ICANN and Verisign's .COM Agreement Appendix 7 Functional and Performance Specifications

3.1.1 Add Grace Period

Delete. If a domain is deleted within the Add Grace Period, the sponsoring Registrar at the time of the deletion is credited for the amount of the registration; provided, however, that Registry Operator shall have the right to charge Registrars a fee as may be set forth in its Registry-Registrar Agreement for disproportionate deletes during the Add Grace Period. The domain is deleted from the Registry database and is immediately available for registration by any Registrar. See Section 3.2 for a description of overlapping grace period exceptions.

Well put Frank.  I think much more is being made of domain tasting than the topic deserves except for a few points…

1.  Nothing should be free. When something is free it is almost always abused. So a small "restocking" fee just makes sense.

2. There is a law of dimishing returns in effect here.  As you stated, sooner or later there won't be all that many defensible generic terms and phrases left to choose from.

I guess you've already made those points.  They just make so much sense, I wonder why domain tasting is being given so much attention.  This is an issue that with some minor policy changes will take care of itself.

Joe writes that "this is an issue that with some minor policy changes will take care of itself".

I agree, however I am not convinced that ICANN's GNSO Names Council will ever rise to the occasion and produce a policy recommendation; neither do I believe that the ICANN Board itself will ever take any action.

From a policy development perspective, the ICANN organization continues to be a dysfunctional body.  Even when it receives stellar advice designed to prompt a reorganization of its policy-recommending units (such as that from the London School of Economics) ICANN plods along at a snail's pace quite willing to delay, postpone and procrastinate. 

Their attitude seems to be:  "If we wait long enough and continue to do nothing, maybe the problem will disappear."

When we had At-Large directors on the ICANN Board we never had this degree of complacency nor the poor quality of decision-making that has characterized this Board in recent years.

Yet another year has past and the abuse continues unabated.

The grace period was designed to correct errors; it was an abuse of the system the first time and it still is. Now, unwilling to wait for names to completely drop, registrars are forging Registered Name Holder's WHOIS information and placing the expiring domain name up for sale before the real Registered Name Holder's renewal grace period has barely even started!

Not only has ICANN demonstrated a total disregard for their responsibility in these areas, they have become directly involved in the activities by protecting offending registrars. Its no surprise that people view the "domain name business" in such a negative manner. What a disgrace.

This is the best most comprehensive analysis of tasting I have seen on the internet. With what is going on with NSI domain tasting issues, this is a great read. Great job Frank.  What do you think about the NSI isue exploding across the net?