Domain Tasting

Domain Tasting is known as temporarily registering a domain under the five-day (Add Grace Period) from a domain name registry. Individuals or corporations would do this with the intent of cancelling the registration and being fully refunded within the grace period. Domain tasting should not be confused with Domain Kiting, a not-so-popular practice which is the act of registering a domain and canceling the registration, and then re-registering the domain without paying the domain fee. Since 2001, agreements between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and top-level domain registrars decided to require a grace period for registrant to receive a full refund. This was to safeguard inexperienced or careless registrants who mistyped the name of their desired domain and would otherwise be stuck with a name they did not want. As the years went on, internet analysts realized that the majority of website registrations were canceled, at up to a 99% percent rate a year. After further research, it appeared that companies were registering thousands or millions of websites a month and canceling the ones they deemed as unprofitable for advertising or pay-per-click ads. These analysts realized this could be a problem for legitimate businesses or individuals and an annoyance to web users. For example, if web users type in the wrong web address for a legitimate website, they would find themselves on a domain taster’s website full of ads or pop-up ads, which are pretty annoying. Most of all, these domain tasters were constantly registering and canceling domain names making it almost impossible for legitimate companies and individuals to find the domain owner or even invoke trademark infringement cases against them. This was something, most of the internet community, believed to be negative impact on the stability and security of the Internet ethics.
This eventually led to a class-action lawsuit against Network Solutions (a domain registrar) for