Priced to sell: $46m of two-letter .xxx names

ICM Registry has added over 1,200 two-character .xxx names to its catalog of priced premiums.
With prices ranging from $100,000 to $37,500, the newly offered domains carry a total ticket price of over $46 million.
The only six-figure name on the list is vr.xxx. ICM said in a press release today it has already sold vr.porn and vr.sex for $100,000 apiece.
There are seven names with adult connotations (such as 69.xxx and bj.xxx) priced at $75,000, eight more at $50,000 and two at $40,000.
The rest of the list of 1,227 names are being offered at $37,500, which is roughly 10 times the prices on the equivalent .porn, .sex and .adult domains.
While ICM noted the interest in domain investing from China recently, it does not appear to have valued its numeric-only domains (such as 88.xxx) any more highly than less attractive-looking combinations (such as 0o.xxx).
Judging by the list published on ICM’s web site, it has already sold well over 300 two-character domains in its newest three gTLDs.
Had those sold at the buy-now prices it would have raised over $1.1 million in revenue.
But ICM since September has been offering an option to register premium names for premium annual fees that are lower than the one-off price. A $37,500 domain costs $3,000 a year to register, under this model.
The total value of ICM’s premium list, including all the longer domains, is roughly $115 million.

2 Comments Tagged: .adult, .sex, icm registry, new gTLDs, porn, premiums, xxx

Baidu, China’s Google, gets its dot-brand gTLD

Chinese web giant Baidu had its dot-brand gTLD, .baidu, go live in the DNS root zone today.
With the extraordinary amount of focus on China in the domain industry currently, this could be one of the dot-brands to watch in 2016.
There are no active domain names in .baidu just yet, but we will likely see nic.baidu put to some use or another over the coming days.
Unusually for a dot-brand gTLD, Baidu’s contract with ICANN does not contain specifications 9 or 13, which allow dot-brands to operate differently to regular gTLDs.
This suggests an open registration policy under which any registrar can sell .baidu domains to any registrant.
However, Baidu’s original gTLD application spells out quite a different plan, focused primarily on trademark protection. It says:

All available second-level strings of .BAIDU (e.g. example .BAIDU) will be initially allocated only to limited number of eligible registrants and for internal corporate business purposes. BAIDU plans to adopt this approach and expects to maintain it for 3 years from the launch of the “.BAIDU” registry service. Such approach will be regularly evaluated and adjusted if appropriate and necessary. Depending a various internal and external factors, including market demand and user expectation, BAIDU may consider a phased roll-out approach for a broader commercial marketplace but will do so after the conclusion of the initial 3-year period.

I wouldn’t expect .baidu to launch properly any time soon.
Not only is the company probably going to want to get its dot-brand contractual protections in place, it’s also showed no huge enthusiasm for making its way through the new gTLD delegation process so far.
It signed its ICANN contract January 8 last year, meaning this week was pretty much the latest date it could permissibly go into the root.
Like most dot-brands, it’s been dragging its feet, in other words.
Baidu is the leading web property in China, dwarfing even Google in terms of search market share locally.

2 Comments Tagged: baidu, delegation, dot-brands, ICANN, new gTLDs

Rightside to auction “xyz” domains at NamesCon

.xyz made a bit of a splash with domain investors in 2015, but is the meaningless string “xyz” inherently attractive? Even at the second level?
Rightside seems to think so.
The registry, which does not operate .xyz, is planning to auction at least four “xyz” domains during next Monday’s live auction at the NamesCon conference in Las Vegas.
Rightside today disclosed that xyz.sale, xyz.market, xyz.news and xyz.live will be among about a dozen registry-reserved short domain names– such as q.sale and z.pub — it will attempt to sell.
The only meaningful domain on its list is the absolutely fantastic, category-killing viral.video.
It’s difficult to see the “xyz” names as anything other than attempt to cash in on the popularity of .xyz domains among the investors, many of them Chinese, currently pumping money into the domain market.
XYZ.com’s .xyz gTLD has over 1.7 million domains in its zone file today, making it the largest-volume new gTLD by a considerable margin.
I’m not sure there’s any causal connection here, but it should probably be noted that Daniel Negari and Michael Ambrose, XYZ.com’s CEO and COO respectively, recently acquired a substantial chunk of Rightside.
The two men disclosed November 30 that they had paid over $8.5 million to buy almost 10 million shares — or roughly 5.2% of the company — on the open market.
The NamesCon auction kicks off at 1400 Pacific (2200 UTC) on Monday at the Tropicana in Vegas. It’s being managed by RightOfTheDot and Namejet.

2 Comments Tagged: .xyz, auction, namescon, rightside, rotd, xyz.com

Afilias seeks to freeze Architelos patent after $10m lawsuit win

Afilias seems bent on burying domain security software maker Architelos, after winning a $10 million lawsuit against it.
The registry on Friday filed a court motion to freeze the patent at the heart of the lawsuit, which Afilias says — and a jury agreed — was based on trade secrets misappropriated by former Afilias employees.
Afilias said it wants to make sure Architelos does not attempt to sell the so-called ‘801 patent, which covers domain abuse-monitoring software.
Its motion asks for a court order “prohibiting Architelos from taking any action that would dilute… or diminish Architelos’ rights or ownership interests” in the patent.
It notes that Architelos has stated that it does not have the means to pay the $10 million damages awarded by a jury in August, which might give it a reason to try to sell the patent.
Afilias said Architelos had “raised the prospect of bankruptcy” during post-trial negotiations.
The motion seems to have been filed now because the judge in the case is taking an unusually long time to render her final judgment.
Despite the case being heard on a so-called “rocket docket” in Virginia, the two companies haven’t heard a peep out of the court since late October.
According to Afilias’ motion, the judge has indicated that Afilias will wind up at least partially owning the ‘801 patent, but that the jury’s $10 million verdict may be “tweaked”.
Judging by a transcript of the August jury trial, the judge herself was not particularly impressed with Afilias’ case and did not expect the jury to crucify Architelos so badly.
Out of the jury’s earshot, she encouraged Afilias to attempt to settle the case and said “if the jury verdict comes in against what I think is the clear weight of the evidence, I will most likely adjust it.”
She also said: “I would have trouble believing that any reasonable jury would find even if they were to award damages to the plaintiff that there’s any significant amount here.”
She clearly misread the jury, which a few days later handed Afilias every penny of the $10 million it had asked for.
That’s much more money than Architelos is believed to have made in revenue since it launched four years ago.
Afilias’ latest motion is set to be heard in court in early January.

1 Comment Tagged: afilias, architelos, lawsuit, patents, security, trade secrets

TLS says .feedback will be “UDRP-proof”, will hire lawyers to defend registrants

Top Level Spectrum plans to make its .feedback domains dirt cheap for domainers during its forthcoming Early Access Period, and is claiming that its domains will be “UDRP-proof”.
CEO Jay Westerdal told DI today that the registry will even hire lawyers to defend its registrants if and when UDRP cases arise.
The company has also introduced a new $5,000 “claims” service that is guaranteed to drive the intellectual property community nuts.
.feedback is shaping up to be one of the most fascinating new gTLD launches to date.
The company’s original plan, to sell 5,000 trademark-match domains to a single entity after its sunrise period ends has been tweaked.
Now, it will instead offer huge rebates during its Early Access Period next month, which will bring the price to registrants down from as much as $1,815 to as little as $5.
It’s called the “Free Speech Partner Program”.
To qualify for the program rebate, registrants will have to agree to stick to using TLS’s specially designated name servers, which point to a hosted feedback service managed by the registry.
An example of such a site can be seen at donaldtrump.feedback, which is among several US presidential candidate names TLS has registered to itself recently.
That commitment will be passed on if the domain ever changes hands, and a $5,000 fee will be applicable if the registrant wants to switch to their own name servers.
A registry charging a lower fee during EAP than GA is unheard of, but that’s what TLS is planning.
Rebates will not be available during the first three days of EAP, which starts January 6 at $14,020 per name. Days two and three see domains priced at $7,020 and $3,520.
From January 9 to January 18, rebates will bring the prices down to $5 per domain.
That’s a quarter of the $20 registry fee it plans to charge during general availability.
“Our plan is to sell thousands of domains before normal GA,” Westerdal said.
“It is a great opportunity for domainers to register domains that will be UDRP proof,” he said. “As free speech sites they are going to improve the world and let anyone read reviews on any subject.”
“I think they are UDRP proof,” he said. “As a registry we will hire lawyers to fight cases that arise.”
Asked to confirm that TLS would pay for lawyers to defend its registrants in UDRP cases, he said: “Hell yes we will.”
The registry plans to give trademark owners a way to avoid UDRP, however, if they’re willing to pay $5,000 for the privilege.
“Free Speech” registrants will have to agree not only to use TLS’s feedback platform, but also to allow the owners of trademarks matching their domains to more or less unilaterally seize those domains for up to two years after registration.
This “claims period” is also unprecedented in new gTLD launches. It’s described like this:

The registry will accept trademarks for a period of 2 years after the initial registration on a “Free Speech Partner Program” domains. The cost is $5,000 to have the mark validated, if the trademark is found to be the first to successfully make a claim against a domain in the program the domain will be transferred to the mark holder. The mark holder will be allowed to change name servers and is not subject to the “Free Speech Partner Program” terms of service.
Domain registrants of the “Free Speech Partner Program” agree the outcome of a validated mark by the Registry have no further claim to the domain if it is transferred to a new registrant.

If TLS is trying to design a system that will enrage the trademark community to the maximum extent possible, it’s doing a fantastic job.
It even introduced a new clause (2.9, here) to its registration agreement earlier this month, obliging registrants to point their domains to a web page that collects feedback. That means nobody will be allowed to leave their .feedback domains dark.
Are these measures justifiable disincentives, or plain old extortion? Opinion will no doubt be split along the usual lines.

1 Comment Tagged: .feedback, cybersquatting, early access period, ICANN, new gTLDs, top level spectrum, trademarks

More on my Twitter.sucks reg

If you were reading on Friday, you’ll know that I brought about the registration of the domain twitter.sucks and took charge of a web site hosted at that address.
I hinted that there was a little more to the story, but couldn’t get into it.
The first part of the story is here.
What I didn’t mention was that twitter.sucks was in my This.sucks account for probably less than 10 minutes before I removed it.
I have no beef with Twitter and no particular desire to moderate a .sucks discussion forum.
After removing twitter.sucks from my account, I noticed that This.sucks again gave me the option to “register” a free .sucks domain.
So I experimentally “registered” thisdotsucks.sucks too.
Again, the domain started resolving, showed up in Whois, and the associated WordPress site went live within seconds.
At this point, I discovered that I had admin privileges for both twitter.sucks and thisdotsucks.sucks sites simultaneously.
Suspecting that I may have found a bug that would allow anyone to register an essentially unlimited number of free and potentially trademark-matching .sucks domains, I informed This.sucks of my findings in the interest of responsible bug disclosure and ended my blog post prematurely.
Late Friday, This.sucks spokesperson Phil Armstrong told me that it wasn’t a bug after all.
He said that the company allows one “do-over”. So if you register a name for free, then delete it, you get another one for free.
He also said that WordPress admin privileges for domains removed from user accounts expire after a period (I had admin rights for the twitter.sucks web site for roughly 48 hours after I deleted it from my account.)
Right now, the domain twitter.sucks still exists, registered to This.sucks as before, as does the associated web site. I have no idea if another user has taken over its administration or if it’s in some kind of limbo state.
All I know is that it’s nothing to do with me any more.

3 Comments Tagged: cybersquatting, sucks, this.sucks, trademarks, twitter, vox populi

.phone will be restricted after Dish gTLD auction win

The new gTLD .phone is going to be tightly restricted, after Dish DBS won the contested string at auction.
The American satellite communications firm beat Donuts to the gTLD, judging by Donuts’ withdrawal from the two-horse on Friday.
This means that if you’re not a licensed telecoms or voice-over-IP service provider, you won’t be able to register a .phone domain, at least at first.
Dish originally applied for .phone as what became known as a “closed generic” — a non-trademark, dictionary word that would nevertheless be operated as a dot-brand, with a single eligible registrant.
Due to Governmental Advisory Committee advice against such business models, Dish changed its application this September to describe .phone instead as a “controlled” gTLD.
Its application states that only Dish, its affiliates and “Qualified Applicants” will at first be able to register .phone domains.
“Qualified Applicants” basically means any company licensed to run a telecommunications service anywhere in the world. The eligibility gate appears to be the “license”.
The application says Dish will reserve the right to open up the gTLD to further classes of registrants at a later date.
While it also says that Dish will not give itself or friendly registrars any “undue preference”, the telecoms industry is suspicious.
USTelecom, the industry body representing large and small US-based telecoms companies, wrote to ICANN in November to say Dish’s volte face was “unconvincing” and its proposals “simply fail to satisfy” ICANN’s rules banning closed generics.
It said in its letter (pdf):

While Dish purports in its amended application that the .phone gTLD will be operated as a “controlled gTLD,” it is in reality an exclusive generic TLD, prone to discriminatory and subjective determinations on which entities are “Qualified Applicants,” and a discretionary reservation “to open this TLD to additional classes of registrants in the future,” who “will not be considered members.”

USTelecom says it negotiated with Dish, in an attempt to resolve its earlier formal objection against the bid, to have Dish include some reassuring Public Interest Commitments in its application, but Dish refused.
ICANN, responding to USTelecom, said that any Registry Agreement Dish signs for .phone will include the clauses that prevent it operating as a closed generic.
Now that the contention set has been settled, Dish’s next step is to proceed to contract negotiations with ICANN.

Comment Tagged: .phone, closed generics, dish dbs, donuts, gac, ICANN, new gTLDs, ustelecom

Tata’s bid for .tata gTLD scuppered by Morocco

Tata Group, the humongous Indian conglomerate, has been told its flagship application for a dot-brand gTLD has been refused.
ICANN on Friday changed the status of the application for .tata from “On Hold” to “Will Not Proceed”, a limbo state that is usually expected to lead to the application being withdrawn.
It is believed that Tata’s row with Morocco is to blame.
While Tata Group is a 150-year-old, $100 billion-a-year company, Tata is also a province of Morocco with a population of about 120,000.
Under the rules of the ICANN new gTLD program, the string “tata” is therefore a protected geographic name, for which the applicant needs to show the unequivocal support or non-objection of the relevant government.
Tata was the last applicant to pass its ICANN evaluation, when in July 2014 it finally managed to pass its Geographic Names Review on the basis of a letter from a Moroccan official.
However, in September last year the Moroccan’s government’s digital economy minister denied that the letter indicated support for .tata.
This February, ICANN threw Tata back into a Geographic Names Review, where the onus was on the company to prove that it really did have support.
That support has evidently not been forthcoming.
Morocco has indicated in letters to ICANN that it may want the .tata gTLD itself in future.
Tata unit Tata Motors has already been delegated the dot-brand gTLD .tatamotors.

2 Comments Tagged: .tata, dot-brands, geographic, geographic names review, ICANN, morocco, new gTLDs

Porn firm wins .cam after years of objections

The controversial new gTLD .cam has been won at auction by Dutch porn site operator AC Webconnecting, putting an end to over two years of back-and-forth objections.
Rival applicants Rightside and Famous Four Media both withdrew their applications earlier this week.
The contest for .cam was marked by several objections and appeals.
In 2013, Verisign filed and lost String Confusion Objections against AC Webconnecting and Famous Four, but won its near-identical objection against Rightside.
Verisign had claimed that .cam and .com are so similar-looking that confusion among internet users is bound to arise.
Because the SCO panels in the three cases returned differing opinions, Rightside was one of two applicants given the right to appeal by ICANN in October 2014.
I never quite understood why Verisign wasn’t also given the right to appeal.
Rightside won the right to stay in the .cam contention set almost a year later.
Despite all that effort, it did not prevail in the resulting auction.
Separately, back in 2013, AC Webconnecting filed and lost Legal Rights Objections against its two rivals, based on a “.cam” trademark it acquired purely for the purpose of fighting off new gTLD competitors.
I’d be lying if I said I knew a lot about the soon-to-be registry.
Based in Rotterdam, its web site comes across as a wholly safe-for-work web design firm.
However, it seems to be mainly in the business of operating scores, if not hundreds, of webcam-based porn sites.
Its application for .cam states that it will be for everyone with an interest in photography, however.
When it goes live, its most direct competitor is likely to be Famous Four’s .webcam, which already has an 18-month and 70,000-domain head start.
It remains to be seen whether its clear similarity to .com will in fact cause significant confusion.

2 Comments Tagged: .cam, ac webconnecting, auctions, ICANN, legal rights objection, new gTLDs, string confusion objection, verisign

How I just registered Twitter.sucks for free in just five clicks

This morning, I caused the registration of and was given control of a web site at twitter.sucks.
I didn’t pay a thing, though I did — by checking a box linked to hidden terms and conditions — promise to pay $10,000 if I was later determined to be working for Twitter.
Ordinarily, registering a .sucks domain would have cost me over $200.
The controversial This.sucks service (which may share ownership with .sucks registry Vox Populi) has gone live and is giving out 10,000 .sucks web sites for free.
Users, who can sign up merely by connecting their Facebook or LinkedIn accounts, are able to cause This.sucks to register names on their behalf.
They are then immediately given limited control over a WordPress blog hosted at that domain, though not to the associated name servers or Whois records.
It’s actually quite a slick, streamlined service, that could quite easily dramatically increase the number of active .sucks site overnight.
But it’s going to cause no end of headaches for trademark owners.
Earlier this week, you may recall DI reporting that This.sucks seemed to have registered the .sucks names matching the brands of Twitter, Adobe, Goldman Sachs and Justin Timberlake.
It seems that this may have been a test of the This.sucks service, as I was tipped off last night that twitter.sucks was no longer registered.
Here’s how I got control over the twitter.sucks web site in just FIVE clicks.
This.sucks has a domain availability query box, just like a regular registrar. I looked up “twitter”:

Seeing that the domain was available, I went through the two-click process of allowing This.sucks to use my Facebook login credentials.

Obviously, while I used a genuine Facebook account, I see no reason why I couldn’t have used a fake one.
After connecting, I was bounced back to This.sucks and was given the ability to register twitter.sucks in a single click.

I also had to check a box confirming:

I’m a free-thinking individual, not a corporate yes-man. I agree to the terms and conditions and any penalties which may apply.

Clicking either of the T&C links, or hovering over the question mark, will introduce you to the concept of a $10,000 penalty.

That’s right — by causing This.sucks to register a .sucks domain, you agree to pay $10,000 if the company decides, in its “sole discretion” that you are affiliated with the matching trademark owner. The terms state:

Site Runners on this.sucks must be individuals who have no affiliation with the subject matter of the Site. You can’t be running the Site on behalf of a company, entity or anyone who is the subject of the Site.
As a Site Runner you agree that if you are found by this.sucks, in our sole discretion, to be in violation of this principal, that a $10,000 USD payment to This.sucks will immediately become due and payable. You will also no longer be a Site Runner with us. Your Site may also be given to a different Site Runner to run.
If you think a Site is being run by someone acting on behalf of the subject of the Site, please email us at whistleblower@this.sucks

Given that Twitter’s lawyers are probably going to hate me for doing this, I felt pretty confident in accepting this risk.
In addition, at this point This.sucks has not asked me for any payment information. If they want $10,000 off of me, they can take a hike, I figure.
So I clicked the “Register Now” button.
Bam! In under 10 seconds the domain name twitter.sucks existed in DNS, in Whois, and there was a simple WordPress web site there that I, to a significant extent, controlled.
The domain is registered to This.sucks, which makes it clear on its web site FAQ that its users — or “Site Runners” — do not actually own the domains they cause to be registered.

As administrator of the WordPress site, I am able to create and update blog posts as well as change the appearance by switching between a limited selection of themes. I can also edit and delete comments and manage registered users.
There’s a little bit more to my story — which I cannot get into for now.
For the moment, it must suffice to say that this is a whole new world for famous brand owners.
They can either pay the roughly $2,000 required to defensively register their brand in .sucks, or they can try to sneak through a free (or $0.99 per month) registration at This.sucks at the risk of being billed $10,000 if they get rumbled.

2 Comments Tagged: cybersquatting, sucks, this.sucks, trademarks, twitter, vox populi