[CPWG] Transfer Policy Review Team: Question about the 60-days lock

[John McCormac]

On 09/11/2021 17:44, Steinar Grøtterød via CPWG wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> At the TPR WG Meeting on Nov 9, 2021, the 60-days locks were discussed. 
> The present policy – and the majority of Registry Operators, have a 
> 60-days transfer lock after the initial registration of a domain name 
> AND a 60-days lock after a successful inter-registrar transfer.
> 
> Based on the discussion in the TPR WG, I would like to hear the CPWG 
> opinion by asking the following:

Following up on today's meeting:

> 1. Are we in favor of keeping the 60-days lock after the initial 
> registration of a domain name?

Yes.
This is still important to deal with issues of reversed creditcard 
charges and non-payment. While payments systems have improved, this 60 
day lock is still a defence against an orchestrated attack using stolen 
payment details.

> 2. Are we in favor of keeping the 60-days lock after a successful 
> transfer of a domain name?

Yes.
This is one way of drastically reducing the chances of success for 
domain name theft. Domain name thieves generally use multiple registrars 
to make it difficult for the registrant to recover their stolen domain name.

> 3. Could the above be optional?

No.
And ICANN Compliance should proactively enforce it.

> 4. Should the Registrant has the option to opt-out?

No.
Do the people who came up with the proposal of making it opt-out for 
registrants actually understand the issue of domain name theft/hijacking 
and how the thieves transfer a stolen domain name from registrar to 
registrar to make it difficult for registrants to recover their domain 
name?


On a related issue that came up in the call, Domain Tasting is very 
different from registrars simply offering time limited promotions.

Domain Tasting involved registrars simply being set up for the purposes 
of tasting and deleting millions of domain names in the five day Add 
Grace Period. This exploitation of the AGP spread to retail registrars. 
Over approximately five years, over 1 billion (1,000,000,000) .COM 
domain names were tasted. The ICANN registry reports were flawed and 
incomplete at the time and remained so until 2014. Those of us who were 
tracking the issue at a domain name level measured it in worn out 
harddrives.

It was only when legal action was taken against a few key registrars and 
Google announced that it would not monetise registrations within their 
five day AGP period that Domain Tasting took a near fatal hit. ICANN was 
stuck in a procastination loop while Domain Tasting was happening but it 
was convinced to eventually do the right thing by adding a "restocking" 
fee for new registations deleted within the AGP. When that was 
implemented, large-scale Domain Tasting stopped. Domain Tasting has 
nothing to do with the 60 day locks.

Regards...jmcc
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