The following was shared with me today by Mike Mann. Enjoy:

First off I have never done domain tasting, nor did BuyDomains.com
when I managed it, and our new domain trading and building platform,
DomainMarket.com, doesn’t either. When we and others first began
thinking about it around 5 years ago it was bad protocol at best, and
really considered a Denial of Service (DoS) attack against the
Netsol/Verisign registry system since robots slam the systems to buy
thousands of name at once; so it was against NSI/VRSN rules and
possibly illegal too.

However once Verisign realized how many domains would ultimately be
registered to their benefit (eventhough I imagine 99% of the
inventory is never paid for and is re-deleted back to the
unregistered pool of potential new domains) they decided domain
tasting for 5 days to measure the PPC traffic and value and buy the
statistical gems was OK.

However domain tasting is indiscriminate and buyers end up having
their robots purchase other peoples’ clear trademarks, as well as a
lot of lewdly suggestive names, or names that once resolved to
questionable content. So again its nothing Id want my team to take part in.

In the past I thought nobody should do it. Today I think it should
actually be done by others carefully for one simple reason: It’s good
for the economy. People are typing in and clicking on legacy domain
links for expired domains, and if they get a 404 error it’s a waste
of time, energy and bandwidth - and nobody gets paid, however if it
lands on a tasting speculators PPC page or monetizable site then
someone is getting paid, and they can pay their employees, taxes, and
tips at the local restaurant, etc. So domain tasting while lame in
most respects is still good for the economy.

I’ve rethought this subject and I think it’s good for others as long
as they don’t buy trademarks or domains that they deem offensive.
Outside of moral considerations they need to be concerned about being
sued or harassed somehow, which could have negative financial
consequences, balanced by the value of the trickle down economics
accidentally applied to attorneys and their caddies.

Thats all, LMK what you think. Cheers

-Mike
http://mikemann.com/