Recent Posts
- US not happy with Donuts hiring Atallah
- ICANN denies it’s in bed with trademark lawyers
- ICANN 63, Day 0 — registrars bollock DI as Whois debate kicks off
- Registrars still not responding to private Whois requests
- Book review — “Domain Names: Strategies and Legal Aspects”
- Co-founder Nevett leaves Donuts
- The internet is still working after KSK roll
- Donuts loses to ICANN in $135 million .web auction appeal
- ICANN says it can spend quarter-billion-dollar auction fund however it likes
- Google abandons its .kid gTLD bid
- ICANN number two Atallah is new CEO of Donuts
- ICANN blocks .islam after government veto
- Nominet to donate over $260,000 to Children In Need
- CentralNic buys .fans for peanuts
- Is auDA’s new marketing windfall working?
- Google adds censorship workaround to Android devices
- Spammy .loan makes Alibaba fastest-growing and fastest-shrinking registrar in June
- Here’s what ICANN’s boss is saying about Whois access now
- Parsons quits GoDaddy board
- Brazil dancing around four million reg milestone
- Donuts says DPML now covers “millions” of trademark variants as price rockets again
- Chinese registrars on the decline
- $3.2 million-a-year registrar up for grabs
- It’s Drazek vs Dammak for GNSO Council chair
- Cloudflare selling all domains at cost: “All we’re doing is pinging an API”
- MMX waving goodbye to .london? Boss puts focus on renewal profits, China
- Emoji domains now easier to use
- Chutzpah alert! DotKids wants ICANN handout to fight gTLD auction
- Afilias gets Guinness record for .au migration
- KSK vote was NOT unanimous
- ICANN turns 20 today (or maybe not)
- Van der Laan to leave ICANN board
- Set buttocks to clench! ICANN approves risky KSK rollover
- Mediators hired as Whois reformers butt heads
- US scraps fucking stupid “seven dirty words” ban
- Beginning of the end for DomainTools? Court orders it to scrub Whois records
- PIR chief: registries should stop stressing about volume
- .CLUB sees spam double after China promotion
- Com Laude acquires Scottish rival
- CentralNic acquired yet another company
- Empty Whois a threat to the US elections?
- Donuts gets bought by former ICANN CEO’s firm
- .tel’s second-biggest registrar gets canned
- Whois privacy did NOT increase spam volumes
- Afilias finally admits it’s American
- Could a new US law make GDPR irrelevant?
- No more free ride for ICANN Fellows?
- Afilias sues India to block $12 million Neustar back-end deal
- More consolidation? Endurance said to be up for sale
- ICANN faces critical choice as security experts warn against key rollover
.baby and .mls fetch over $3 million each
ICANN and Power Auctions have completed December’s mini-batch of “last resort” new gTLD auctions, adding a total of $6.4 million to its mysterious auction cash pile.
Johnson & Johnson won .baby, fighting off five portfolio applicants and paying a winning bid of $3,088,888.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Real Estate Association beat Afilias to .mls, paying $3,359,000.
I called it for CREA earlier this week, noting that the organization wanted .mls enough that it filed two applications, a failed Community Priority Evaluation, and an unsuccessful Legal Rights Objection against Afilias.
ICANN has now raised over $34 million selling off 10 strings at last resort auctions, with prices ranging from $600,000 (.信息) to $6.7 million (.tech).
The money has been set aside for purposes currently undecided. At least one applicant wants ICANN to redistribute the cash to losing bidders, which I don’t think is particularly likely.
Since MLS also stands for major league soccer, will this extension also be limited to members of the real estate community like .realtor, or will it be open others?
ICANN should allocated the majority of the money to support all of the new domain extensions coming to market via an international awareness campaign.
To simply take high application fees and annual fees, institute overbearing regulations, and cause costly delays would be a disservice to the whole program.
If ICANN truly wants to support innovation and competition in the name space they need to let the world know that the new domain extensions exist. Ironically, if they invested the funds to support the new TLDs it would actually support their longterm revenue streams.
Could only agree with you about this. ICANN’s actions seems very defensive, I wonder why.
It was not just CREA behind .mls:
http://realtormag.realtor.org/daily-news/2014/12/19/mls-domain-expand-internet-real-estate
https://twitter.com/dotmls/status/546027510627336192
“.MLS domains will NOT be available for real estate use within the U.S. under deal among @dotMLS, NAR, and CREA”
So, thru 3 different applicants, NAR secured .realestate, .mls and .realtor, and decided which TLD serves which market.
And here I just made a year-end tax-deductible donation to the campaign to fight MLS.
Doh!