.eu domains to be sold to non-residents

In a few years, you’ll no longer have to live in the European Union in order to buy a .eu domain name.

Residency requirements are to be dropped under new regulations approved by the European Parliament, Council and European Commission last week.

When the new rules come into effect — not expected until April 2023 — EU citizens based anywhere in the world will be able register .eu domains.

It’s not entirely clear how EURid, the current registry, will determine eligibility at point of sale, but I guess they have plenty of time to think about it.

Notably, the proposed new Regulation will shift oversight of .eu from one based on EU regulations to one based on a contract between the Commission and the registry operator.

It is hoped that this will give EURid the flexibility to more rapidly change its business model in future, merely having to agree upon a contract change rather than waiting for the EU institutions to chug through their lengthy legislative processes.

1 Comment Tagged: .eu, eurid

DNS inventor says .luxe first innovation in a decade

DNS inventor Paul Mockapetris has endorsed MMX’s foray into the blockchain as “the first genuine piece of DNS related innovation that I have seen in the last decade”.

The quote came in an MMX press release this morning, which provided an update on the launch of .luxe as the first gTLD that publishes information to the Ethereum blockchain as well as the DNS.

As I attempted to describe a few months ago, .luxe is being sold as an alternative way to address blockchain assets such as cryptocurrency wallets, which currently use nonsense, immemorable 40-character hashes.

MMX has built an API that allows registrars to automatically associate .luxe domains with Ethereum addresses.

The registry said today it now has 11 registrars signed up to use this API, along with 60 more selling vanilla .luxe domains.

In addition to its launch distribution partner, the wallet provider imToken, MMX said it has also signed up Bitxbank, BeeNews, BEPAL, Hillstone Partners, Math Wallet, MTC Mesh Network, Qufen, Fbee, and ChainDD, which all appear to be Asian blockchain software companies.

It expects to announce support for two non-Ethereum blockchains in the first half of next year.

Judging by zone files, .luxe names have not exactly been flying off the shelves since launch.

It had around 2,600 names in its zone file yesterday, having entered general availability about a month ago.

Despite this, CEO Toby Hall said in this morning’s press release that MMX’s initial investment in .luxe (I assume he’s referring to the R&D investment rather than the cost of applying for the gTLD) has already been recouped.

1 Comment Tagged: .luxe, blockchain, ethereum, imtoken, mmx, new gTLDs

New gTLDs continue growth trend, but can it last?

New gTLDs continued to bounce back following a year-long slump in registration volumes, according to Verisign data.

The company’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief, covering the third quarter, shows new gTLDs growing from 21.8 million names to 23.4 million names, a 1.6 million name increase.

New gTLDs also saw a 1.6 million-name sequential increase in the second quarter, which reversed five quarters of declines.

The sector has yet to surpass its peak of 25.6 million, which it reached in the fourth quarter of 2016.

It think it will take some time to get there, and that we’ll may well see a decline in next couple quarters.

The mid-point of the third quarter marked the end of deep discounting across the former Famous Four Media (now GRS Domains) portfolio (.men, .science, .loan, etc), but the expected downward pressure on volumes wasn’t greatly felt by the end of the period.

With GRS’s portfolio generally on the decline so far in Q4, we might expect it to have a tempering effect on gains elsewhere when the next DNIB is published.

Verisign’s data showed also that ccTLDs shrunk for the first time in a couple years, down by half a million names to 149.3 million. Both .uk and .de suffered six-figure losses.

Its own .net was flat at 14.1 million, showing no signs of recovery after several quarters of shrinkage, while .com increased by two million names to finish September with 137.6 under management.

1 Comment Tagged: cctlds, dnib, new gTLDs, verisign

No .web until 2021 after Afilias files ICANN appeal

Afilias has taken ICANN to arbitration to prevent .web being delegated to Verisign.

The company, which came second in the $135 million auction that Verisign won in 2016, filed Independent Review Process documents in late November.

The upshot of the filing is that .web, considered by many the best potential competitor for .com — Afilias describes it as “crown jewels of the New gTLD Program” — is very probably not going to hit the market for at least a couple more years.

Afilias says in in its filing that:

ICANN is enabling VeriSign to acquire the .WEB gTLD, the next closest competitor to VeriSign’s monopoly, and in so doing has eviscerated one of the central pillars of the New gTLD Program: to introduce and promote competition in the Internet namespace in order to break VeriSign’s monopoly

Its beef is that Verisign acquired the rights to .web by hiding behind a third-party proxy, Nu Dot Co, the shell corporation linked to the co-founders of .CO Internet that appears to have been set up in 2012 purely to make money by losing new gTLD auctions.

Afilias says NDC broke the rules of the new gTLD program by failing to notify ICANN that it had made an agreement with Verisign to sign over its rights to .web in advance of the auction.

The company says that NDC’s “obligation to immediately assign .WEB to VeriSign fundamentally changed the nature of NDC’s application” and that ICANN and the other .web applicants should have been told.

NDC’s application had stated that .web was going to compete with .com, and Verisign’s acquisition of the contract would make that claim false, Afilias says.

This means ICANN broke its bylaws commitment to apply its policies, “neutrally, objectively, and fairly”, Afilias claims.

Allowing Verisign to acquire its most significant potential competitor also breaks ICANN’s commitment to introduce competition to the gTLD market, the company reckons.

It will be up to a three-person panel of retired judges to decide whether these claims holds water.

The IRP filing was not unexpected. I noted that it seemed likely after a court threw out a Donuts lawsuit against ICANN which attempted to overturn the auction result for pretty much the same reasons.

The judge in that case ruled that new gTLD applicants’ covenant not to sue ICANN was valid, largely because alternatives such as IRP are available.

ICANN has a recent track record of performing poorly under IRP scrutiny, but this case is by no means a slam-dunk for Afilias.

ICANN could argue that the .web case was not unique, for starters.

The .blog contention set was won by an affiliate of WordPress maker Automattic under almost identical circumstances earlier in 2016, with Colombian-linked applicant Primer Nivel paying $19 million at private auction, secretly bankrolled by WordPress.

Nobody complained about that outcome, probably because it was a private auction so all the other .blog applicants got an even split of the winning bid.

Afilias wants the .web IRP panel to declare NDC’s bid invalid and award .web to Afilias at its final bid price.

For those champing at the bit to register .web domains, and there are some, the filing means they’ve likely got another couple years to wait.

I’ve never known an IRP to take under a year to complete, from filing to final declaration. We’re likely looking at something closer to 18 months.

Even after the declaration, we’d be looking at more months for ICANN’s board to figure out how to implement the decision, and more months still for the implementation itself.

Barring further appeals, I’d say it’s very unlikely .web will start being sold until 2021 at the very earliest, assuming the winning registry is actually motivated to bring it to market as quickly as possible.

The IRP is no skin off Verisign’s nose, of course. Its acquisition of .web was, in my opinion, more about restricting competition than expanding its revenue streams, so a delay simply plays into its hands.

6 Comments Tagged: .com, .web, afilias, donuts, ICANN, irp, ndc, new gTLDs, nu dot co, verisign

Nevett lands at PIR

Donuts alumnus Jon Nevett has been named the new CEO of Public Interest Registry.

Non-profit PIR, which runs .org and related gTLDs, said he will start in the role December 17.

Nevett was most recently executive VP at Donuts, the new gTLD registry he co-founded.

He left Donuts in October, not long after he cashed out when the company was sold to private equity firm Abry Partners.

The PIR corner office had been empty since May, after the unexpected and still unexplained resignation of Brian Cute.

Jay Daley, a member of the board of directors, was filling the role on an interim basis, but told us definitively in September that he was not interested in taking over permanently.

Comment Tagged: .org, abry, donuts, pir