oldtimer,
There are several different types of reserve names in the registry today. Some, such as host.us, were reserved prior to launch and will likely remain on the reserve list for the immediate future. There is another set of names that were reserved for US government agencies, states, cities and other localities. Each agency, state, or cities was offered their domain. The domains that were released were those that were not wanted by the respective agency, state, or city. The remainder were either registered or reserved. Most of these will remain registered or reserved, but it is possible that some could be released if the current registrant opts to give them up.
The reason these domains are showing as past their expiration is because of the way we handle expirations and the auto-renew grace period. These names will auto-renew within the next month or so.
However, this does raise an important issue for .us registrants to understand. Like the gTLD registries, the .us registry has a 45 day auto-renew policy. This means that any domain that expires will automatically renew, unless the registrar either deletes or proactively renews the domain within the 45 day grace period. In the .us and .biz registries, we have implemented a solution that is slightly different from many other registries. Here's how our implementation works:
A domain name expires on a given day, say April 17th 2007. At that time nothing happens - the domain name simply ages past its expiration date. Forty-five days after the expiration the registry will automatically renew the domain, and charge the registrar for the renewal, unless the registrar has already explicitly renewed or deleted the domain. Some registrars will give their registrants the full 45 day grace period to renew, while others will only utilize a portion of it before deleting the domain. Regardless, the registrar is only charged if they explicitly renew the domain or they wait until the end of the 45 day grace period and the registry renews it.
By contrast, in many of the other gTLD registries, the registry will automatically rewew the domain the day it expires, charge the registrar immediately for the renewal, and then allow the registrar 45 days to delete the domain and receive a credit. Once the deletion occurs, the domain reverts back to the previous expiration date and goes into the redemption grace period.
The problem with this last implementation, is that many registrants will check the registry whois, which will show the new expiration date, and believe that their name has already been renewed, when in fact it may not have been. Furthermore, this implementation requires the registrars pay for the auto-renew up front before they may have received payment from their registrants. Under our implementation, the registrar is not required to front funds to the registry and the expiration date of the domain always remains true. In other words, the expiration date does not change unless the domain has been proactively renewed by the registrar or the 45 day auto renew grace period has expired, at which time the registry performs the auto-renew.
I realize this is a bit of a long response, but I hope you and others find it useful in understanding the way the auto-renew grace period works.
Regards,
