[jerf]

"but they don't want to invest the time into you know, actually contacting the domain owners."

That is not a viable option to tar them with accusations of not taking. I am sure the vast bulk of domains have amounts of money set aside grossly less than the cost to either party to even start talking to each other. If you want to hand me $1.21, I don't even want to hear from you. (There's hardly any way to do that anyhow without losing most or all of it to fees.)

No, the only other possibly alternative is to return the unused money to those who gave it, but that may have its own problems.

[darushimo]

"That is not a viable option to tar them with accusations of not taking."

Right, but this does suggest a good way for them to give a good faith effort. What if they put the effort into contacting all X content providers/publishers who 'earned' $Y or more? Even if it were somewhat costly, my appreciation would kick in if I knew they spent time to contact everyone who had earned $20 or more.

Even if the rest of the money went to charity, I'd still have a higher opinion of the way they've ended this operation.

Update: Their terms of services (7b, "Payments") states they won't pay out for amounts under $50. Sounds high given the expectable long tail, but they could put in work to contact those publishers.

[simonbrown]

Another option could be to allocate the money between the site owners that have registered in the same proportions as before. If they set a date to do this, and the planned amount for most sites ends up being significant, this may provide an incentive for more people to register.

[sjs382]

They stole the idea from Superman III