Japan gets two new geo TLD projects

BusinessRalliart, a Japanese technology company, has announced that it plans to apply for two geographic top-level domains covering the prefecture of Okinawa.
According to a few local news reports, the two proposed TLDs are .okinawa and .ryukyu, covering the names of the region and the islands themselves.
It’s not entirely clear from the articles whether the company will also apply for the Japanese-script equivalents.
What’s particularly interesting is the fact that, according to a translation provided by UrbanBrain, the investors in the project are reportedly a car rental firm and a restaurant chain.
I’m speculating, but it seems likely that these investors will get some premium domain name real estate under these TLDs as part of the deal.
I’m expecting to see quite a few of these kinds of relationships emerging in the first round of new TLD applications – getting an investor and an anchor tenant on board in one deal makes good sense for a limited community or geographic TLD.

Nic.at strikes .hamburg deal

Hamburg Top-Level-Domain GmbH, a potential bidder for the .hamburg top-level domain, has headed across the border into Austria for its registry services provider.
The company has signed up to use Nic.at, currently the registry for the .at country-code TLD, according to a press release.
The initiative appears to be looking for money at the moment.
dotHamburg’s chief executive Oliver Süme said: “The knowledge that the technical side of things is in safe hands is an important criteria for potential investors looking to invest in .hamburg.”
The company will also need to secure the support of Hamburg’s local government, given the recent changes to ICANN’s Applicant Guidebook.

Governments get .xxx wish-list

National governments have been given the chance to block “words of cultural and/or religious significance” from the forthcoming .xxx top-level domain.
ICM Registry has told ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee that its members have until the end of July to provide lists of names they want banning from the .xxx namespace.
The GAC is due to meet during ICANN’s meeting in Singapore next Tuesday to discuss an “ICM Registry Request”, which is believed to be said block-list.
Approved strings would be marked as reserved and would resolve to a standard placeholder page. Unlike trademark holders, governments will not be required to pay a fee.
Strings in non-Latin alphabets will not yet be supported, according to ICM, but governments are allowed to submit them anyway, for future reference.
ICM will decide which strings make it to the list, but I can’t see it refusing reasonable requests — pissing off governments probably wouldn’t be a wise move given that some of them already plan to block the whole TLD at their national borders.

Short .tel domains available tomorrow

Telnic has announced that two-letter and numeric-only .tel domain names will becomes available from tomorrow at 2pm UTC.
You’ll be able to register any two-letter .tel domain that has not already been claimed in a two-week landrush period, which ends today, with the exception of combinations that match ccTLDs.
Numeric-only and numeric/hyphen domains are restricted to seven characters and under, in order to avoid clashes with telephone numbers.
The release of numeric .tel domains was the subject of a minor controversy when Telnic first made the request to ICANN last year.
Telnic said pricing is expected to be the same as regular .tel registrations – usually about the same price as a .com domain name.
A list of participating registrars can be found here.

M+M gets into bed with Neustar

Minds + Machines has committed to use Neustar’s registry services for some of its new top-level domain applications, the companies have announced.
M+M parent Top Level Domain Holdings said in a press release that the companies:

will work together exclusively in respect of all geographic gTLDs pursued by TLDH, apart from a short list of those already in progress. TLDH will oversee sales, marketing, registrar relations, ICANN compliance and other management functions, while Neustar will provide back-end registry and DNS services.

The deal may cover applications including .bayern, .berlin, and .mumbai, judging from the press release.
M+M will continue to use Espresso, its version of the CoCCA registry platform, for non-geo TLDs.
Under ICANN rules, geographical TLDs will require the support of the respective governments.
Reading between the lines, it appears that demand for proven scale and financial stability may have been the primary driver for the deal.
Neustar manages .us and biz, among others, while M+M has a far shorter track record. Neustar has annual revenue of over half a billion dollars, compared to TLDH’s approximately $100,000.

Second .music applicant is Demand Media partner

Far Further has come out as the second company to say it plans to apply to ICANN for the .music top-level domain.
It’s also, I believe, the first applicant to reveal that it has partnered with Demand Media registrar eNom for its back-end registry services.
Far Further is one of a number of likely applicants for .music. The only other applicant to go public to date is Constantine Roussos’ dotMusic.
The new company is headed by former Warner Music record producer Loren Balman, CEO, and former music journalist John Styll, president. Former PIR chief Alexa Raad of Architelos is advising.
Far Further says its .music will “provide the global music community a secure identifying Internet address that supports the promotion of music, the protection of intellectual property rights, and the advancement of global access to music education.”
It’s my belief that the successful .music applicant will be the one that can secure the support of organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America and its overseas counterparts.
The RIAA’s concerns about piracy spreading through .music domains, however misplaced, suggest that any other applicant is likely to find itself on the receiving end of objections, if not lawsuits.
Support from such organizations would also be critical to any bid that plans to invoke a Community Priority Evaluation — a trump card that well-supported applications can play in the ICANN process.
Perhaps the most interesting revelation about Far Further is the company’s selection of eNom, and its Shared Registry System, as its back-end technology services provider.
eNom is of course the world’s second-largest domain name registrar, with over 11 million domains under management, but it has yet to enter the registry services market.
There’s still a bit of a question mark over eNom’s ability to pass ICANN’s background checks, due to its UDRP losses, but this may not be a problem if it is merely the back-end provider, rather than the applicant itself.

ICANN hiring CSRs for new TLD program

ICANN has advertised for four new staff to support its new generic top-level domains program.
The organization is looking for three Lead Application Coordinators, to be based in Marina Del Rey, Hong Kong and Brussels, and one Application Coordinator for Marina Del Rey.
The roles are all fairly similar – essentially senior customer support representatives for new gTLD applicants. The lead positions require more than five years call center experience and a university degree.
With the number of applicants in the first round expected to be around the 400 mark, I think that’s a pretty solid ratio of CSRs to applicants, assuming the application process runs smoothly.
The hiring move is obviously a pretty strong indication that ICANN expects the new gTLD program to kick off fairly soon.
ICANN has also recently started advertising for a vice president of Europe, which I believe is a new position. It currently has 18 open positions in total, according to its hiring page.

Senior ICANN staffer hired by .bank project

Craig Schwartz, ICANN’s chief gTLD registry liaison, has been headhunted by BITS, the tech arm of the Financial Services Roundtable, to head up its .bank top-level domain application.
Schwartz will become BITS’ general manager of registry programs in early July, following the conclusion of the next ICANN meeting in Singapore.
BITS has yet to reveal the TLDs it plans to apply for, but .bank is the no-brainer. I understand it is also considering complementary strings, such as .finance and .insurance
The organization has already said that it plans to use VeriSign as its back-end registry services provider.
Schwartz is a five-year ICANN veteran, and his experience dealing with registries will no doubt be missed, particularly at a time when the number of gTLDs is set to expand dramatically.
His replacement will have plenty of time to settle into the role, however. The first new gTLDs approved under the program are not likely to go live until late 2012 at the earliest.

Final call for .xxx policy volunteers

The International Foundation For Online Responsibility, which will set policies for the .xxx top-level domain, has issued its final call for Policy Council volunteers.
The deadline for nominations for the nine PC seats has been set at July 5, and IFFOR plans to announce the successful candidates in late August.
Five of the seats are reserved for members of the porn industry. Another will represent privacy/security interests, one will be drawn from the world of child protection, and one will be a free speech advocate.
The final seat will be occupied by ICM Registry, the .xxx manager.
My understanding is that a front-runner for the child protection role is Sharon Girling, a former British police officer who played a key role in child abuse stings including Operation Ore.
I know of a few people who have applied for the free speech spot. Most recently, outspoken .xxx critic “DarkLady”, author of the Dot-XXX Opposition blog, revealed she had put herself forward for the job.
While the PC members are ostensibly volunteers, they do get a $15,000 annual stipend and their travel expenses paid for.
IFFOR will receive $10 from ICM for every .xxx domain that is registered.

Overstock becomes .co’s anchor tenant from heaven

Overstock.com is to slap its new brand, O.co, on the Oakland Raiders stadium in California, bringing yet more exposure to the .co top-level domain.
The company bought the stadium naming rights back in April, and was pushed into the rebranding now because the sign needs to go up, according to AdAge.
Presumably, whenever American football fans tune into a broadcast or read the sports pages, they’re now going to be exposed to the .co brand.
Not many TLDs have that claim to fame. According to Wikipedia, the only other stadium in the US currently named after a domain is the Jobing.com Arena in Glendale, Arizona.
Overstock has been so good for .CO Internet’s marketing, it’s easy to forget that the company actually paid for the domain, splashing out $350,000 a year ago.
I’d hazard a guess that if the registry had known just how prolific the O.co brand would become, it would have given the name away for free.
Currently, the domain o.co redirects to overstock.com, but the site logo refers to “O.co, also known as Overstock.com”.