Domain name tasting takes advantage of the fact that anyone can register a domain and keep it for up to five days, only to return it for a full refund. This grace period enables dishonest operators to test domains to see if they produce more in advertising profits than the cost of their registration for a year.

This practice is wildly criticized for wasting users' time and advertisers' budgets, because it withholds millions of domain names at a time from the market, as well as forces advertisers to pay for adverts that appear on empty Web pages that people visit by mistake. Operators that exploit the five-day grace period have reportedly earned millions of dollars a year through pay-per-click ads seen by people who visit these addresses.

ICANN, which supervises the grace period, is facing mounting pressure to change the policy on domain tasting and is seriously contemplating changing the refund process. The board will decide in June whether to place ICANN management's proposal into practice and keep 20 cents of the $6 fee to dissuade bulk-registrations of domains for tasting.

Now a part of ICANN, the Generic Names Supporting Organisation (gnso.icann.org) has requested to change the current rules on the number of refunds a registrar can claim on behalf of its customers.

The organization wants operators of generic top level domains to be limited to refunding only 10 percent of the newly registered domain names in any given month. If the number of refunds they process is under 50, they will be allowed to refund up to 50 fees.

The GNSO council says it will take into account "public comments and constituency impact statements" regarding the draft proposal and incorporate them into a final proposal for council consideration at its upcoming April 17 meeting.