I've seen the end result of this three times myself. Each time, I searched for a domain name for a client or for myself, none of which was actually particularly novel or desirable, and each time the domain was snapped up within 12 to 24 hours of my search. Once is chance. Twice is a coincidence. Three times? Either I'm on an unlucky streak or something is going on.

"ICANN said the perception of sharp practice damages trust and tarnishes the image of the domain name registration industry." ...

because its not like it's image is tarnished already. Buying domains and how they are run has to be one of the most cowboy like practices on the internet, short of 419 scams.

This practice has been going on for years I'm sure:

In the middle of 1999, I was working for a major UK technology company and had an idea for a personnal domain name related to a particular interest of mine. It was a vaguely pronouncable four letter acronym, lets call it wxyz.com as an example.

At work, I used the internet to check domain name availability and found that wxyz.com and wxyz.co.uk were available. Note that anyone having access to these searches would see the query source IP as belonging to a major technology company, a household name,

The next day, I showed this service to a colleague who had expressed interest and looked up the availabilty again to show the facilty to him. wxyz.com and wxyz.co.uk were by that time taken, less that 24 hour after my initial enquiry.

For the past eight years, these domains have been parked or held or in some way owned by someone who does absolutely nothing with them. Right now, wxyz.com is for sale for $800 and wxyz.co.uk is available. I assume whoever it was got fed up with waiting on the .co.uk address.

Of course this happens, as long as there is a chance of money being made then people will do what they can to make it. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out but it would take reorganisation and security to stop it. I'm sure ICANN's preference on this one has always been to stick their head in the sand.

I have seen it first-hand several times.

On one notable occasion I helped a friend who wanted a longish (14-character) .com domain name for a specific purpose.

In the space of a minute we checked the availability of three candidates via a large US domain registration company. All were available. She picked one. When we tried to purchase it we found it had already been taken.

So had the other two.

When we last checked, those domains were occupied by identical sites saying "this domain may be for sale".

Draw your own conclusions.

Do a nameserver query - presumably there is a Windows tool to do this but from a Linux commandline you can use dig or nslookup:

$ dig fuckwitsheepshaggers.com ns

;; Got answer:

;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 8098

(you have to do some eyeball filtering)

If the reply says non-existent domain (NXDOMAIN) you know it's not taken yet.

Now, how much am I bid for this prestigious and valuable domain name?

Surely that's why there is a dispute resolution process for most TLDs. If you're planning on doing anything with the domain, why not register the trademark, and get the cybersquatters thrown off? Should cost a lot less than $800.

So is it possible for me to hook up a pronouncable password generator to the domain query site?

... just do so many searches that whoever's doing this gets bankrupted by the cost of registering all those domain names. Make them spend a fortune on worthless made-up random domain names. Assuming, of course, that this is a semi-automated system with limited human intervention.

I swear, one day webmasters the world over are going to tar and feather ICANN.

It is almost guaranteed that any domain you search for and don't register will be registered within a month.

If you searched for: fruitfliesareavacadoswithwings.com by next month it will be registered and parked and asking $1,000 dollars. With a page filled with a bazillion key word ads on fruit, flies, avacados and wings.

Sometimes I think we should abolish the death penalty. Than other days I think we should expand it to include SPAMMers and cyber-squatters.

Make domain names more expensive.

None of this 'bulk registration'. The ones who are behind this fraud are usually the registrars. Make every and any registration cost at least $20 / year. Suddenly, lots of names become available.

I don't see why I should pay more than I already do for my domain when the real answer is to not allow domain name parking for more than a year.

You buy a domain name ? Fine. You buy a hundred domain names ? Good for you. But if you're not doing anything useful with all that in 12 months, they're no longer yours, bucko.

THAT would solve the problem. Or at least, cut it down to size.

See http://www.domainnamenews.com/editorial/verisign-to-profit-from-rootserver-data

>Mike Banahan

Your method won't stop Verisign.

If you want a name, make a list; test for no more than five minutes; then register. If you can't decide that fast, register the top 2 or 3 yourself -- before someone else does.

There is a no cost technique called Domain Name Tasting where you can return unneeded Domain Names that you have just registered within a set time period and not need to pay for them. While this is an option that has been used by Domain Name Squatters, I see nothing unethical about using it against their hijacking of your potential Domain Names. Instead of just LOOKING at the names you might want, register them immediately/instead (to place a hold on them) and then release the ones you do not need/want.

One domain worth mentioning in this connection is delta17.com and I mention it not without reason.

That 1 month period mentioned may be 1 1/2 in this case but it was lapped up ultimately.

I'm not going to beat about the bush.

My suspicions lie on someone from Yahoo! or Yahoo India! We all know that even their search feature can be manipulated. They make very calculated exclusions of some websites when they fear that their own business could be affected. Therefore, it can never match Google. Google can not be influenced to that extent. I know what I am saying.

Revealer Brasstacks

India.