ICANN announced that it is bringing forward a budget proposal to be debated this spring that will eliminate the five-day grace period for new registrants of a domain name. In the past it was possible for new registrants to correct their applications in case they were spelled wrong or in case they changed their minds.

A request last May by ICANN's At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC), which is made up of select advisors from outside the board and representatives of many private firms, requested that the board investigate the practice with an eye toward what policy changes it could make to prevent it.

AGP’s original plan was to allow the no-cost cancellation fee of a Domain Registration when registrants or registrars mistyped or misspelled domain names during the registration process, however, it is not widely employed due to the fact that it allows people to carry out Domain Tasting. Furthermore, nothing in the AGP guidelines Say that the registrant or any related registrant can’t immediately re-register the same domain after it is dropped at the end of the five day grace period. This means that the registrant can get almost continuous use of the domain at no net cost.

Surprisingly there are very few registrants actually involved in domain tasting or kiting, although it turns out, it doesn't take many to make it a serious problem. ICANN reported yesterday, that a total of 47.8 million Domain Names had been deleted from the Internet's total registry. Of those, 45.45 million -- a full 95% -- had been deleted by just ten registrants, all of whom are suspected tasters.

In an ICANN report released last June in response to the ALAC request, ICANN's Maria Farrell, Karen Lentz, and Patrick Jones argued that the organization might have good reason to discontinue the AGP period based on the safety of the network as a whole.

The extreme volume of registrations and deletions believed to be associated with tasting is said to be placing operational loads on Registry systems. The ICANN team is concerned that such incessant stress on the system could case it to become unstable. Such stress could cause instability in the TLD name place or worse the entire Domain Name system.

It is thought as many as four million domain names could be tied up in tasting operations each and every day, the ICANN team said, that this information is based on data obtained in early 2007 – the figures today could be significantly higher than those gathered in 2007.

Ending the AGP is a budget matter because it's more than a policy matter. It would mean that every registrant is charged ICANN's annual fee the moment a DNS name is registered, whether or not it's spelled wrong.

Discussions will start in early may with a formal debate beginning on the first of July. It will be necessary for two-thirds of ICANN’s accredited registrars to vote for the grace period to be discontinued so it can go ahead.