.xyz press release yanked for “encouraging cybersquatting”

XYZ.com has withdrawn a month-old press release following allegations that it encouraged cybersquatting in .xyz.

The December 3 release concerned the release of 18,000 .xyz domains that were previously blocked due to ICANN’s policy on name collisions.

The release highlighted “trademarked names such as Nike, Hulu, Netflix, Skype, Pepsi, Audi and Deloitte” that were becoming available, according to World Trademark Review, which reported the story yesterday.

Five of the seven brands highlighted have since been registered by apparent cybersquatters, WTR reported.

The .xyz press release has since been withdrawn from the web sites on which it appeared, and registry production manager Shayan Rostam told WTR that the intention was to encourage brand owners to register, rather than cybersquatters.

“Cybersquatting has a negative effect on our business and we would never take any action to encourage cybersquatting,” he reportedly said.

Read the WTR article here.

Comment Tagged: .xyz, cybersquatting, name colllisions, xyz.com

Here’s how the new number two new gTLD got so big so quick

Attentive DI readers will recall my journalistic meltdown last week, when I tried to figure out how the Chinese new gTLD .网址 managed to hit #2 in the new gTLD zone file size league table, apparently shifting a quarter of a million names in a week.

Well, after conversations with well-placed sources here at NamesCon in Las Vegas this week, I’ve figured it out.

.网址 is the Chinese for “.url”.

Its rapid growth — hitting 352,000 names today — can be attributed primarily to two factors.

First, these weren’t regular sales. The registry, Knet, which acquired original applicant Hu Yi last year, operates a keyword-based navigation system in China that predates Chinese-script gTLDs.

The company has simply grandfathered its keyword customers into .网址, I’m told.

The keyword system allows Latin-script domains too, which explains the large number of western brands that appear in the .网址 zone.

The second reason for the huge bump is the fact that many of the domains are essentially duplicates.

Chinese script has “traditional” and “simplified” characters, and in many cases domains in .网址 are simply the traditional equivalents of the simplified versions.

I understand that these duplicates may account for something like 30% of the zone file.

I’ve been unable to figure out definitively why the .网址 Whois database appeared to be so borked.

As I noted last week, every domain in the .网址 space had a Knet email address listed in its registrant, admin and technical contact fields.

It seems that Knet was substituting the original email addresses with its own when Whois queries were made over port 43, rather than via its own web site.

Its own Whois site (which doesn’t work for me) returned the genuine email addresses, but third-party Whois services such as DomainTools and ICANN returned the bogus data.

Whether Knet did this by accident or design, I don’t know, but it would have almost certainly have been a violation of its contractual commitments under its ICANN Registry Agreement.

However, as of today, third-party Whois tools are now returning the genuine Whois records, so whatever the reason was, it appears to be no longer an issue.

Comment Tagged: hu yi, ICANN, idns, keywords, knet, new gTLDs, whois, 网址

Vegas.club sells for $100,000

.CLUB Domains said today it has sold the domain vegas.club for $100,000, and will help in its promotion as a members-only site for deals related to Las Vegas.

The deal was announced here at the NamesCon conference at the Tropicana hotel in Vegas.

The buyer is One Degree World Systems, a local company that develops booking sites for tourist destination cities worldwide.

I’m not sure the deal would be reportable as a straightforward domain-only sale, given that .CLUB said the companies have a “partnership” to develop the domain.

According to a company press release, the upcoming site will offer “members-only deals on nightclubs, hotels, shows, attractions and tours as well as concierge services, VIP status at local attractions, and white glove services like personal assistants on the ground, butler and nanny services and more.”

.CLUB had a similar relationship with its first big anchor tenant, the rapper 50 Cent, for the fan site 50inda.club.

It’s the second .club name the registry has sold for a six-figure sum. It sold coffee.club, also for $100,000, last year.

Right Of The Dot helped broker the vegas.club deal, the registry said.

1 Comment Tagged: .club, namescon, new gTLDs, vegas.club

The new massive number two new gTLD has me paralyzed with confusion

The Chinese-script gTLD .网址 powered to the number two spot in the new gTLD rankings by zone file size this week, but it’s doing some things very strangely.

.网址 is Chinese for “.site”, “.url” or “.webaddress”.

The registry is Hu Yi Global, ostensibly a Hong Kong-based registrar but, judging by IANA’s records, actually part of its Beijing-based back-end Knet.

I’m going to come out and admit it: even after a few hours research I still don’t know a heck of a lot about these guys. The language barrier has got me, and the data is just weird.

These are the things I can tell you:

• .网址 has 352,727 domains in its zone file today, up by about a quarter of a million names since the start of the week.
• The names all seem to be using knet.cn name servers
• I don’t think any of them resolve on the web. I tried loads and couldn’t find so much as a parking page. Google is only aware of about eight resolving .网址 pages.
• They all seem to have been registered via the same Chinese registrar, which goes by the name of ZDNS (also providing DNS for the TLD itself).
• They all seem to be registered with “nameinfo@knet.com” in the email address field for the registrant, admin and technical contacts in Whois, even when the registrants are different.
• That’s even true for dozens of famous trademarks I checked — whether it’s the Bank of China or Alexander McQueen, they’re all using nameinfo@knet.cn as their email address.
• I’ve been unable to find a Whois record with a completed Registrant Organization field.
• Nobody seems to be selling these things. ZDNS (officially Internet Domain Name System Beijing Engineering Research Center) is apparently the only registrar to sell any so far and its web site doesn’t say a damn thing about .网址. The registry’s official nic.网址 site doesn’t even have any information about how to buy one either.
• ZDNS hasn’t sold a single domain in any other gTLD.
• News reports in China, linked to from the registry’s web site, boast about how .网址 is the biggest IDN TLD out there.

So what’s going on here? Are we looking at a Chinese .xyz? A bunch of registry-reserved names? A seriously borked Whois?

Don’t expect any answers from DI today on this one. I’ve been staring at Chinese characters for hours and my brain is addled.

I give up. You tell me.

11 Comments Tagged: hu yi, ICANN, idns, knet, new gTLDs, whois, zdns, 网址

.reise is first live new gTLD to hit the auction block

German domain registry Dotreise has become the first company to reveal that it wants to sell off a new gTLD.

Innovative Auctions is to handle an auction on February 27 at which Dotreise will attempt to unload the unwanted string, it emerged this evening.

The word “reise” is German for “travel”.

The gTLD has failed to capture much interest since it launched. As of today, it has just 1,254 domains in its zone file, about 1,000 of which were registered in its first week of general availability last August.

At launch, it had just a handful of registrars. Only four registrars sold more than 100 names in August.

It’s currently a relatively big-ticket TLD, which may account for the low sales. It retails for about $170 to $180 at United-Domains, the registrar that has shifted the most .reise names to date.

That would put revenue for .reise at under a quarter of a million dollars a year, based on its current volume, I guess.

It competes with Donuts’ .reisen, which has pretty much the same meaning but has been available a month longer and retails for under $25 a year; .reisen has a slightly bigger zone file, at 3,839 domains.

According to Innovative, the company behind Applicant Auction, which helps settle new gTLD contention sets with auctions:

The .REISE TLA will be a simultaneous ascending clock auction, similar to the format of the Applicant Auction. There will be no buyer commission for this auction, so no additional fees – you just pay the winning price if you win.

It’s a one-day auction.

Innovative had planned to auction off multiple live gTLDs in October, but was hit by delays.

Comment Tagged: .reise, applicant auction, dotreise, ICANN, innovative auctions, new gTLDs