This is all just begging for a class action lawsuit.

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…

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

or the General obligations of Registrars ?
Dbii – do not unreasonably restrain competition.

If its not then it sure is a conflict of interest to let Registrars act as if they own the domains to do as they please with.

Whats coming next, charge people $500 to let them renew it whilst in the redemtion period or you’ll just keep it for yourself ??

Deliberetly targetting owners in order to confiscate their domains for yourself just because their whois details are not 100% spot on ??

Not sending out email renewal notices because you want to keep the names for yourself ??

Its NUTS for ICANN to allow registrars to behave in the way you are, there is clearly a very big conflict of interest and a serious tust issue and I will definetly be transferring all my names away from Tucows as soon as possible.

Bill – If you owned a pub would you leave an alcoholic in charge of it when you went on holiday ? Of course you would’nt – Whats the difference ?

Its about time ICANN grew some balls and sorted this mess out.

It amazes me that even a new extension like the .eu seem to be doing something about this type of warehousing and speculating by so-called “registrars” and ICANN don’t do anything.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5216118.stm

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**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.

Tucows commented,

“Our strategy to acquire expiring domain names differs from that of some other large Registrars who have focused on domain name auctions. Tucows believes that there is substantial value in holding on to these domain names, both in terms of monetization through pay-per-click advertising, but also in terms of the resale or lease of high-value domains to individuals and businesses that understand the intrinsic value of a high-quality domain name.”

http://blog.domaintools.com/2008/02/tucows-portfolio/

Domainsite.com is also keeping names from what I can tell, a name I was after got renewed by them but does’nt show any whois info on it.

I think they’ll all be doing it soon.

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?