Based on comments received on last week's blog article about domain tasting/kiting, I did some research over the weekend and found some very interesting facts about the practice in a publicly filed pleading in Florida. The case is Dell v. BelgiumDomains, between Dell Computer Corporation and a number of domain name registrars that allegedly kite domains. "Kiting" is serially registering and then deleting domain names within the ICANN five-day grace period, so the company registering the name gets the benefit of the domain registration without incurring any registration costs. The Complaint is here. Exhibits 1-5 to the Complaint are here. Exhibits 6-10 are here. Exhibit 4 is a sample list of the kited domains, and it reads like a list of corporate america typosquatted. (The entire list was too voluminous to file as a paper document, but was filed as a CD-ROM.)

In its opposition to a motion, BelgiumDomains and the other Registrar Defendants described their business practices:

The Registrar Defendants servers are maintained at a facility operated by Internap Network Services Corporation (“Internap”). (Exhibit A, Declaration of Ezequiel Guilleron in Support of the Registrar Defendants’ Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Motion for Sanctions (“Guilleron Decl.”) at Para. 8.) Netrian’s servers process millions of domain registrations and deletions every day. (Id.) Processing those transactions requires large amounts of disk space to store temporary cache data associated with those transactions.

Emphasis added. Yes, that's right, these registrars are registering and deleting "millions" of domain names "every day."

The Declaration of Ezequiel Guilleron, the CTO who manages these servers, repeats the same facts:

I am responsible for maintaining servers Netrian uses to host the domain name registration services operated by its United States subsidiaries.... Each day Netrian's servers process millions of domain registrations and deletions.

Now stay tuned for the real kicker.

Dell obtained a preliminary injunction against the Registrar Defendants, the companies responsible for the domain kiting/trademark infringement scheme, and were able to attach the revenue that those defendants receive each month....from Google.

How much do they receive from Google Adsense?

The numbers in a Stipulated Order (see Paragraph 8) are in ranges. Amazing ranges. The first $1,000,000 the defendants receive from Google each month is to be paid into a special escrow fund to be held for Dell's benefit should it win at trial. The second $1,000,000 received each month is to be paid back to the defendants. Everything over $2,000,000 each month is split 50/50 between the escrow fund and the defendants.

Google has been paying out millions to just this handful of domain players. Across all the domain kiters, what is the number?...tens of millions? ...hundreds of millions? ....each month? And after you've digested the financial numbers, look back again at Exhibit 4, the list of the domain names that Google was paying out these Adsense dollars on.

A real eye-opener.