No problems with Donuts’ DropZone — ICANN has
ICANN is not concerned that DropZone presents significant security, stability, or competition issues.
ICANN Vice President, GDD Accounts and Services Russ Weinstein has informed TurnCommerce that it sees no problems with Donuts’ plans for its DropZone service. Weinstein stated Donuts’ plans do not raise significant security, stability, or competition concerns.
Donuts filed two Registry Services Evaluation Policy (RSEP) requests (pdf, pdf) with ICANN for the DropZone system.
With Dropzone, the registry provides an exact expiration time for each domain, and registrars can apply for the domains at this time through a discrete EPP server system. If more than one registrar sends an application, the domain is awarded to the first registrar that submits its application on or following the expiration time.
TurnCommerce co-founder Jeff Reberry expressed concerns regarding the system and the precedent it could set. Apparently, Donuts intends to charge a modest fee for DropZone orders. It’s unclear if the fee will be success-based or application-based.
While few people will be concerned regarding a fee for Donuts’ domains, this could give .com registry Verisign an opening to find a way to extract revenue from the expired domain process.
Verisign has previously tried to grab more revenue from expired domains with a “waitlist” service. The firm has also patented other ways to distribute expired domains, counting offering encoded backorder domains and creating access pools for catching expired domains.
