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Another problem is that when domains expire, eg, I don't need it anymore, instead of going into the pool of available domain names, my registrar gets to keep th
by prirun 6y ago
Another problem is that when domains expire, eg, I don't need it anymore, instead of going into the pool of available domain names, my registrar gets to keep the domain name for a few pennies a year. They put it in their domain auction pool instead of releasing back to the free pool. Because they are a registrar, it costs them almost nothing (18 cents per year) to hang onto the domain name:
From https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/registrar-fees-2018-08-10-en https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/registrar-fees-2018-08...:
"Transaction-based fees are assessed on each annual increment of an add, renew or a transfer transaction that has survived a related add or auto-renew grace period. This fee will be billed at US$0.18 per transaction for registrars operating under the 2009 or 2013 RAA."
One way to prevent this is to: a) require that an expired domain go back to the free pool; b) require registrars to pay regular annual registration fees for all domains they own.
- kadoban 6y agoAren't expired/expiring domains that are auctioned off, that happens quickly, no? Like days to weeks? So they do go back into the available pool unless someone actually buys it. Disclaimer: I work for a company in this field, only speaking for myself.
- sfusato 6y ago$0.18 is the ICANN fee, but in the .com case you also have to pay $7.85/year to Verisign (who operates .com). Most registrars operate on very thin margins.
- prirun 6y agoYou're right; I didn't know this, but it's spelled out here in Exhibit A: https://www.verisign.com/assets/com-registrar-agreement.pdf https://www.verisign.com/assets/com-registrar-agreement.pdf Now I really don't understand domain parking. How can they afford to own thousands of domain names at $8/year when most of them are unpopular?
- sfusato 6y agoWell, most registrars that also run auction houses will auction off the expiring domain names. If nobody bids for them, they will get deleted. As far as I understand it, this won't cost them anything in ICANN/Verisign fees if a domain doesn't sell as there's no renewal involved or anything. There are other registrars (usually, smaller ones) that don't auction off expiring domain names, but rather keep them for themselves. $8/year is not much to offset and if you take in consideration the occasional sale of a domain name, it becomes even less to break even. At least, this is my take on it. Some registrars (eg. EPIK) provide you with the number of WHOIS queries ran against your domain names, the IP's used etc. This is enough information to signal interest or not in a domain name. Also, once a domain expires, they can point it to their own DNS and start collecting a whole new set of valuable info.