Twitter and Justin Timberlake targeted by This.sucks
This.sucks, a company with close ties to .sucks registry Vox Populi, has started registering domain names matching famous brands to itself.
Twitter, along with singer Justin Timberlake, software maker Adobe and investment bank Goldman Sachs all saw their matching .sucks domains registered by This.sucks on Friday, according to the .sucks zone file and Whois queries.
The domains twitter.sucks, goldmansachs.sucks, justintimberlake.sucks and adobe.sucks currently resolve in browsers, but only to a password-protected web site.
New York-based This.sucks says its service is in beta. It plans to give 10,000 .sucks domains away for free, and to sell them for as little as $12 per year. Its business model has not been revealed.
That’s a deep discount from their regular $250 suggested retail price, which rises to $2,500 for domains matching famous brands.
Technically, the company should have just paid around $10,000 for the four brand-matching domains it has just registered.
But it is broadly suspected that This.sucks shares ownership with Vox Populi, the .sucks registry operator, which would make this a case of the right hand paying the left.
As we uncovered in October, Vox Populi originally hosted This.sucks’ web sites and the CEO of Momentous, which founded Vox Pop, paid for its web site to be developed.
The two companies also share a physical address and a Cayman Islands lawyer.
Vox Pop has denied any involvement in This.sucks, saying it’s just another customer.
It will be interesting to see how long it takes for one of the four affected brands to file a UDRP or URS complaint on these new domains.
As far as I can tell, the .sucks namespace currently has an unblemished UDRP record.
Unlike rival Top Level Spectrum, which runs .feedback, neither Vox Pop nor This.sucks has revealed any plans to use brands belonging to third parties as part of their services.
TLS has said it plans to sell 5,000 branded .feedback domains to a third party after its sunrise period ends next month.
It has already registered fox.feedback to itself as one of its special 100-domain pre-sunrise registry allowance.
Since we last reported on .feedback a month ago, the registry appears to have also registered the names of all the current US presidential candidates — such as donaldtrump.feedback and hillaryclinton.feedback — to itself.
The sites are all live, as is santaclaus.feedback, which seeks commentary on the “fictional” character.
Former ICANN director Blokzijl dies at 72
Rob Blokzijl, a former ICANN director widely acknowledged as an internet pioneer, died last week at the age of 72.
He passed away December 1, according to RIPE.
Blokzijl, a citizen of the Netherlands, was one of the founders of RIPE NCC, the European IP address registry and the first of the internet’s Regional Internet Registries, in 1989.
He was chair of the organization for 25 years until his retirement in 2013. He then held the title of Chair Emeritus.
RIPE said in a statement:
To many of us in the RIPE community and beyond, Rob was a mentor, a friend, a trusted confidante and always the voice of reason. His legacy stretches from the physical networks the Internet is made of to the community he built and the wisdom he injected into that community’s make-up from the very beginning. His legacy will continue to be felt as the community continues to grow and its participants often ask themselves, “What would Rob do?”
Blokzijl also sat on the board of ICANN, representing the Address Supporting Organization, from 1999 to 2002.
ICANN’s board passed a resolution in his memory last week, stating:
He was a gentle man who radiated warmth and optimism, while working constructively in the Netherlands, in Europe and, indeed, throughout the world to foster the development of the Internet.
Blokzijl was made Officer in the Order of Oranje-Nassau — a title awarded by the Dutch monarchy — in 2010 for his contributions to the internet.
Almost 200 people have left tributes on the RIPE web site.
Foot-dragging Amazon has bumper crop of new gTLDs
Amazon Registry Services took possession of 17 new gTLDs at the weekend.
The would-be portfolio registry had .author, .book, .bot, .buy, .call, .circle, .fast, .got, .jot, .joy, .like, .pin, .read, .room, .safe, .smile and .zero delegated to the DNS root zone.
Amazon seems to have waited until the last possible moment to have the strings delegated.
It signed its registry agreements — which state the TLDs must be delegated with a year — in mid-December 2014.
Don’t plan on being able to register domains in any of these gTLDs. You may be disappointed.
All of the strings were originally applied for as what became known as “closed generics”, in which Amazon would have been the only permitted registrant.
It recanted this proposed policy in early 2014, formally amending its applications to avoid the Governmental Advisory Committee’s anti-closed-generic advice.
Its registry contracts do not have the standard dot-brand carve-outs.
However, the latest versions of its applications strongly suggest that registrant eligibility is going to be pretty tightly controlled.
The applications state: “The mission of the <.TLD> registry is: To provide a unique and dedicated platform while simultaneously protecting the integrity of Amazon’s brand and reputation.”
They go on to say:
Amazon intends to initially provision a relatively small number of domains in the .CIRCLE registry to support the goals of the TLD… Applications from eligible requestors for domains in the .CIRCLE registry will be considered by Amazon’s Intellectual Property group on a first come first served basis and allocated in line with the goals of the TLD.
They state “domains in our registry will be registered by Amazon and eligible trusted third parties”.
Amazon has not yet published its TLD start-up information, which may provide more clarity on how the company intends to handle these strings.
I suspect we’ll be looking at a policy that amounts to a workaround of the closed-generic ban.
The registry seems to be planning to run its registry from AmazonRegistry.com.
Schilling: registries could wind-down unprofitable gTLDs
New gTLD portfolio registries may one day decide to wind down some of their gTLDs if they fail to reach profitability.
That’s according to Uniregistry CEO Frank Schilling, who told DI today that registries may “sunset” under-performing TLDs.
His comments came in response to our post earlier today about registries going out of business involuntarily due to lack of sales.
But he’s referring to registries managing large numbers of strings, winding down the unprofitable ones in a controlled manner.
“I can’t see Uniregistry doing that today, but if in round two we get 100 strings that all kill it and we have some round one stuff that sucks, yes,” he said in an email. “I would consider raising prices to get the string profitable or sunset the string.”
“That said,” he added, “that’s 5-8 years out [and] by then even the slowest should be profitable.”
ICANN security advisor predicts “hundreds” of new gTLDs will “go dark”
A security company led by a member of ICANN’s top security committee reckons that “hundreds” of new gTLDs are set to fail, leading to web sites “going dark”.
Internet Identity, which provides threat data services, made the prediction in a press release this week.
IID’s CTO, quoted in the release, is Rod Rasmussen. He’s a leading member of the Anti-Phishing Working Group, as well as a member of ICANN’s influential Security and Stability Advisory Committee.
He has a dim view of new gTLDs:
Most new gTLDs have failed to take off and many have already been riddled with so many fraudulent and junk registrations that they are being blocked wholesale. This will eventually cause ripple effects on the entire domain registration ecosystem, including consolidation and mass consumer confusion as unprofitable TLDs are dropped by their sponsoring registries.
The press release acknowledges that ICANN has an Emergency Back-End Registry Operator (EBERO) program, which will keep failing gTLDs alive for up to three years after the original registry operator goes out of business.
But it continues:
questions abound as to who would risk an investment in poorly performing TLDs, especially as they start to number in the hundreds. “That’s why eventually some are going to just plain go dark,” added Rasmussen.
The prediction is for “2017 and beyond”. Given the existence of the EBERO, we’re probably looking at 2020 before IID’s claim can be tested.
It’s a bit of a strange prediction to come out of a security company.
The whole point of EBERO is to make sure domain names do not go dark, giving either the registry the chance to sell on the gTLD or the registrants a three-year heads-up that they need to migrate to a different TLD.
It would be a bit like being told that there’s a horrible bit of malware that is set to brick your computer, but that you’ll be fine if you change your anti-virus provider in the next three years.
I could live with that kind of security threat, personally.
But what are the chances of hundreds of live, non-dot-brand going fully post-EBERO dead in the next few years?
I’d say evidence to date shows the risk may be over-stated. It may happen to a small number of TLDs, but to “hundreds”?
We’ve already seen new gTLD registries essentially fail, and they’ve been taken over by others even when they’re by definition not profitable.
Notably, .hiv — which has a contractual agreement with ICANN to not turn a profit — failed and was nevertheless acquired by Uniregistry.
We also see registries including Afilias and Donuts actively searching for failing gTLDs to acquire.
Complaints over 50% .uk price hike
.uk registrars are petitioning Nominet to complain about plans to increase the price of a .uk domain name by up to 50%.
The registry announced the price increase, which will come into effect March 1 next year, on Wednesday.
A one-year registration will go up to £3.75 ($5.65) wholesale, still cheaper than any gTLD I can think of.
Currently, Nominet charges £3.50 for a one-year reg and £2.50 per year for multi-year registrations.
The company heavily hinted, in an email, that some of this extra cash will wind up in registrars’ pockets, due to promotional spending:
Our new pricing strategy aims to accomplish three things. Firstly, as with any business the price we charge is linked to our ability to deliver a fantastic service. Secondly, we want to invest in the .UK namespace to ensure we can differentiate over the long-term. Thirdly, we want to be able to invest in marketing and promotions in order to secure prominence at point of sale – which our current pricing levels cannot support.
The price of a .uk domain has not increased since 1999, Nominet said.
Increasing the price from a posh coffee to a London beer is presumably not a big deal for most registrants, but domainer-registrars are unhappy.
Andrew Bennett of Netistrar has set up a web site at egm.uk to call for “outraged” registrants and Nominet members to voice their opposition to the changes.
The site points out that Nominet has said it will review its pricing annually.
It calls on Nominet to have a three-month public consultation then a member vote before introducing the changes.
At time of publication, 77 registrants and 47 Nominet members have signed the petition.
On its web site, Nominet lists 2,048 members.
Verisign warns about Chinese .com boom
Verisign has warned investors that the current boom in .com sales is largely coming from Chinese domainers and may not be sustainable.
The company has added an unprecedented 4.1 million domain in .com and .net so far during the fourth quarter.
“While there continues to be demand for domain names globally, the recent increased volume for Verisign’s top level domains, as well as top level domains of other registries, during the fourth quarter is coming largely through registrars in China,” the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
It listed several factors that are likely responsible for the sudden uptick, but warned that renewal rates are typically not great.
In the past, Verisign has discussed many factors that affect the demand for domain names, including, but not limited to economic, social, and regulatory conditions, Internet adoption, Internet penetration, and increasing e-commerce. In addition to these factors affecting demand, Verisign is also evaluating additional potential factors unique to China that may also be responsible for the recent increased volume of new registrations in China.
In no particular order, these potential factors, or combination of factors, could include, but may not be limited to, government initiatives in China to develop their online economy such as ‘Internet Plus;’ registry and registrar regulatory requirements; cultural influences such as the popularity of numeric domain names; increasing competition amongst Chinese registrars; potential increases in domain name investment activity; and recent capital markets volatility and access to capital in China.
Verisign cannot predict if or how long this increased pace of gross additions will continue and we cannot at this time predict what the renewal rate for these domain names will be. Verisign has noted in the past that renewal rates for domain names registered in emerging markets, such as China, have historically been lower than those registered in more developed markets.
It’s difficult to imagine that Chinese investors have managed to find four million unregistered domains worth keeping.
There are currently 123,497,852 domains in the .com zone file, according to Verisign’s web site.
Verisign is not the only registry that appears to be benefiting from a deluge of registrations from China.
XYZ.com has seen over 440,000 domains added to its .xyz zone file in the last three weeks, bringing its total to over 1.5 million, which appear to be largely coming through Chinese registrars.
Verisign v XYZ judge confirms both companies suck
Verisign and XYZ.com have both come out of a US lawsuit looking like scumbags.
Explaining his dismissal of Verisign’s false advertising lawsuit against .xyz registry XYZ.com, Virginia judge Claude Hilton today said that XYZ.com’s statements about its registration numbers were “verifiably true”.
At the same time, he confirmed that they came about as a result of a bullshit deal with Network Solutions to bolster .xyz’s launch numbers.
The judge’s ruling confirms for the first time the financial details of the deal between XYZ and Web.com (Network Solutions) that saw .xyz’s registration volume rocket in its first few weeks of general availability. He wrote:
Web.com purchased 375,000 domain names for a price of $8 each totaling $3 million dollars. In exchange, XYZ purchased advertising from Web.com in the form of 1,000 impressions for $10 each, at a total cost of $3 million dollars. Instead of cash exchanging hands, advertising credit was given to XYZ and the .xyz domain names were given to Web.com, who subsequently gave them away as free trials to their subscribers.
In other words, XYZ bought $10,000 of advertising for $3 million and paid for it with $3 million of free .xyz domains — 375,000 of them.
That bogus deal enabled XYZ to report big reg volume numbers without actually, legally, lying,
“The statements regarding Defendants’ revenue and number of registrations are statements of fact that are verifiably true,” the judge wrote.
When the Defendants [XYZ.com] stated they were a market leader in new TLD’s and that they had the most new registrations than any other TLD, they were basing that information off of an accurate zone file. Further, the zone file confirms that there are over 120 million .com registrations and one {1) million .xyz registrations. These statements are also true.
The judge said he was dismissing the suit not just because XYZ wasn’t lying, but also because Verisign couldn’t show that it had been harmed.
The number of .com registrations has actually been going up, he noted.
Much of Verisign’s complaint centered on this ad:
Verisign said the ad lied about the availability of .com domains, which XYZ denied.
The judge said:
The video posted to YouTube is puffery and opinion. It displays no actual domain names, and communicates a subjective measure of value and superiority, not capable of being proven false.
“Puffery” is a term with legal weight in false advertising cases under US law. It basically means that advertisers are allowed to exaggerate. XYZ had in fact used the “puffery” defense.
The judge seems to have relied heavily on zone file analysis to reach his conclusions. He wrote.
according to Plaintiff’s [Verisign’s] own data, .com names are largely unavailable. In a given month, Plaintiff reports that it receives about two (2) billion requests to register <.com> domain names, yet fewer than three (3) million are actually registered.
I believe that “two billion” number refers to how many “attempted adds” Verisign gets every month for .com domains, as reported in its monthly reports with ICANN.
That number would include every automated attempt to register a dropping domain by every registrar.
It’s not a reflection of how many actual human beings attempt and fail to register .com domains and, in my view, it’s worrying that the judge took it to mean that.
In summary, the lawsuit managed to unearth the dirty reality behind XYZ’s launch “success”, whilst also making Verisign look like a petty, petulant, child.
Everybody loses.
Except the lawyers, obviously, who have been paid millions.
ICANN reveals 12 more data breaches
Twelve more new gTLD applicants have been found to have exploited a glitch in ICANN’s new gTLD portal to view fellow applicants’ data.
ICANN said last night that it has determined that all 12 access incidents were “inadvertent” and did not disclose personally identifiable information.
The revelation follows an investigation that started in April this year.
ICANN said in a statement:
in addition to the previous disclosures, 12 user credentials were used to access contact information from eight registry operators. Based on the information collected during the investigation it appears that contact information for registry operators was accessed inadvertently. ICANN also concluded that the exposed registry contact information does not appear to contain sensitive personally identifiable information. Each of the affected parties has been notified of the data exposure.
The glitch in question was a misconfiguration of a portal used by gTLD applicants to file and view their documents.
It was possible to use the portal’s search function to view attachments belonging to other applicants, including competing applicants for the same string.
Donuts said in June that the prices it was willing to pay at auction for gTLD string could have been inferred from the compromised data.
ICANN told compromised users in May that the only incidents of non-accidental data access could be traced to the account of Dirk Krischenowski, CEO of dotBerlin.
Krischenowski has denied any wrongdoing.
ICANN said last night that its investigation is now over.
English beats Portuguese in $2.2m .hotels auction
Booking.com has won the right to operate .hotels after an auction concluded a protracted fight over the gTLD.
In an ICANN-run auction yesterday, Booking.com prevailed with a winning bid of $2.2 million.
Its sole competitors was Travel Reservations (formerly Despegar Online), which had applied for the Portuguese word .hoteis.
In 2012, a String Similarity Review panel concluded that .hotels and .hoteis look too similar to coexist, due to the likelihood of confusion between I and l in sans-serif fonts.
Neither applicant agreed with that decision, knowing that it would result in a expensive auction, and Booking.com filed a Request for Reconsideration and then, in March 2013, an Independent Review Process complaint.
After two years, it lost the IRP. But the panel said it had “legitimate concerns” about the fairness of the SSR process and ordered ICANN to pay half of its costs.
Now, Booking.com has had to fork out another $2.2 million for the string.
That’s not particularly expensive as ICANN-auctioned gTLDs go. Eight of the 13 other strings ICANN has auctioned have sold for more.
ICANN’s auction proceeds to date now stands at $63,489,127, which is being held in a separate bank account for purposes yet to be determined.
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