First .post domains going live

After entering the DNS root in August, the .post gTLD has started accepting its first registrations.
The Italian postal service is one of the first web sites with a .post address to go live, according to the Universal Postal Union, the registry manager.
Its site at posteitaliane.post appears to be more than just a mirror of its main .it site.
The postal services from Malaysia and Brazil have also signed up, according to the UPU.
The UPU has grand plans for the gTLD, promising a “global track and trace application” that will “enable customers to track the items they have ordered until final delivery.”

CoCCA withdraws from APTLD over support for AusRegistry “monopoly”

Registry services provider CoCCA has pulled out of the Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Association after APTLD gave support to AusRegistry in its campaign to continue to run .au.
The company claims that APTLD — the Hong Kong-based association of ccTLD operators from the region — backed AusRegistry because AusRegistry is one of its largest donors.
The allegations center on a consultation run by AuDA, the policy overseer for Australia’s .au domain.
AuDA is currently deciding whether to renegotiate AusRegistry’s longstanding registry back-end contract — which is its preferred option — or open it up to public tender.
Draft recommendations published for comment last month suggest that the contract should remain with AusRegistry when it expires in 2014, albeit with renegotiated terms.
CoCCA is mad with APTLD for submitting a comment in support of these recommendations without first consulting its membership, suspecting AusRegistry’s sponsorship of APTLD might have something to do with it.
(October 24 Update: APTLD has submitted a revised comment here. The original submission can be found here.)
In an email to APTLD last week, CoCCA director Garth Miller said:

That AusRegistry, a large for-profit company that is an associate member of APTLD can simply make a phone call to a board member and get the board to make a public submission on behalf of all members that a scheduled public tender be cancelled and AusRegistry be awarded the contract – worth as much as several hundred million dollars, because they have made substantial contributions to the APLTD in the past and are likely to do so in the future if awarded the contract is, in my view, disturbing.

CoCCA, which already provides registry services for a few ccTLDs in the region and runs the .cx (Christmas Island) ccTLD, reckons the .au back-end contract should be opened to competitive bidding.
Judging by the other submissions to AuDA’s consultation, which are published here, it’s a minority view.
Every other comment — most of which were sent by .au registrars, even newcomers such as Go Daddy — supports the recommendation that AusRegistry should keep the deal.
And AusRegistry says that everything is above board. CEO Adrian Kinderis said in a statement sent to DI:

AusRegistry has been actively seeking acknowledgments and recommendations from valued partners and industry leaders over the past month. This included an approach to APTLD to seek a reference from them to acknowledge the positive industry engagement and continued support and participation of AusRegistry in the Asia Pacific domain name industry. APTLD responded positively to our request. AusRegistry has made no secret of such, and to suggest that clandestine calls have taken place is simply not true.

APTLD also denied that it has done anything wrong, though it does not appear to be denying that AusRegistry contributions may have played a part in its decision.
In a statement, APTLD told DI:

The allegation on APTLD must be a misunderstanding and is untrue. APTLD has no comments to make on the tendering process and whether a public tender should be conducted. APTLD does not have sufficient local knowledge to provide any constructive comments. All APTLD can provide is a reference for AusRegistry as an active and positive player in the domain name industry in the Asia Pacific region. Past contributions to APTLD is just one of the many factors when the Board considers whether to provide a reference to a particular member.

AusRegistry has been running the .au registry under contract with AuDA since 2001. It’s used its experience to launch ARI Registry Services, a pretty big player in the new gTLD back-end market.
Last time its .au deal was renegotiated, prices came down.

Here’s how Donuts wants to resolve its 158 new gTLD contention fights

Donuts is backing a private auction model designed and managed by Cramton Associates as its preferred solution for resolving its 158 new gTLD contention sets.
The proposals, spelled out by auction design expert Peter Cramton during private sessions with new gTLD applicants, caused a bit of a buzz — not all of it positive — at the ICANN meeting in Toronto last week.
But Donuts co-founder Jon Nevett told DI today that Cramton has addressed rivals’ concerns and that Donuts wants to handle as many of its contention sets as possible via private auction.
The idea is that private auctions will be faster and cheaper for applicants than the process set out by ICANN as the “last resort” method for resolving contention sets.
In the ICANN model, all of the proceeds of the auction would go to ICANN, to be distributed to worthy causes at a later date. But with a private auction, the winning bidder pays the losers.
This makes it more attractive to applicants, according to Donuts.
“The cost of losing an ICANN auction is greater than the cost of losing a private auction,” Nevett said. “If you lose an ICANN auction you get nothing, zero, you lose your asset.”
But with private auctions, “it doesn’t hurt as much to lose, so the theory is the second-place guys won’t stretch as much,” he said.
Cramton is a professor of economics at the University of Maryland. A long-time auction specialist, he’s been involved in designing processes for selling off wireless spectrum around the world.
For new gTLDs, Cramton proposes an “ascending clock” auction. At each stage, the price is increased by the auctioneer and the bidders/sellers can either commit to pay that amount or drop out.
The last man standing wins the gTLD, paying the amount that the second-highest bidder was willing to pay.
The money would be divided equally between all the losing applicants. According to Cramton, the advantage over proportional distribution is that it does not encourage applicants to over-bid, keeping costs down.
Cramton’s original plan, which left some applicants scratching their heads last week, was to run the auctions in the first quarter of 2013, before ICANN announces the results of Initial Evaluation.
That would mean that losing bidders would get a 70% refund of their ICANN application fee, which may be an attractive percentage in the case of low-value strings.
But it also means that an applicant could win an auction and later discover its application has been rejected. The other applicants would have withdrawn, so the gTLD would just disappear into the ether.
Judging by a series of videos shot last week and published on Cramton’s YouTube account, many applicants are in favor of running the auctions after IE results have been announced.
Another complaint expressed by Donuts’ competitors last week is Cramton’s “all or nothing” approach, in which Donuts’ rivals would have to commit to use the auctions for their entire portfolio of applications.
According to Nevett, that idea is no longer on the table.
“In the beginning he was discussing that it would have to be all your TLDs or none, and I think a lot of applicants told him that was unacceptable, so he changed his view,” he said.
The idea now is that the auctions would proceed on a TLD-by-TLD basis.
Given that winning bidders are giving money to their competitors, another concern is the ordering of the auctions. You don’t necessarily want to give your rivals a big wedge of cash they can use to out-bid you on the next lot.
The preferred solution here appears to be a simultaneous auction, with all the participating contention sets being resolved at the same time.
There was also a deal of suspicion in Toronto about whether Cramton would be biased towards Donuts, given that Donuts is responsible for finding Peter Cramton and introducing him to the gTLD program.
But Nevett said that Donuts has not contracted with Cramton. Peter Cramton showed up in Toronto on his own dime and has not required an up-front payment from Donuts, Nevett said.
“Every applicant has a veto on whether to participate, and it won’t happen unless every applicant wants to do it,” Nevett said. “Our incentive is to have an auction provider who is attractive to every applicant.”
“Our goal is to get as many applicants to participate in a private auction, so we need the auction to be designed in a way that is simple, fair and inclusive,” he said.
But there’s no denying that Donuts has a greater incentive than most to have a consolidated auction. By its own admission, it’s an eight-person operation without the manpower to negotiate 158 contention sets.
Cramton’s materials from last week’s Toronto sessions can be found at applicantauction.com or here.

Soon Verisign could sell .com domains direct

With little fanfare, ICANN last week formally approved new rules that could allow incumbent registry operators to own registrars that sell domains in their own gTLDs.
The policy would give the likes of Verisign, Neustar and Afilias the right to become affiliated with registrars that sell .com, .biz and .info names respectively.
These registries would have to sign up to the standard new gTLD registry agreement first, or submit to contract renegotiation in order to drop their current cross-ownership bans.
In either case, they would become bound by the new registry Code of Conduct, preventing them from offering preferential terms to their affiliated registrars.
The new rule came into effect following the ICANN board meeting on Thursday, at which this resolution was passed.
ICANN had already dropped cross-ownership restrictions for new gTLD registry operators, but held back from bringing in the same rules for incumbents due to concerns from competition authorities.
After exchanges of letters with the European Commission and US Department of Commerce, these concerns appear to have dried up, however. ICANN said in its resolution:

it appears that there is no longer any reason against extending the approved process to existing registry operators for their own TLDs.
This action will be an advantage for the ICANN community, as it will provide the opportunity for treating all registry operators equally with respect to cross-ownership restrictions.

Registries would have their requests for contract changes referred to competition authorities for comment before ICANN would approve them.
Based on previous comments, Verisign might have a struggle with respect to .com but the other incumbents might have an easier time renegotiating their deals.
Neustar has been particularly outspoken in its desire to get rid of the contractual language preventing it owning a .biz registrar, so we might see that company first to get into talks.
Both .biz and .info contracts are up for renewal before the end of the year.

Dengate Thrush quits TLDH

Peter Dengate Thrush, executive chairman of new gTLD portfolio applicant Top Level Domain Holdings, has decided to quit not much more than a year into the job.
According to a press release, Dengate Thrush will leave the company in January 2013, to be replaced by original chair Fred Krueger.
No reason for the departure was given.
When he joined TLDH, his share option package envisaged him sticking around until at least July 2014.
Dengate Thrush will continue to advise some of TLDH’s new gTLD applicant clients after he leaves, according to the press release.
His decision to join TLDH in July 2011, just a few weeks after helping to push through approval of the new gTLD program as ICANN’s chairman, was a nodal point in ICANN’s recent evolution.
It led directly to strict conflict of interest rules being put in place on ICANN’s board, which are now being criticized by some contracted parties for removing vital expertise from the board.
It also gave plenty of ammunition to those who criticize ICANN for being too focused on enriching its insiders.
TLDH has applied for 70 gTLDs, and its Minds + Machines subsidiary is the named back-end provider for several more.

Original .web gTLD applicant sues ICANN

Image Online Design, which unsuccessfully applied for the .web gTLD all the way back in 2000, has sued ICANN, alleging trademark infringement and breach of contract.
IOD, which says it has over 20,000 .web domains under management in an alternate root, says ICANN never officially rejected its .web bid, and that it should not have allowed other companies to apply for it.
It’s looking for an injunction preventing ICANN awarding .web to any other company, as well as seeking ICANN’s “profits” resulting from the alleged infringement of its mark.
There are seven .web applicants in the current round, but IOD is not among them.
The company paid $50,000 for its application in 2000, but it’s not happy with the $86,000 discount ICANN offered 2000-round applicants on their $185,000 fees if they wanted to resubmit their applications.
The IOD complaint claims:

Allowing other entities to file applications for a .web TLD while IOD’s .WEB TLD application was still pending is improper, unlawful and inequitable.

The complaint cites the November 2000 ICANN meeting in Marina Del Rey, during which the first proof-of-concept gTLDs were approved by ICANN’s board of directors.
It notes that then-chair Vint Cerf steered the board away from approving .web applications filed by Afilias and others because IOD was already operating .web in an alternate root at the time.
You can watch a video of that meeting here.
The complaint also alleges tenuous conflicts of interest between two .web applicants (Afilias and Google) and members of ICANN’s board of directors (current chair and vice-chair Steve Crocker and Bruce Tonkin in the case of Afilias, and long-gone chair Vint Cerf in the case of Google).
The suit comes just a few days after IOD’s fellow 2000 applicant and alternate root player, Name.Space, sued ICANN on similar grounds, trying to prevent 189 gTLDs being approved.
Here’s the IOD complaint.

Company files for injunction against 189 new gTLDs

Alternate root player Name.Space has sued ICANN for trademark infringement and anti-competitive behavior, saying “insiders” have conspired to keep it out of the new gTLD program.
If successful, the suit would prevent dozens of new gTLD applicants from having their applications approved.
The lawsuit, filed in California this week, follows a warning the company fired at ICANN this March.
While only ICANN is named as a defendant, the suit alleges that the new gTLD program was crafted by and is dominated by “ICANN insiders” and “industry titans”.
It wants an injunction preventing ICANN delegating any of the 189 gTLD strings that it claims it has rights to.
It also fingers several current and former ICANN directors, including current and former chairs Steve Crocker and Peter Dengate Thrush, over their alleged conflicts of interest.
Name.Space has been operating 482 diverse TLDs — such as .news, .sucks, and .mail — in a lightly used alternate root system since 1996.
Most people can’t access these zones and are unaware that they exist.
The company applied to have 118 of these strings added to the root in ICANN’s “proof of concept” gTLD expansion in 2000, when the application fee was $50,000, but was unsuccessful.
Now, the company claims the new gTLD program is “an attack on name.space’s business model and a mean by which to create and maintain market power in the TLD markets”.
The complaint (pdf) states:

Rather than adopting a procedure to account for the pending 2000 Application and facilitate the expansion of TLD providers in the DNS, ICANN has adopted a procedure so complex and expensive that it once again effectively prohibited newcomers from competing. It instead has permitted participation solely by ICANN insiders and industry titans.

If it had applied for all 118 again in this year’s round, it would have cost almost $22 million (though it would have qualified for an $83,000 discount on a single bid).
Name.Space is asking for damages and an injunction preventing ICANN from approving 189 gTLDs that match those it currently operates in its alternate root.
The full list of affected applications is attached to the complaint.

Nominet chair rebuts “skewed and inaccurate” whistleblower claims

Nominet chair Baroness Rennie Fritchie has apologized for “embarrassment” caused by leaked emails that suggested Nominet and UK officials tried to avoid freedom of information laws.
But she has rebutted allegations that Nominet executives conspired to orchestrate a government takeover of the .uk namespace during a fractious board dispute back in 2008.
In a statement to Nominet members today, Fritchie said she has conducted a “fact-finding review” of the allegations and had “concluded that Nominet did not manufacture Government concern.”
As we reported a month ago, former policy director Emily Taylor made a number of claims about Nominet’s actions in 2008, when executives perceived a threat to control of the board by certain vocal domainers.
In order to ensure a friendlier board, Nominet approached the UK government for help, according to Taylor.
This led to an independent review, a restructuring of Nominet’s board, and powers for the government to take over the running of .uk being included in the Digital Economy Act of 2010.
Nominet has maintained, and Fritchie now says she has confirmed, that the concerns originated with the government, BT and the Confederation of British Industry, and not the other way around.
Fritchie wrote:

we have been extremely disappointed to see that correspondence from a troubled time in Nominet’s history has led to a skewed and inaccurate interpretation of events.
…
Having personally considered all available evidence, I have concluded that Nominet did not manufacture Government concern. There were longstanding issues, and the failure to win support for the proposed improvements in our governance at the AGM in 2008 was the catalyst that put Nominet’s problems firmly in the spotlight.
I have also been reassured that the concerns raised by CBI and BT representatives immediately following the 2008 AGM were not concocted by Nominet.

It also emerged last month that UK government officials and Nominet executives had been communicating via private email accounts, apparently in order to avoid Freedom of Information Act requirements.
One Nominet email from 2008 provided to DI signed off with “It feels wonderful to work free from fear of FOI !!”
It is for this email that Fritchie appears to be apologizing. She wrote:

We would however like to apologise for the embarrassment caused to members by an inappropriate suggestion, made in an email from a Nominet employee, that information could or should be deleted by officials to avoid an anticipated Freedom of Information request. This was a misguided attempt to ensure that open and honest conversations about how to secure the membership model of Nominet could take place, without being inappropriately influenced by those with vested interests. I would like to assure members that this was the result of troubled times, and is not at all representative of the way that Nominet operates.

The message was posted to Nominet’s members-only forum this afternoon.
The story may not be over yet, however.
Last month, Andrew Smith, Member of Parliament for Nominet’s home town of Oxford, told DI that he had referred Taylor’s freedom of information claims to Head of the Home Civil Service and the Chair of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.
“These are very serious matters and it is important they are properly investigated,” he said.

Directi to relaunch .pw as an open TLD

Directi will soon relaunch .pw, the ccTLD for the tiny Micronesian nation of Palau, as an open pseudo-gTLD.
The official launch of the registry will happen at the ICANN meeting in Toronto next week, according to Directi CEO Bhavin Turakhia, with a sunrise period kicking off in December.
It’s the first TLD for which Directi — an applicant for 30 new gTLDs as well as a top-ten registrar — will act as the registry.
The company will brand the offering around the retroactive acronym “Professional Web”.
Turakhia hopes success will come from a combination of low cost — registry fees are not yet finalized, but will be sub-.com, he said — and the fact that .pw is mostly virgin territory.
“It’s a pretty good pricing model,” he said. “We’re making sure that people have access to desirable names at an affordable cost.”
The company plans to run .pw “exactly like a gTLD”, with standard sunrise, landrush and registration lifecycle policies. It will even adopt the UDRP, Turakhia said.
CentralNic, which already runs subdomain services such as .gb.com and .us.com, has been hired to run the back-end, despite the fact that Directi is using ARI Registry Services for its gTLD bids.
Sunrise is expected to start in early December and run for about 70 days. Landrush will run for a month, starting in February 2013. Pricing has yet to be finalized.
Directi is currently looking for registrars to sell the domains, above and beyond its own network of registrars.
Directi obtained the exclusive license to .pw about four years ago via EnCirca, the registrar that attempted to relaunch .pw under the “Personal Web” slogan in 2004.
The company originally planned to use the second level as a bundled service to tie in with a social networking slash instant messaging product that it was working on, but those plans have changed.
As a result .pw hasn’t been accepting registrations for a while.
Palau is a Pacific island nation with only about 20,000 citizens. As such, .pw doesn’t have a great many legacy registrations.
One such registration is pay.pw, which Directi is using for a payment gateway service.
Turakhia said that six second-level domains have been reserved for Palau’s use: co.pw, ne.pw, or.pw, ed.pw, go.pw and belau.pw. No other two-letter domains will be available.

.cialis and .chatr new gTLD bids dumped

Two more new gTLD applications have been formally withdrawn.
ELi Lilly & Co has dropped its bid for .cialis and Rogers Communications has withdrawn its .chatr application.
Both were dot-brand applications — Cialis is a drug and Chatr is a Canadian wireless company — and neither was contested, though there are four applications for the very similar .chat.
This makes a total of six dead bids, following Google’s withdrawal of .est, .and and .are and German pump-maker KSB withdrew its dot-brand .ksb.
From ICANN’s statements, we know that there’s at least one other bid that is in the process of being withdrawn, but its identity is not yet known.