On Monday, ICANN posted its AGP Limits Policy and Draft Implementation Plan for public comment.

The important take-away from this plan is the intention to cap the number of domain name deletes that can be refunded by a registrar. The AGP Limits Policy prevents any refunds on domain names that are deleted in excess of 10% of the Registrar’s new registrations or in excess of 50 domains, whichever number is higher.

While it is always encouraging to see progress towards better policy, the pace at which these steps are being taken is disheartening. This policy, which is slated for implementation in March of 2009, is proposed as a remedy for domain tasting—a tactic used by some cybersquatters in which perpetrators leverage the 5-day add/drop grace period mandated by ICANN to “test-drive” a domain name—which started gaining ground almost two years ago.

I’m not suggesting that any plan should move forward without the appropriate considerations, in fact we’ve long been proponents of seeing ICANN use more fact-based research, but with the Internet community hurting from the lack of strong deterrents against domain name tasting there should be a sense of urgency associated with this process. The Internet is a rapidly changing medium with new enforcement challenges at every turn; policies addressing these challenges should be made in a manner that allows them to keep up with this pace.