Add Grace Period Limits Policy

The Add Grace Period Limits Policy or AGP Limits Policy applies to all registrars or operators who utilize ICANN's Add Grace Period (AGP) or the five day period that a domain name registrant has to delete their name without penalty. This policy created a monetary penalty for registrars who exceeded a certain number of domain name deletions per month. It was adopted in 2008 in order to combat increasing levels of Domain Tasting, although it also affected levels of Domain Kiting. Before enacting this policy, ICANN first put into place an AGP Budget Provision. This provision was very similar to the policy, except that the AGP Limits Policy has more aggressive fees.

Requirements

• The policy specifies that an ICANN-Accredited registrar will not receive a refund on domain names deleted during the AGP for any deletions that were above:

1. "10% of that Registrar's net new registrations (calculated as the total number of net adds of one-year through ten-year registrations as defined in the monthly reporting requirement of Operator Agreements) in that month, or
2. fifty (50) domain names, whichever is greater, unless an exemption has been granted by an Operator."

• The policy does allow a registrar to qualify for an exemption if it can show that there were "extraordinary circumstances."
• TLD operators are required to provide ICANN with the number of monthly AGP domain deletions per registrar and should keep records of registrar exemptions.

Results

The results of implementing the AGP Budget Provision and AGP Limits Policy were very promising. In less than a year, June 2008-April 2009, the number of AGP abuse incidents, including domain tasting and domain kiting, decreased by over 99%. The initial ICANN status report for the policy is titled "The End of Domain Tasting."

Additional Resources

• Read an ICANN status report comparing the year before the AGP Limits Policy was enacted and the year after

Related Articles

• AGP
• Domain Kiting
• Domain Tasting