Is Verisign .web applicant’s secret sugar daddy?

The fiercely contested .web gTLD is being forced into a last-resort auction and some people seem to think a major registry player is behind it.
Two .web applicants — Radix (pdf) and Schlund (pdf) — this week wrote to ICANN to demand that the .web auction, currently planned for July 27, be postponed.
They said the sale should be delayed to give applicants time “to investigate whether there has been a change of leadership and/or control” at rival applicant Nu Dot Co LLC.
Nu Dot Co is a new gTLD investment vehicle headed up by Juan Diego Calle, who launched and ran .CO Internet until it was sold to Neustar a couple of years ago.
I gather that some applicants believe that Nu Dot Co’s .web application is now being bankrolled by a larger company with deeper pockets.
The two names I’ve heard bandied around, talking to industry sources this week, are Verisign and Neustar.
Nobody I’ve talked to has a shred of direct evidence either company is involved and Calle declined to comment.
So is this paranoia or not?
There are a few reasons these suspicions may have come about.
First, the recent revelation that successful .blog applicant Primer Nivel, a no-name Panama entity with a Colombian connection, was actually secretly being bankrolled by WordPress, has opened eyes to the possibility of proxy bidders.
It was only after the .blog contention set was irreversibly settled that the .blog contract changed hands and the truth become known.
Some applicants may have pushed the price up beyond the $19 million winning bid — making the rewards of losing the private auction that much higher — had they known they were bidding against a richer, more motivated opponent.
Second, sources say the .web contention set had been heading to a private auction — in which all losing applicants get a share of the winning bid — but Nu Dot Co decided to back out at the last minute.
Under ICANN rules, if competing applicants are not able to privately resolve their contention set, an ICANN last-resort auction must ensue.
Third, this effective vetoing of the private auction does not appear to fit in with Nu Dot Co’s strategy to date.
It applied for 13 gTLDs in total. Nine of those have already gone to auctions that Nu Dot Co ultimately lost (usually reaping the rewards of losing).
The other four are either still awaiting auction or, in the case of .corp, have been essentially rejected for technical reasons.
It usually only makes sense to go to an ICANN last-resort auction — where the proceeds all go to ICANN — if you plan on winning or if you want to make sure your competitors do not get a financial windfall from a private auction.
Nu Dot Co isn’t actually an operational registry, so it doesn’t strictly have competitors.
That suggests to some that its backer is an operational registry with a disdain for new gTLD rivals. Verisign, in other words.
Others think Neustar, given the fact that its non-domains business is on the verge of imploding and its previous acquisition of .CO Internet from Calle.
I have no evidence either company is involved. I’m just explaining the thought process here.
According to its application, two entities own more than 15% of Nu Dot Co. Both — Domain Marketing Holdings, LLC and NUCO LP, LLC — are Delaware shell corporations set up via an agent in March 2012, shortly before the new gTLD application filing deadline.
Many in the industry are expecting .web to go for more than the $41.5 million GMO paid for .shop. Others talk down the price, saying “web” lacks the cultural impact it once had.
But it seems we will all find out later this month.
Responding to the letters from Schlund and Radix, ICANN yesterday said that it had no plans to postpone the July 27 last-resort auction.
All seven applicants had to submit a postponement form by June 12 if they wanted a delay, ICANN informed them in a letter (pdf), and they missed that deadline.
They now have until July 20 to either resolve the contention privately or put down their deposits, ICANN said.
The applicants for .web, aside from Nu Dot Co, are Google, Donuts, Radix, Schlund, Web.com and Afilias.
Due to a string confusion ruling, .webs applicant Vistaprint will also be in the auction.

8 Comments Tagged: .web, auction, ICANN, last resort, neustar, new gTLDs, nu dot co, straat, verisign

Web.com policy exec moves to ICANN

Domain industry veteran Jennifer Gore is to become ICANN’s new director of registrar relations.
She takes over the role from Mike Zupke, who I gather is leaving ICANN, from next Monday. She will report to Cyrus Namazi in ICANN’s Global Domains Division.
Gore was most recently senior director of policy at Web.com, a role she held for over five years. Much of her earlier career was spent at Network Solutions and Verisign.
Her move from industry to ICANN means she has had to resign her position on the GNSO Council, where she represented the Registrars Stakeholder Group.
The RrSG will now have to hold an election to find her replacement.

4 Comments Tagged: ICANN, web.com

Donuts invests in Bitcoin startup

Donuts has made an investment in Netki, a company focused on digital wallets used in Bitcoin and other e-money systems.
Netki’s service is designed to make it easier to locate the wallets Bitcoin users use when they send and receive money, which are usually gibberish strings of around 34 characters.
The company service, when integrated into wallet providers’ offerings, converts these impossible-to-remember strings into easy-to-understand domain names.
An example given by Netki on its web site is the wallet name 1CpLXM15vjULK3ZPGUTDMUcGATGR9xGitv, which can instead be rendered as wallet.BruceWayne.rocks.
The company seems to make its money from end users by selling domain names with a higher mark-up than you’d usually expect. A .com via Netki is $20.99, for example.
It offers scores of TLDs, both generic legacy, new, and ccTLD, many of which are in the Donuts stable.
The size of the investment was not disclosed.
It’s the second investment to be announced from Donuts Labs. In May, it invested in “geofencing” startup GeoFrenzy.

1 Comment Tagged: bitcoin, donuts, netki

After long battle, first Bulgarian IDN domain goes live

Bulgarians finally have the ability to register domain names in their native Cyrillic script, after years of fighting with ICANN.
The domain Имена.бг, which translates as “names.bg” went live on the internet this week, according to local reports.
Bulgaria was one of the first countries to ask for a internationalized domain name version of its ccTLD, almost seven years ago, but it was rejected by ICANN in 2010.
The requested .бг was found too similar to Brazil’s existing Latin-script ccTLD .br. Evaluators thought the risk of phishing and other types of attacks was too high.
The requested string didn’t change, but ICANN processes were adapted to allow appeals and a new method for establishing similarity was established.
On appeal, .бг was determined to be less prone to confusion with .br than existing pairs of Latin ccTLDs are with each other, ergo should be approved.
Имена.бг does not yet directly resolve (for me at least) from the Google Chrome address bar. It’s treated as a web search instead. But clicking on links to it does work.
The new ccTLD, which is .xn--90ae in the DNS, was delegated last week.
The registry is Imena.bg (which also means “names.bg”), based in Sofia and partially owned by Register.bg, the .bg registry.
Despite the long battle, the success of .бг is by no means assured. IDNs have a patchy record worldwide.
It’s true that Russians went nuts for their .рф (.rf for Russian Federation) ccTLD during its scandal-rocked launch in 2010, but Arabic IDNs have had hardly any interest and the current boom in China seems to be largely concentrated on Latin-script TLDs.
.бг is expected to open for general registration in the fourth quarter.
I guess we’ll have to wait until at least next year to discover whether the concerns about confusion with .br were well-founded.

2 Comments Tagged: .bg, .бг, bulgaria, cctld, fast track, ICANN, idn, imena.bg

Buy it or lose it? Governments could get first dibs on two-letter domains

Governments and ccTLD registries would get new rights to own two-letter domains in new gTLDs under a proposed ICANN policy.
These highly-prized domains, many of which are likely worth thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, would be subject to a mini sunrise period, under the proposal.
The so-called Exclusive Availability Pre-registration Period would be limited to those companies or government entities in charge of matching ccTLDs.
The measures are outlined in “Proposed Measures for Letter/Letter Two-Character ASCII Labels to Avoid Confusion with Corresponding Country Codes” (pdf), published by ICANN late last week.
The surprisingly succinct document outlines three things new gTLD registries must do if they want to start selling two-letter domains matching ccTLDs, which are currently restricted.
The key measure is:

Registry Operator must implement a 30-day period in which registration of letter/letter two-character ASCII labels that are country codes, as specified in the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 standard, will be made exclusively available to the applicable country-code manager or government.

In other words, if you’re a government or company listed as the ccTLD manager here, you get 30 days of exclusive opportunity to buy the LL.example matching your ccTLD.
Until now, governments have been able to block the release of LL new gTLD domains matching their ccTLDs.
The new proposal, introduced in an attempt to settle a long-running debate about the most appropriate way to enable the release of two-character strings, appears to add a “buy it or lose it” component to existing policy.
Under the base New gTLD Registry Agreement, all two-character domains were initially reserved.
Then, in late 2014, ICANN said registries could release all letter-number, number-letter and number-number combinations.
Many registries have already released such names, some selling for thousands at auction. When Rightside released its LN/NL/NN names, some carried price tags as high as $50,000.
Letter-letter domains could also be released following a formal registry request to ICANN, but were subject to a 60-day period during which governments could object.
Almost 1,000 new gTLDs have submitted such requests, and almost all have been “partially approved”.
That means some governments objected to the release of ccTLD-matching domains. Over 16,000 unique domain names have been objected to and therefore blocked over the last year or so.
The new proposal would add an extra process under which these blocked domains could be released, with ccTLD concerns getting first rights.
Interestingly, it appears to bring ccTLD managers into the mix, rather than restricting the names simply to governments.
The Governmental Advisory Committee has been the main driving force behind demands for restrictions on LL domains, but the proposed policy appears to also extend rights to private entities.
Remember, many ccTLDs are operated independently by private companies, without local government oversight.
For example, .uk is managed by Nominet, a non-governmental entity. The UK government has blocked many uk.example domains from being registered. The new policy appears to allow either Nominet or the government to register these names.
The one-page proposal is light on some details. It does not say, for example, what happens when the government and the ccTLD manager both want the name.
In keeping with ICANN’s habit of staying out of pricing, it does not specify price caps either.
It does, however, oblige registries to ban registrants from pretending to be affiliated with the relevant government when they are not.
Governments also get to complain, and registries have to investigate, if the relevant domains are causing “confusion”, though registries do not appear to be under a strict obligation to delete or suspend domains.
The policy is open for public comment until August here.

2 Comments Tagged: cctlds, gac, ICANN, new gTLDs, two-character, two-letter

Chinese gTLD cranks up renewal prices from $18 to $100

Chinese new gTLD registry Beijing RITT-Net has said it intends to more than quintuple its registration and renewal prices.
From January 1, 2017, prices for .手机 will go up from $18 a year to $100 a year, the company said in a notice to ICANN late last month.
.手机 (.xn--kput3i) is a Chinese internationalized domain name meaning “.cell” or “.cellphone”.
The registry told ICANN:

it is our sincere hope to adjust the initial registration and renewal fees from 18 dollars to 100 dollars with the aim to keep up with the status quo of China’s domain name market and to provide registrants with better services. We wish the new price will be effective from Jan 1st, 2017.

I believe this is the biggest renewal price hike for a new gTLD registry to date.
Around 25,000 existing registrations appear to be affected, but very few registrars will have to deal with the ramifications.
According to registry reports, over 99% of its registrations were made via Beijing Innovative Linkage Technology, which does business at dns.com.cn.

1 Comment Tagged: .xn--kput3i, .手机, Beijing Innovative Linkage Technology, Beijing RITT-Net, dns.com.cn, ICANN, new gTLDs

MarkMonitor to change hands in $3.55 billion deal

MarkMonitor owner Thomson Reuters is to sell of its IP division, which includes the brand-protection registrar, to private equity in a $3.55 billion all-cash deal.
The company said it will sell its Intellectual Property & Science business Onex Corporation and Baring Private Equity Asia.
MarkMonitor is of course a small part of that division. It also includes its Web of Science, Thomson CompuMark, Thomson Innovation, MarkMonitor, Thomson Reuters Cortellis and Thomson IP Manager services.
The unit reportedly has 4,000 employees and $1 billion in annual revenue.
Thomson Reuters said it will use $1 billion of the sale price to buy back shares and the rest to pay off debts.
The company revealed plans to get rid of the unit last November. Analysts said it was not core to its growth strategy.
Thomson Reuters acquired then privately held MarkMonitor for an undisclosed sum in 2012.

1 Comment Tagged: acquisition, markmonitor, thomson reuters

.blog launch date and pricing revealed

The new gTLD .blog will go to general availability in November with a wholesale price tag of $20, it was revealed today.
The registry, Knock Knock Whois There, told registrars that sunrise will kick off August 18 and run for 60 days with a $130 price tag. Disputed sunrise domains will go to auction.
Landrush will follow for a week from November 2 with a $130 application fee and auctions for contested domains a week later.
General availability is then due to begin November 21, with a registry fee of $20.
There will be tiered pricing on reserved “premium” names.
The registry does not seem to have ruled out an Early Access Period either.
This is all fairly consistent with KKWT’s previous statements that its pricing and launch structure will be in line with current industry norms.
The registry is owned by Automattic, the company behind the WordPress blogging software and service.
It emerged as the surprise secret backer of original applicant Primer Nivel earlier this year, following a $19 million auction win.

5 Comments Tagged: .blog, automattic, kkwt, knock knock whois there, primer nivel, wordpress

GoDaddy gets its dot-brand

GoDaddy has become a new gTLD registry with the delegation yesterday of .godaddy.
It’s a dot-brand, so domain name registrations will not be made available to the general public.
In one of the shortest mission statements found in new gTLD applications, the company describes .godaddy like this:

The mission or purpose of the .GODADDY gTLD is strictly for branding protection and internal use. The gTLD .GODADDY will give visitors to any .GODADDY site the assurance that they are truly dealing with Go Daddy and not an imposter or cybersquatter.

GoDaddy has not yet gone live with its nic.godaddy site.
It’s not the first domain name firm to get its own dot-brand. Notably, Neustar and Verisign own .neustar and .verisign.
It’s not the only registrar with a dot-brand, either. France’s OVH got there first with .ovh.
GoDaddy originally applied for two other gTLDs — .home and .casa — but withdrew their applications almost immediately after a shift of company strategy.

3 Comments Tagged: delegation, dot-brands, godaddy, ICANN, new gTLDs

Most businesses don’t care about .uk domains

The majority of businesses in the UK don’t care about direct second-level .uk domains, even when the benefits are spelled out for them, according to Nominet research.
The new survey found that only 27% of businesses would “definitely” or “probably” exercise their new right to buy a .uk domain that matches their .co.uk or .org.uk name.
That number only went up to 40% after respondents had seen a brief Nominet marketing pitch, the survey found.
Another 16% said they had no plans to get their .uk, post-pitch, while 44% remained undecided.
This was the value proposition the respondents saw (click to enlarge):

Under the direct .uk policy, all registrants of third-level domains, such as example.co.uk, have the right of refusal over the matching example.uk.
If they don’t exercise that right by June 10, 2019, the matching SLDs will be unfrozen and released into the available pool.
The new Nominet research also found out that most registrants don’t even know they have this right.
Only 44% of respondents were aware of the right. That went up to 45% for businesses and down to 33% for respondents who only owned .uk domain names (as opposed to gTLD names).
A quarter of respondents, which all already own 3LD .uk domains, didn’t even know second-level regs were possible.
Of those who had already bought their .uk names, over two thirds were either parking or redirecting. Individuals were much more likely to actually use their names for emails or personal sites.
The numbers are not terribly encouraging for the direct .uk initiative as it enters into its third year.
They suggest that if something is not done to raise awareness in the next few years, a lot of .co.uk businesses could find their matching SLDs in the hands of cybersquatters or domainers.
Nominet members (registrars and domainers primarily) were quizzed about possible ways to increase adoption during a company webinar today.
Suggestions such as making the domains free (they currently cost £2.50 a year, the same as a 3LD) or bribing a big anchor tenant such as the BBC to switch were suggested.
There’s a lot of dissatisfaction among the membership about the fact that .uk SLDs were allowed in the first place.
The number of second-level .uk names has gone from 96,696 in June 2014 to to 350,088 last year to 593,309 last month, according to Nominet stats.
Over the same periods, third-level regs have been shrinking, from 10.43 million to 10.22 million to 10.08 million, .

9 Comments Tagged: .uk, cybersquatting, direct.uk, nominet