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Following up from my comments that I feel I'd prefer to see one Registry appointed auction service operating at arms length from any Registrar, or even operated entirely by the Registry, take control of all domain names that expire rather than letting individual Registrars do as they please with them, what do others think? If all potentially valuable expired but yet to be deleted domain names are going to be auctioned, wouldn't it be better for everyone if they all went through this process via one independent service? The associated Registrar could still get a large percentage of the sale price but they would be kept at arms length from any bidders. This would also mean that any really good domain names had to be auctioned first rather than potentially "sold" to an offshoot company owned by the Registrar to be "marketed".
In summary my proposal means:
1. All domain names are auctioned once expired. If no bid is received the domain name drops as now.
2. Auctions are independent of any Registrar that might have a vested interest in the auction. This keeps the auctions transparent and prevents those with deep pockets (probably some domainers! ) colluding with Registrars beforehand to get first dibs at the best expiring domain names before they go to auction and Registrars cherry picking the best names to be siphoned off to their own offshoot companies.
This seems highly sensible Invincible and something I would back if any changes are to be made from the current system.
Imagine registrar's having a nice name and it coming up for renewal, let's say debt.co.uk for example.
If the registrar has any financial interest in letting this go to auction, renewals emails might go a miss, renewal requests fall off the system so names don't get renewed (already happens now with some registrars). Imagine all the mistakes that registrars currents currently make and look at them in the new light that they make money from some of these mistakes in the future. There is going to be carnage and suspicion all over the place. It doesn't really matter if their is skulduggery involved, the suspicion will do the damage to the industry.
So if it is going to be done it needs to be run independently as Invincible says and by the Registry Nominet.