One of the dumbest gTLDs just switched back-ends

Why does .blockbuster still exist, seriously?

Old-timers such as your humble correspondent will recall Blockbuster as the once world-conquering video rental chain that spectacularly failed to adapt to adapt to the era of Netflix and streaming and went almost completely out of business.

I say almost because, as was widely reported a few years back, there’s still one branch of Blockbuster open. It’s in Bend, Oregon and has sidelines as a tourist destination and, more lucratively, selling ironic merch mocking its own inexplicable existence.

So that’s a whole dot-brand gTLD essentially for a single retail outlet. Possibly the only smaller, dumber gTLD is .richardli, which is a dot-brand representing just one dude, Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li.

The Bend store is a franchisee, so it pays Dish DBS, owner of the brand, a licensing fee to use its trademark. But the gTLD is unused. Blockbuster has a holding page at blockbuster.com while the Bend store uses bendblockbuster.com.

Why mention this at all? Well, Dish has just changed the back-end registry services provider for .blockbuster and all of its other dormant dot-brands from Identity Digital to Tucows, indicating that it has no plans to terminate its ICANN registry contracts just yet.

.sling, .dish, .latino, .dot, .ott, .ollo, .mobile, .dtv, .dvr, .phone, and .data, none of which have any registered domains (but several of which would surely prove attractive to an acquiring portfolio registry) have also made the move to Tucows.

(Actually, .ollo may be an even dumber dot-brand given that the brand doesn’t exist and seemingly never has existed. Dish filed for a trademark on the string in 2011 but never used it.)

Running a gTLD isn’t free. The current ICANN fee alone is $25,800 a year per string. While Dish had $10.6 billion in revenue last year, its parent, EchoStar, is currently circling the drain-hole of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Ironically, EchoStar faces the dire choice because the US Federal Communications Commission is threatening to revoke some of its 5G spectrum licenses because the company acquired the licenses then didn’t use them.

Comment Tagged: blockbuster, dish dbs, echostar, new gTLDs

GoDaddy loses .co to Team Internet

Team Internet is to take over back-end duties for .co, after agreeing to take less than half as much as GoDaddy was charging.

The London-based company has teamed up on a joint venture, Equipo PuntoCo, with Panama-based registrar CCI REG to sign a 10-year deal with Colombia’s communications ministry, MINTIC.

The handover will put an end to GoDaddy’s 15-year stint as .co’s back end. The TLD was relaunched globally as a .com alternative in 2010 by .CO Internet, which was subsequently acquired by Neustar and then GoDaddy.

It seems Team Internet was willing to price its services much lower than GoDaddy. The company said in a statement that Equipo PuntoCo is getting 8% of gross revenue from .co sales, compared to the 19% GoDaddy was getting and the 93% .CO Internet originally received. The rest goes into the Colombian public purse.

While it’s not the biggest TLD on Team Internet’s servers (that honor goes to .xyz), it’s going to be the second or third largest migration of a single TLD between registry services providers in the history of the DNS.

.co had about 3.2 million domains at the start of the year. Today, Team Internet says it has “more than 3 million”. It’s the same ballpark as .au’s 2018 move from Neustar to Afilias, which was 3.1 million names, but a million shy of this year’s migration of .in from GoDaddy to Tucows.

When it comes to retaining the big ccTLDs, it seems GoDaddy really can’t catch a break.

Radix and Identity Digital also competed for the contract.

2 Comments Tagged: .co, godaddy, team internet

Governments erect bulk-reg barrier to new gTLD next round

No new gTLDs should be added to the internet until ICANN develops policies addressing the abuse of bulk domain name registrations, according to the Governmental Advisory Committee.

The GAC this afternoon drafted formal Advice for the ICANN board stating that policy work on bulk regs should get underway before ICANN 84, which takes place in Muscat, Oman in late October.

While the wording still may change before it is sent to ICANN, the current draft advice reads:

The GAC advises the board: To urge the GNSO Council to undertake all necessary preparation prior to ICANN84 towards enabling targeted and narrowly scoped Policy Development Processes (PDPs) on DNS Abuse issues, prioritizing the following: to address bulk registration of malicious domain names; and the responsibility of registrars to investigate domains associated with registrar accounts that are the subject of actionable reports of DNS Abuse.

The advice on bulk regs is fairly self-explanatory: the GAC has become aware that spammers typically shop around for the cheapest TLDs then register huge amounts of domains on the assumption that some will start getting blocked quite quickly.

The second part of the advice probably needs some explanation: under the current ICANN contracts, registrars have to deal with abuse reports concerning domains they sponsor, but they’re under no obligation to investigate other domains belonging to the registrants of those domains.

So, if a scumbag registers 100 domains for a spam campaign and only one of them is reported as abusive, the registrar can comply with its contract by simply suspending that one domain. The GAC thinks it should be obliged to proactively investigate the other 99 names too.

The advice seems to have been inspired by two sources: NetBeacon’s recent Proposal for PDPs on DNS Abuse (pdf) and data from Interisle Consulting.

Both pieces of advice obviously could have an impact on registrars’ top and bottom lines. They could lose revenue if they currently make a lot of money from bulk regs, and their costs could be increased with new obligations to investigate abuse.

An added wrinkle comes in the GAC’s rationale for its advice, which suggests that dealing with bulk regs and abuse probes should be a gating factor for the next round of new gTLDs going ahead. It reads:

Before new strings are added to the DNS as a result of the next round, further work on DNS Abuse is needed to stem the increasing cost to the public of phishing, malware, botnets, and other forms of DNS Abuse.

The core text of the advice was compiled in furtive huddles on the edges of sessions at ICANN 83, and I believe Switzerland held the pen, but it seems the US government was the driving force behind the push to make abuse a barrier to the next round.

As I reported on Monday, the US GAC rep said that “in light of the global phishing problem… and similar concerns the United States is of the view that we should not expand the DNS too broadly”.

5 Comments Tagged: dns abuse, gac, ICANN, icann 83, new gTLDs, next round, prague

Little interest in cheapo gTLD program

ICANN’s program to offer heavily discounted new gTLD application fees to certain organizations has so far seen little uptake, and some governments are not happy about it.

The Applicant Support Program offers up to 45 qualified applicants a discount of up to 85% on their application fees. That’s worth almost $200,000 each. ICANN will also hook applicants up with pro-bono application consultants and help out with auctions if necessary.

While 40 applications are in the process of being drafted, according to ICANN’s latest monthly stats, only four finalized applications have been submitted and there’s no way of telling whether the other 40 will convert to full applications.

The low number has members of ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee concerned, partly because of a deal it struck with ICANN last year that would encourage a change of strategy if it turned out some regions were more represented than others.

The arrangement saw ICANN promise to refocus its outreach efforts on under-served regions after tallying up the home nations of the first 20 submitted applications. With the 12-month program application window now well past the half-way mark, the GAC is worried that by the time the 20th bid is logged, it will be too late to course-correct.

It now seems likely that the GAC’s formal Advice from the ongoing ICANN 83 meeting in Prague will see language included saying ICANN should conduct its review of the applications now, while there’s still time to adjust the strategy.

Currently, the stats show a strange and surprising mix of geographies.

North America has the most applications in draft at 15. This is weird because entities based in the US and Canada don’t qualify for the discount, ICANN doesn’t count Mexico as North American, and the only other economies in the region are US island territories like Puerto Rico and Guam.

Meanwhile, the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean region, with all its half a billion citizens, has just two applications in draft. That’s the just one more than Europe, which has just a handful of qualifying nations.

Africa and Asia-Pacific both have seven applications in draft, and Asia-Pac also has three fully submitted bids.

Based on the current stats, you’d have to assume ICANN would need beef up its outreach in Latin America if it wanted to rebalance the numbers. Europe probably doesn’t need as much love because so few countries there qualify.

As well as encouraging ICANN to analyse its number immediately, the GAC is also considering text that would connect applicants in drafting with their local governments, to see if they need any assistance getting over the final hurdle.

Comment Tagged: applicant support program, gac, ICANN, new gTLDs, next round

US government opposes most new gTLDs

The US government has come out against most of the new gTLDs likely to be applied for in next year’s application round, saying they will contribute to the “global phishing problem”.

The eyebrow-raising revelation came during an intervention from Susan Chalmers, the country’s senior representative on the Governmental Advisory Committee, at the ICANN 83 meeting in Prague this afternoon.

Chalmers said the US is not opposed to the next round in general, but “has some reservations” that the expansion could make DNS abuse worse and that ICANN should “consider how to limit the expansion appropriately”.

Here are her remarks in full:

The United States has some reservations about the next round of new gTLDs. Specifically we have concerns that expanding the DNS too broadly can lead to more spam and DNS abuse for everyone on the internet. Our concerns are not for a next round in general to be clear. We see value in certain categories of applications such as for geo-TLDs and for internationalized domain names. In some cases it makes sense to add new strings to the DNS, but in light of the global phishing problem (which we will learn more about tomorrow) and similar concerns the United States is of the view that we should not expand the DNS too broadly. As the GAC did in 2013 we must consider how to limit the expansion appropriately to take into account public interest impacts.

The US, which has at least five civil servants attending the GAC meetings in Prague, was the only government to openly oppose new gTLDs during this afternoon’s session.

The position puts the US at odds with likely the majority of next-round new gTLD applicants, which could be a cause for concern.

While there will no doubt be some worthy geographic TLDs and IDNs applied for, if 2026 is anything like the 2012 round most applications will be commercial in nature, with as broad an appeal as possible.

Sadly, no doubt some applicants will be the kind of chancers who want to make their millions selling disposable domains for a buck apiece to spammers.

While Chalmers’ remarks may be somewhat surprising, the US position under Trump isn’t a million miles away from the Obama administration’s position in the run-up to the 2012 round.

Back then, the US tried successfully to strong-arm ICANN into giving the GAC more powers over which gTLDs could and could not enter the root. Those powers have been grandfathered in to the rules for next year’s round.

But the political landscape was different back then. ICANN was still a US government contractor, which irked other governments. Some nations wanted ICANN’s powers to be expatriated and given to a body like the International Telecommunications Union. The US was keen to keep the Org under its jurisdiction, and thought a beefed-up GAC was the way to do it.

It seems unlikely that the US could derail the next round entirely. Technically, it would have to win over the full GAC to produce a consensus against the expansion, but one of the hallmarks of the Trump administration so far has been its refusal to play nicely or respect multilateralism, so who knows what might happen.

The US could also use ICANN’s own rules to object to individual new gTLD applications it deems risky or unworthy.

A GAC consensus advice objection against an applications has historically been enough to kill it dead, but any nation can also choose to go it alone by issuing a so-called GAC Early Warning.

An Early Warning is a unilateral notice to an applicant that a government doesn’t like their application and may try to get it rejected or changed in some way. Applicants are free to ignore such warnings, but are encouraged to engage with the government in question to resolve their concerns.

Could Chalmers’ remarks today be the first early warning?

4 Comments Tagged: gac, ICANN, icann 83, new gTLDs, next round, prague

GoDaddy loses last Amazon business to Identity Digital

GoDaddy appears to have lost the last remnants of its Amazon back-end registry services deal.

IANA records show that GoDaddy was recently replaced by Identity Digital as the technical contact for all of the remaining 12 gTLDs it was serving.

The gTLDs in question are: .coupon, .song, .zero and the IDNs .ストア, .セール, .家電, .クラウド, .食品, .ファッション, .書籍, .ポイント and .通販, which are generic terms for things like “fashion” and “books”.

Five of the IDNs have actually launched and have been generally available for years, but they’re been phenomenally unsuccessful — the largest zone has just 146 domains in it. The remaining seven are dormant, unlaunched.

Amazon originally used GoDaddy (then Neustar) for all 54 of the gTLDs it successfully applied for back in the 2012 gTLD application round, but it switched all but 12 of them to Nominet back in 2019, where they remain today.

1 Comment Tagged: .coupon, .song, .zero and the IDNs .ストア, .クラウド, .セール, .ファッション, .ポイント, .家電, .書籍, .通販, .食品, amazon, godaddy, new gTLDs, nominet

Third Amazon gTLD launch dates revealed

Amazon is set to launch not two but at least three of its dormant new gTLDs in the next few months, according to ICANN documentation.

As reported earlier this week, .talk and .fast are set to go to sunrise in August and general availability in September, and now they’ll be joined by a third: .you.

.you will enter a one-month sunrise period for trademark owners August 25, to be immediately followed by GA. There’ll likely also be a five-day Early Access Period.

The releases follow the launch of .free, .hot and .spot last month.

1 Comment Tagged: .you, amazon

.TOP promises to play nice on DNS abuse

.TOP Registry is off the ICANN naughty step, almost a year after it became the first registry to be hit by a public contract-breach notice over ICANN’s latest rules on DNS abuse.

The Org took the highly unusual step yesterday of publishing a blog post drawing attention to what it clearly sees as a big Compliance win, ahead of its public meeting in Prague later this month, at which abuse will no doubt, as usual, be a key discussion topic.

ICANN said that it has been working with .TOP for months to put in systems aimed at reducing the abuse of .top domains. It posted:

.TOP Registry expressed its commitment to maintaining compliance with the DNS Abuse obligations and continuously strengthening its abuse detection and mitigation processes through newly established collaboration channels and a structured approach designed to drive ongoing enhancement. ICANN Compliance acknowledged that the remedial measures were sufficient to cure the Notice of Breach. We noted that future violations of these requirements will result in expedited compliance action, up to and including the issuance of additional Notices of Breach.

Compliance had hit .TOP with the breach notice last year over allegations that it repeatedly ignored abuse reports submitted by security researchers, and that it was ignoring Uniform Rapid Suspension notices.

Security outfit URLAbuse later revealed it was the party that had reported .TOP to ICANN.

.TOP is a Chinese registry that sells mainly via Chinese registrars, typically at under a couple bucks retail. A non-scientific perusal of its zone files reveals that the majority of the many thousands of domains it sells every day are nothing but disposable junk — random strings of characters with no meaning in any language.

While .top is far from alone in that regard, it is the most successful at the abuse-attractive low-price-high-volume business model. Its zone grew by almost 1.2 million domains in the last 12 months — the biggest growth spurt of any TLD — and it has just shy of four million domains today.

Despite this implausibly rapid growth, ICANN says that abuse reports for .top domains started falling in April and there has been a “noticeable decrease in reported abuse”.

The Org says it will “actively monitor the effectiveness of these new [.TOP] systems and processes, the Registry Operator’s abuse rankings and their compliance with the requirements.”

The registry has told ICANN it has already “mitigated” over 100,000 abusive domain names with its new systems and processes.

1 Comment Tagged: .top, .top registry, breach, compliance, dns abuse, ICANN

Court denies ICANN’s #MeToo “cover up” attempt

A Los Angeles court has ruled against ICANN’s attempt to have a former employee’s sexual harassment lawsuit against it thrown out, which the plaintiff claims was an attempt to “silence” her.

Tanzanica King, one of ICANN’s longest-serving employees, sued ICANN last August, claiming that had been repeatedly sexually harassed by her superior and others, as well as being paid less than male counterparts and passed over for promotions.

She was ultimately let go in ICANN’s round of layoffs last year. King, who has given her consent to be named in this reporting, claims that she was fired for becoming a whistleblower.

ICANN’s response to the suit was to point out that King’s employment contract, signed in 2002, requires her to take all disagreements to arbitration, rather than the courts, so the case should be dismissed.

But a US Federal law signed onto the statute books in 2023 in the wake of the #MeToo movement — the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (EFAA) — says that employees cannot be forced into arbitration.

ICANN argued, according to the court’s ruling (pdf) that the EFAA did not apply and local California state arbitration law should apply instead, but the judge disagreed.

The Superior Court in LA last week ruled, following precedent from Casey v. Superior Court last year:

The EFAA prohibits enforcing arbitration agreements against persons who allege sexual harassment… The EFAA applies to any dispute arising or accruing on or after the enactment of the act, May 2022

King’s lawyer, Jonathan Delshad, said in a statement:

ICANN tried to silence Ms. King and suppress the truth behind the secret walls of arbitration. This ruling affirms her right to tell her story in a public forum so that all can see what ICANN did to her. The Court’s decision makes clear that companies cannot use California law to escape accountability for sexual harassment and retaliation and make an end around the EFAA.

A trial date in July 2027 (not a typo) has been set.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, sexual harassment

Launch dates for two more Amazon gTLDs revealed

Fresh from the launch of .free, .hot and .spot, Amazon has pencilled in launch dates for two more of its backlog of dormant gTLDs.

The company has told ICANN it plans to launch .talk and .fast later this year, with sunrise coming in August.

It also seems to be planning to start using .audible, one of its dot-brands, but that would not be available for public registration.

.fast and .talk are set to enter their sunrise periods from August 26 to September 25 this year, according to ICANN documentation. General availability would follow immediately.

If Amazon follows the same playbook as it did with the three gTLDs it launched last month, there would also be a five-day Early Access Period, with premium prices for early adopters.

The May launches have yet to set the world alight, perhaps in part due to their pricing (ranging from $30 to $60 retail), with best-performer .free’s zone file containing just 1,150 domains so far.

Comment Tagged: .fast, .talk, amazon