On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 09:41:23PM +0530, Mukund Sivaraman wrote:
> There is a grace period. It was put there so that domain owners are able
> to correct a mistake.

I was working for a registry when it was added, and that's not the
reasoning I recall.  The problem to be solved was that registrants
were surprised when their names disappeared at the end of the
auto-renew grace period and when they hadn't paid their bills.  Under
the old rules, when that happened, usually a "domainer" ended up in
control of the expired name, and this meant that people who failed to
pay their bills lost their names completely.  That seemed bad.  Yet
grace periods had already piled up (the auto-renew grace period is
already 45 days long), so people didn't want to encourage even more
dependence on grace periods.

So, the redemption grace period acts _like_ the name has been deleted
and recovered by someone else, except that the registrant has a right
to pay extra and get the name back.  That's what it's intended to do,
and therefore there's nothing wrong with registrars doing all manner
of things with the name under those circumstances.  You don't pay your
bill, this is what happens.

> In the bit of time that the registrar gets access before it's renewed,
> the website loses its reputation with nefarious ad serving. Yes

Yes, exactly.  "Pay your bills."

> that. Enough money is already charged for domain registration that such
> quick switching tactics are unnecessary.

The margins in the registration business are in fact terribly thin.  I
am not surprised that some registrars want to create additional
revenue opportunities.

> We can argue this :) , but you surely understand the difference between
> providing a clean 30 day grace period and what is happening now.

You already _have_ a clean period, which is the 45 days _prior to_
your expiration.  There are lots of ICANN-mandated notices in that
period, and anyway it seems to me that you need to know about when
your names expire and pay for them on time.  I don't think this is
anyone else's responsibility but the registrant's, and I think calling
"nefarious" anything someone does with a name after you've failed to
pay for it and it has expired is putting the responsibility on the
wrong party.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
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