What is the Domain Redemption?
Domain redemption is when a domain owner does not renew their domain by not paying the renewal fees and someone else redeems the domain at the moment of the domain’s expiry. This is also known as domain sniping.
Domain sniping is the practice of an individual registering a domain name whose registration has lapsed in the immediate moments after expiry. This practice has largely been rendered moot through ICANN’s addition of the Redemption Grace Period (RGP), which allows registrants 30 days to reclaim their domain name. By law there are no perpetual rights to domain names after payment of registration fees lapses, aside from trademark rights granted by common law or statute.
Although domain registrars often make multiple attempts to notify a registrant of a domain name’s impending expiration, a failure on the part of the original registrant to provide the registrar with accurate contact information can make an unintended registration lapse possible. Unless the original registrant holds a trademark or other legal entitlement to the name, they are often left without any form of recourse in getting the domain name back.
Prior to the Redemption Grace Procedure (RGP) individuals could engage in domain sniping in order to extort money from the original registrant to buy the name back. The addition of RGP has largely abated the ability to “snipe” names and therefore has moved the battle for expiring domain names to the domain registrar level, where companies such as GoDaddy or eNom retain names for auction through services such as TDNAM or Snapnames.
What is the Domain Redemption Period (also known as the Redemption Grace Procedure)?
The redemption period is a Domain Registry period of up to 30 days that occurs when a domain name is deleted after having expired unrenewed. Instead of just getting deleted and returning to the pool of domain names available for registration, the existing registry keeps a hold on the domain name in a what is technically called as REDEMPTION PERIOD. During this 30-day redemption period, the original domain registrant (owner of the domain) is allowed to retrieve the domain name from deletion by contacting their Registrar. This process costs an additional fee.
This extra 30-day period – redemption period – extends the time available to renew expired domain names by 30 days. However, all names that enter the redemption period are removed from the zone files in the global DNS, as a result, any Web site or email services associated with the domain name gone into redemption period will stop working and would appear offline.