Tucows holding back expired 4 letter .com’s

I’d guess Tucows send names to auction when they please, rather than at the whim of the expiration cycle. If true, wouldn’t this be better as their control of an name is assured, rather than the potential a former registrant renews it at the last minute?

Hi Jamie,

I’m the General Manager of the Tucows Domain Portfolio and also oversee the Tucows auction.

Glad to hear you’re a fan of our auction.

Not all of the expired names end up in the Tucows auction. Some names are renewed by the original registrant before they reach the auction, and some of the names are retained by Tucows for our own portfolio (although we still allow the orginal registrant to reinstate the domain name if they want to). In other words, we go out of our way to protect the rights of the orginal registrant.

One final thing to keep in mind: expired names only start to show up in the Tucows auction approximately 32 days after they have expired.

Cheers,

Bill

**Jamie Says**

Hi Bill,

Thank you for your reply. I find this line pretty interesting. And I quote “some of the names are retained by Tucows for our own portfolio” Do you find this as Stealing? Warehousing? Shady business practice?

Jamie, you asked me if I consider Tucows retaining some expired names for our own portfolio “Stealing? Warehousing? Shady business practice?”. My answer is: none of the above. Tucows is an ICANN-accredited registrar, a publicly-traded company, and one of the oldest Internet companies in the world. We not only adhere to ICANN regulations, we exceed many of them. We also have one of the longest Grace Periods in the industry, and every day the Tucows team helps original registrants reinstate their domain names. I’m very proud of what we do and how we do it, and if I thought we were doing something illegal or unethical, I’d be the first person walking out the door.

**Jamie Says**

Thank you for the follow up Bill. To me as an investor, I feel that registrars have an unfair advantage in the industry with being “able” to obtain expired domain names for just the renewal fees of the domain name with no competition. If a registrar had to pay what the normal general public does for expired domains in auction, I would then consider it fair. Until ICANN addresses this issue, registrars will simply have the pick on what they want to keep, what to auction and what to really let expire.

Registrar shall abide by any ICANN-adopted policy prohibiting or restricting warehousing of or speculation in domain names by registrars.

And can you find any ICANN-adopted policy prohibiting or restricting warehousing of or speculation in domain names by registrars? Has warehousing even been defined to begin with?

Registrars may have an unfair advantage over the average user in being able to register a domain name. But keep in mind that registrars are not required to offer domain registration services to the public to begin with.

Of course, it never stops people from feeling otherwise…