ICANN announced today that the newly-proven tactic for combating domain name tasting, namely that of fining registrars with unacceptably-high AGP deletes, is being expanded via a new Add Grace Period Limits Policy.

The policy, targeted at the gTLDs, states that rather than paying a 20-cent fee for any automatically-approved AGP deletions beyond the threshold, registrars now must request exemptions from the registries when too many deletes are requested - or else pay the full fee.

According to the ICANN announcement, only those deletions under the threshold, plus those that are exempted case-by-case by the registry, will be allowed to receive a refund from the registry operator. This could mean AGP delete policies between registrars and domainers will change completely.

The allowable threshold for this new policy is the same as that used for the already-enacted 20-cent fees: 10 percent of each registrar's newly added domains per month, or 50 domains per month, whichever is greater.

Recent registrar reporting shows that the 20-cent penalty for breaking the same threshhold brought down AGP deletions dramatically.

The announcement says all gTLD registry operators must implement the new policy by March 31 2009.

News report compiled by Nathan Hawks