Bosnian government to sue US domain firm that cut it off

One of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s two governments has said it will sue a US domain name company — probably Verisign — for turning off the domain it was using for official government business.

“The Government of the Republic of Srpska will hire legal experts to prepare a lawsuit against the company that disabled the use of the website of the Government of the Republic Srpska without prior notice,” the government said in a statement on its new web site.

It did not name the company in question, but we can narrow it down to a few.

Its old domain, vladars.net, was registered via Dotster, a reseller for Domain.com, part of Newfold Digital. The .net registry is of course Verisign. These are all American companies subject to US legal jurisdiction.

The domain still exists in Whois, but has been removed from the .net zone file and does not resolve.

The Republika Srpska, or Serb Republic, is part of Bosnia and Herzegovina that doesn’t particularly want to be a part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. As such, its new domain is in .rs, the ccTLD for neighboring Serbia, rather than Bosnia’s .ba.

The old .net domain was reportedly deleted due to US sanctions against the Republic, which were expanded October 20 to include members of President Milorad Dodik’s family and several corporate entities.

The US accuses the Dodik family of widespread “graft, bribery, and other forms of corruption” and engaging in “divisive ethno-nationalistic rhetoric” to divert attention from their activities. It additionally accuses them of violating the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the war in the region in the 1990s.

Comment Tagged: domain.com, dotster, newfold digital, Republika Srpska, takedowns, verisign

Freenom is “essentially finished as a company”

Freenom is “essentially finished as a company”.

That’s the conclusion of a truly excellent piece of reporting at the MIT Technology Review today, which takes a deep dive into the company’s ccTLD antics over the last couple of decades, particularly regarding Tokelau’s .tk domain.

The article reveals not only that all four of Freenom’s African ccTLDs have severed ties with it (we already knew about two) but that Tokelau has asked .nz operator InternetNZ to help it wrest away control of .tk, the company’s flagship.

Officials in Tokelau, a tiny Pacific island territory with extremely poor and expensive internet infrastructure, say they get very little money from Freenom and are appalled that Tokelau’s reputation has been dragged through the mud by decades of abusive .tk registrations.

Freenom’s business model is to give away domains for free and then monetize them when they expire or, more usually, are suspended for abuse. It’s seen .tk become one of the largest TLDs by volume, with at one point over 40 million names.

The company hasn’t been selling any domains in the five ccTLDs it operated since January and it seems quite likely ICANN will suspend or terminate its gTLD registrar accreditation in the coming days or weeks.

It’s also fighting a cybersquatting lawsuit filed by Facebook owner Meta earlier this year that seeks damages sufficiently large to bankrupt it.

The MIT article is long but meticulously researched and sourced and well worth your time. It’s certainly one of the best pieces of mainstream journalism about the domain industry I’ve read.

Comment Tagged: .tk, freenom, ICANN, tokelau

Gap drops some dot-brands

American clothing retailer Gap has dumped two of its unused dot-brand gTLDs.

The company has told ICANN to terminate its registry contracts for .oldnavy and .bananarepublic, the names of two of its store chains, saying it isn’t using them.

Gap still owns .gap, and hasn’t yet asked for it to be cancelled, but it isn’t using that either.

The company’s TLDs all run on GoDaddy’s back-end and are managed by Fairwinds Partners.

The terminations bring the total number of dead dot-brands this year to 23, spread across 12 companies.

Comment Tagged: .bananarepublic, .oldnavy, dot-brands, gap, ICANN, termination

Group to seek .io TLD takeover after OECD human rights ruling

A group composed of displaced Chagossians will ask ICANN to redelegate the increasingly popular .io top-level domain, according to the group’s lawyer.

The move, still in its very early stages, follows a recent ruling under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct, which mildly chastised the current registry, Identity Digital.

“The next move is domain reassignment,” lawyer Jonathan Levy, who brought the OECD complaint on behalf of the Chagos Refugees Group UK, told us. The proposed beneficiary would be “a group composed of Chagossians” he said.

.io is the ccTLD for the archipelago currently known as the British Indian Ocean Territory. It’s one of those Postel-era “Just Some Guy” developing-world delegations that pre-date ICANN.

But BIOT is a controversial territory. Originally the Chagos Archipelago, the few thousand original inhabitants were forced out by the UK government in the 1970s so the US military could build a base on Diego Garcia, the largest island.

Most of the surviving Chagossians and their descendants live in Mauritius, but have been fighting for their right to return for decades. In 2019, the UN ruled the UK’s current administration of BIOT is unlawful.

In recent years, since .io became popular, the ccTLD has become part of the fight.

The original and technically still-current registry for .io is a UK company called Internet Computer Bureau. ICB was acquired by Afilias in 2017 for $70 million. Afilias was subsequently acquired by Donuts, which is now called Identity Digital.

Corporate accounts filed by ICB name its ultimate owner as Beignet DTLD Holdings of Delaware, which appears to be a part of $2.21 billion private equity firm Ethos Capital, Identity Digital’s owner, which is co-managed by former ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé.

None of these companies have a connection to BIOT beyond paying a local company called Sure (Diego Garcia) Limited for a mail-forwarding service. The only people believed to reside in the territory at all are US and UK military and contractors.

Levy, on behalf of the Chagossian refugees and a group of victims of cryptocurrency scams operated from .io domains, filed a complaint with the Ireland National Contact Point for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct — basically a mediation service operated by the Irish government — seeking a share of the money from .io sales and/or redelegation.

According to its most-recent public accounts, ICB had turnover of £16.4 million ($19.8 million) in 2021, up from £12.8 million ($15.5 million) in 2020, but also had absolutely horrible gross margins for a registry with only one employee.

The company had cost of sales of £15.8 million and a gross margin of 3.58%. It pays no ICANN fees and the UK government receives no cut beyond the regular corporate tax ICB pays (about £26,000 in 2021).

The OECD’s Guidelines are voluntary guidelines that countries sign up to that are meant to guide how multinational companies behave with regards human rights and so on. Enforcement seems to be relatively toothless, with national NCPs only having the power to “recommend” actions.

In fact, Afilias declined to participate in mediation and appears to have received only a mild finger-wagging in the Irish NCP’s decision (pdf), which was published in September. One of its recommendations reads:

The NCP recommends that in cases in which a product, including a digital asset, is associated with long-running disputes regarding human rights, multinational enterprises should be able to demonstrate that they have carried out human rights due diligence

Levy thinks the NCP’s decision is a big deal, saying it means the OECD has validated the Chagossians’ concerns. Coupled with the UN sanction on the UK related to BIOT, he reckons it could play in their favor in a future redelegation request.

.io domain owners shouldn’t be too worried right now, however. Redelegation takes a very long time even when the losing party agrees, and it doesn’t tend to happen without the consent of the incumbent.

Comment Tagged: biot, chagos, ethos, iana, ICANN, identity digital, io, oecd

Meta given 30 days to stop using Threads trademark

A small UK software firm has given Facebook owner Meta, well known in the domain industry for pursuing cybersquatters, 30 days to stop using the brand name “Threads” or face legal action.

Meta launched a Twitter clone called Threads back in July and quickly gathered over 100 million users (since declining to eight million daily active users), but Threads Software of London says its UK trademark dates back to 2012.

“Threads Software Limited and its lawyers have today (30 October) written to Meta’s Instagram giving it 30 days to stop using the name Threads for their service in the UK. If it does not, Threads Software Limited will seek an injunction from the English Courts,” the company said in a press release (pdf).

The company further claimed that Meta’s lawyers have tried to buy the domain threads.app from it four times this year but were turned down each time. Meta is using threads.net, Threads Software uses threads.cloud.

Threads Software says it operates a service that “captures, transcribes, and organises all of a company’s digital messages (emails and phone calls) into one easily searchable database”.

Managing director John Yardley said in the press release: “We recognise that this is a classic ‘David and Goliath’ battle with Meta. And whilst they may think they can use whatever name they want, that does not give them the right to use the Threads brand name.”

“We want them to stop using the Threads name with immediate effect. If they do not, we will seek an injunction from the UK courts,” he added.

The irony here is of course that Meta owns some of the most-cybersquatted brands out there and is one of the most litigious enforcers of its intellectual property.

Comment Tagged: cybersquatting, facebook, meta, threads, trademarks

Modest pay rises for ICANN top brass

ICANN’s six top executives have been given pay raises up to 3.5%, according to resolutions passed at ICANN 78 last week.

The increases are a little ahead of US inflation but a little below the market rate if these officers were to work elsewhere, according to the resolutions.

Interestingly, interim CEO Sally Costerton is named in a pay-rise resolution for the first time, perhaps indicating she’s no longer being paid through the UK-based consulting company she owns, which has allowed ICANN to hide her compensation in its annual tax filings.

The resolution raises her “salary” by up to 3.5% for her role as senior advisor to president and SVP, Global Stakeholder Engagement, but does not mention the fact that she’s also acting CEO.

1 Comment Tagged: ICANN, salaries

Nominet wins Microsoft’s dot-brand business from Verisign

Nominet has taken over back-end registry services for Microsoft’s small portfolio of dot-brand gTLDs.

The company said it’s now running .azure, .bing, .hotmail, .microsoft, .windows and .xbox TLDs, bringing the total number of gTLDs on its registry platform to 74.

Microsoft had been with Verisign to date, but Verisign told us in July that it’s getting out of the dot-brand back-end business.

Almost 100 gTLDs have left Verisign this year, the vast majority landing at Identity Digital.

Nominet also took on .sky from Verisign earlier this year.

Comment Tagged: Microsoft, nominet, verisign

Looks like the fight for .hotel gTLD is over

One of the longest-running fights over a new gTLD may be over, after three unsuccessful applicants for .hotel appeared to throw in the towel on their four-year-old legal fight with ICANN.

In a document quietly posted by ICANN last week, the Independent Review Process panel handling the .hotel case accepted a joint request from ICANN and applicants Fegistry, Radix and Domain Venture Partners to close the case.

The applicants lawyers had told ICANN they were “withdrawing all of their claims” and the panel terminated the case “with prejudice”.

They had been fighting to get ICANN to overturn its decision to award .hotel to HOTEL Top-Level-Domain (HTLD), formerly affiliated with Afilias, which had won a controversial Community Priority Evaluation.

CPE was a process under the 2012 new gTLD program rules that allowed applicants in contention sets to avoid an auction if they could show sufficient “community” support for their bids, which HTLD managed to do.

The Fegistry complaint was the second IRP to focus on this decision, which was perceived as unfair and inconsistent with other CPE cases. The first ran from 2015 to 2016 and led to an ICANN win.

Part of the complaints focused on allegations that an HTLD executive improperly accessed private information on competing applicants using a vulnerability in ICANN’s applications portal.

The IRP complainants had also sued in Los Angeles Superior Court, but that case was thrown out in July due to the covenant not to sue (CNTS) that all new gTLD applicants had to agree to when they applied.

The fight for .hotel had been going on for longer than that for .web, but unlike .web it appears that this fight may finally be over.

Comment Tagged: .hotel, cpe, dvp, Fegistry, htld, ICANN, irp, radix

China has .com’s growth by the balls

Verisign has downgraded its expectations for .com/.net growth for the year into potentially negative territory, citing — not for the first time — low demand from China.

The registry expects its domain name base to grow at a maximum of 0.4% or shrink as much as 0.4% by the end of the year. That compares to a prediction of between 0% and 2.25% growth at the start of the year.

“Low demand from China remains the primary source of drag on the overall domain name base growth,” CEO Jim Bidzos told analysts on Thursday. “Excluding registrars based in China, both our domain name base and new registrations are up year-over-year”.

The company’s regulatory filing for Q3 shows that China revenue was down from $26.8 million to $22 million over the year. It was the only one of the four geographic reporting segments to show a shrinkage.

Verisign ended Q3 173.9 million .com/.net domains under management, down 0.1% over the year and down half a million names in the quarter.

While DUM growth may be on the decline, price hikes compensate and keep Verisign’s dollar-growth going.

The company reported year-over-year revenue growth up 5.4% at $376 million for the quarter of 2023. Net income was $188 million, up from $169 million a year ago.

Comment Tagged: .com, .net, china, earnings, financials, verisign

.web fight back in “court”

ICANN is heading back to the quasi-courtroom of its Independent Review Process, after .web auction runner-up Altanovo Domains filed its second IRP complaint about the controversy-ridden gTLD.

I first reported that the complaint had been filed back in July, but it was not until last Thursday that ICANN published the document, along with thousands of pages of exhibits and its own response, almost all thoroughly redacted to remove references to the one contract at the heart of the mess.

Now-independent Altanovo, which was part of Afilias before that company was acquired by Donuts, claims that ICANN broke its bylaws commitments to apply its policies equitably to everyone.

The company remains incredibly cheesed off that it lost the 2016 auction for .web, which saw a company called Nu Dot Co pay ICANN $135 million for the domain, at a time when it was secretly backed by Verisign.

Altanovo claims that NDC broke the terms of ICANN’s Applicant Guidebook and the rules of the auction by declining to disclose the existence of the Domain Acquisition Agreement it had signed with Verisign.

That deal saw Verisign bankroll and dictate the terms of NDC’s handling of the auction; in exchange, NDC would transfer .web to Verisign shortly after signing its ICANN registry agreement.

Altanovo has already won one IRP about this. The panel in the first case ruled in May 2021 that ICANN broke its bylaws because its board did not make a decision on whether NDC’s behavior was kosher.

As a result of that ruling, the board spent over a year mulling and eventually decided this April that, no, NDC didn’t break the rules. It’s that decision that Altanovo is challenging now. The complaint says:

NDC had no independent business plan for .WEB that it intended to implement. Its sole purpose in applying for .WEB was to obtain it for the oldest of the incumbent players, not to market .WEB itself in any way or to compete in the market… No one in the Internet Community, including the other .WEB Contention Set members, had any clue that, as of August 2015, they were competing with Verisign and not NDC.

ICANN’s response to the complaint states that its board was exercising its “business judgement”, which must be deferred to, and that Altanovo’s claims about bylaws breaches merely amount to differences of interpretation.

Speaking to analysts on Verisign’s third-quarter earnings call last week, company CEO Jim Bidzos quoted from the conclusion of ICANN’s IRP response and added: “Altanovo’s IRP request should be denied. We agree with ICANN.”

“We continue to believe that this IRP filed by Altanovo and its backers has been filed for the purpose of delay,” he said.

Altanovo reckons that Verisign and ICANN have been colluding on their legal responses to the .web and that certainly seems likely in terms of the redactions ICANN has made to the complaint and response published last week.

All quotations of the Verisign-NDC DAA are redacted in the Altanovo complaint are redacted as “third party confidential”, presumably at Verisign’s request; in the ICANN response the single DAA quote remains unredacted.

Comment Tagged: .web, altanovo, auctions, ICANN, irp, new gtld, verisign