Fourth digital archery service launches

Knipp has become the fourth company to reveal a service to help new gTLD applicants automate their participation in ICANN’s digital archery application batching system.
With First Come First Batch, you only pay if you get into the first batch.
It appears to be the cheapest such service to launch so far, with “early bird” pricing starting at $7,500. If you sign up after June 20, it will set you back $12,500, still the cheapest on the market.
The service is limited to 500 gTLDs, with a limited number per ICANN region and a Europe bias.
Knipp is the outfit behind the Germany-based back-end provider Tango Registry Services which has partnered with Minds + Machines on the .nrw (North Rhine-Westphalia) application.

8 Comments Tagged: .nrw, batching, digital archery, ICANN, knipp, new gTLDs, tango

ICANNWiki boss applies for 10 gTLDs

A new company run by ICANNWiki founder Raymond King and business partner Peter Brual has applied to ICANN for 10 new generic top level domains.
Top Level Design has applied for: .blog, .llc, .group, .wiki, .gay, .art, .style, .design, .ink, and .photography.
The company is entering contention sets on most of those, but I believe it’s the first .wiki bid announced to date.
It’s also the only portfolio player so far to announce that it’s using CentralNIC, best known for pseudo-gTLDs such as uk.com, as its back-end registry provider.
The company said the venture “will not interfere with the presentation or neutrality of ICANNWiki.com”.

Comment Tagged: centralnic, ICANN, icannwiki, new gTLDs, top level design

Key-Systems has 31 gTLD clients, offers digital archery services

Key-Systems has become the third company to announce it is providing new gTLD applicants with a chance to possibly increase their chances of success with digital archery.
The service costs €15,000 ($18,800) if the company gets your application into ICANN’s first evaluation batch.
Almost as an aside, the company also revealed in a press release today that its KSRegistry back-end service is the named registry services provider for 31 gTLD applications.
Digital archery services are also being offered by Pool.com and Digital Archery Experts.
Today, Digital Archery Experts announced that it will split the cost of its service between clients if it winds up shooting arrows on behalf of multiple applicants in the same contention set.

1 Comment Tagged: batching, digital archery, ICANN, key-systems, ksregistry, new gTLDs, pool.com

Demand Media applies for 26 gTLDs, partners with Donuts on 107 more

Demand Media, owner of eNom, has applied to ICANN for 26 new generic top-level domains, and may acquire rights in 107 more if applications submitted by Donuts are approved.
The company has not yet revealed which strings it’s going for.
Donuts said last week that it’s applying for 307 gTLDs with Demand Media as its back-end provider, but it seems that Demand will not have ownership rights in 200 of those.
The deal with Donuts, which was founded by eNom alum, is a “strategic relationship”, according to a press release.

Comment Tagged: demand media, donuts, enom, ICANN, new gTLDs

Neustar gets 358 back-end contracts, beating Verisign

Neustar has revealed that it is contracted to supply registry services for 358 new generic top-level domain applications.
Given the over 1,900 applications ICANN has received, the deals give the .biz/.us manager roughly 19% of the new gTLD back-end market.
It’s more than Verisign, which announced last month that it’s named on 220 applications. Afilias is now the only one of the big incumbent gTLD registry service providers yet to disclose its magic number.
Neustar was pretty aggressive about recruiting dot-brand applicants from the outset, announcing a $10,000 entry-level offering just a few days after ICANN approved the gTLD program a year ago.
The company also confirmed today that it’s behind the official .nyc bid, and that it has applied for .neustar.

Comment Tagged: .nyc, ICANN, neustar, new gTLDs

Is digital archery bugged too?

ICANN’s digital archery system, which will be used to decide the fates of many new gTLD applicants, may have a bug, according to one applicant.
In a must-read post over on CircleID, Top Level Domain Holdings CEO Antony Van Couvering presents some intriguing evidence that ICANN’s system may be mis-recording timestamps.
Van Couvering hypothesizes that that when applicants’ clicks are recorded before their target time, the software records “the wrong seconds value, but with the right milliseconds value”.
He’s asked ICANN to look into the issue, and has added his voice to those clamoring for gTLD batching to be scrapped entirely.
With so many applicants using custom software to fire their arrows, millisecond differences will be hugely important.
However, as Van Couvering notes, ICANN does not plan to reveal applicants’ scores until July 11, so it’s impossible to tell if this alleged “bug” in the test suite is replicated in the live firing range.
The digital archery system uses the now-notoriously flawed TLD Application System.
JUNE 12 UPDATE:
In a follow-up post, Van Couvering reports, based on a conversation with ICANN, that the “bug” was indeed present, but that it was in the presentation layer, rather than the underlying database.
In other words, it was cosmetic and unlikely to influence the outcome of the batching process.

Comment Tagged: digital archery, ICANN, new gTLDs, tldh, top level domain holdings

How Uniregistry wants to make Whois “two-way”

If someone uses a Whois database to look up personal information such as your home address and phone number, wouldn’t it be nice to know a little something about them, too?
That’s the philosophy behind one of Uniregistry’s more interesting new gTLD policies, according to Frank Schilling, founder of the new new gTLD portfolio applicant.
Uniregistry has applied for dozens of gTLDs and says it has a “registrant-centered” outlook that extends to the mandatory thick Whois databases.
If its gTLDs are approved, the company will record the IP addresses of people doing Whois queries and make the records available to its registrants, Schilling said.
He suggested that Whois users may have to give up more info about themselves, in certain cases, too.
“To get certain pieces of information, you’ll have to agree to share some information about yourself,” Schilling said in an interview with DI yesterday.
Registrants would be able to view archived data about who’s been looking them up, which could help them during subsequent legal disputes about names, or during sales negotiations.
For domainers, this could be handy. Imagine you own the domain soft.drink and you receive a low-ball offer from a random stranger you suspect might be a proxy for a large corporation. Wouldn’t it be nice to know Coca-Cola has recently been checking out your Whois?
It’s going to be interesting to see how IP interests and law enforcement agencies – the two ICANN lobbies most deeply invested in Whois accuracy – react to Uniregistry turning the tables.

Comment Tagged: icann. new gtlds, uniregistry, whois

Schilling applies for “scores” of new gTLDs

Domaining icon Frank Schilling’s new venture, Uniregistry, has applied for “scores” of new generic top-level domains, “most” of which he expects to be contested.
Schilling won’t say exactly how many or which strings Uniregistry is pursuing, but he did reveal that while he is not going for .web, he will be in contention with Google for .lol.
“It’s closer to TLDH than Donuts,” Schilling told DI in an interview this evening, referring to the announcements of Top Level Domain Holdings’ 68 and Donuts’ 307 applications.
I’m guessing it’s around the 40 to 50 mark.
Despite the portfolio and Schilling’s history in domain investing, Uniregistry isn’t what you might call a “domainer” play.
The company doesn’t plan on keeping whole swathes of premium real estate for itself or for auction, Schilling said. Nor does it intend to rip off trademark owners.
“We’ve seen good TLDs fail with bad business plans,” he said, pointing to premium-priced .tv as an example. “You need to allow other people to profit, to evangelize your space.”
“I’m not going to get as rich from this as some of our registrants,” he said.
Uniregistry only plans to hold back a “handful” of premium names, Schilling said. The rest will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.
To avoid creating wastelands of parked domains, the company plans to deploy technical countermeasures to prevent too many domains falling into too few hands.
“The way we’re going stage the landrush it will be very difficult to game it,” he said. “There’ll be significant rate limiting, so you can’t come and take 500 domains in ten milliseconds.”
“What we want to avoid is someone going in and getting 100,000 of the best ones on day one. It’s not fair, and it’s unhealthy for the space.”
Schilling is one of the industry’s most successful domainers. His company, Name Administration, is one of the largest single owners of second-level domain names.
Now Schilling says he’s brought his considerable experience as a domain name registrant Uniregistry’s business model and policies.
The company’s message is that it’s “registrant-centered”.
While that sounds like an easy, glib marketing statement, Schilling is backing it up with some interesting policies.
He’s thinking about a much closer relationship between the registry and the registrant that you’d see in the .com space.
When a second-level domain in a Uniregistry gTLD expires, registrants will get 180 days to claim it back from the registry, possibly even circumventing the registrar.
Uniregistry will even directly alert the registrant that their name is going to expire, a policy that Schilling said has been modeled in part on what Nominet does in the .uk space.
“Registrants have the ability to go to the registry to manage their .co.uk, to transfer the domain, to change certain pieces of information,” he said.
The 180-day policy is designed in part to prevent registrars harvesting their customers most valuable domains when they forget to renew them.
Rogue registrars and registrars competing against their own customers are things that evidently irk Schilling.
“I prefer a system that protects registrants,” he said.
But existing registrars are still the company’s proposed primary channel to market, he said. Uniregistry plans to price its domains in such a way as to give registrars a 50% margin.
“I think there’s enough margin in these strings for registrars to make a great living,” Schilling said.
Schilling hasn’t ruled out an in-house pocket registrar, but said it wouldn’t be created to undercut the regular channel.
The company has hired Internet Systems Consortium, maker of BIND and operator of the F-Root, as its back-end registry provider.
Judging by Uniregistry’s web site, which carries photos of many ISC staff, it’s an unusually close relationship.
I’ll have more on Uniregistry’s plans for Whois and trademark protection in a post later.

6 Comments Tagged: .lol, .web, donuts, google, ICANN, internet systems consortium, new gTLDs, tldh, uniregistry

YouPorn says ICANN not immune from .xxx antitrust

YouPorn owner Manwin Licensing has rejected ICANN’s claim to be immune from antitrust liability.
The company has told a California court that its lawsuit against ICANN and .xxx operator ICM Registry is little different from the landmark case Coalition For ICANN Transparency v Verisign.
Manwin sued ICANN and ICM last November, claiming the two illegally colluded to create a monopoly that, among other things, extorted defensive registration money from porn companies.
But ICANN has said in its attempts to have the case dismissed that the antitrust claims could not apply to it as, for one reason, it “does not engage in trade or commerce”.
Manwin’s oppositions to ICANN’s and ICM’s motions to dismiss rely heavily on the fact that the court allowed CFIT v Verisign, which challenged Verisign’s 2006 .com registry agreement, to go ahead.
Essentially, ICANN is trying to wriggle out of the suit on legal grounds at an early stage, but Manwin reckons there’s precedent for it to have to answer to antitrust claims.
You can read Manwin’s latest court filings here and here.
The case continues.

1 Comment Tagged: ICANN, icm registry, manwin, xxx, youporn

Unbelievably, .africa will be contested

The .africa top-level domain may well be unique — the only geographic gTLD to be contested.
DotConnectAfrica, which has been campaigning for .africa for years, has confirmed that it has applied for the string, despite the fact that another bidder has support of the African Union.
DCA chief Sophia Bekele blogged:

because of the history of the DotAfrica gTLD and our experience during the ‘Yes2DotAfrica’ promotional campaign, we anticipate a prolonged process

The AU in February announced that it was providing its support to a .africa application from UniForum, the South African ccTLD registry.
DCA had previously secured what appeared to be a letter of support from an AU official, but it has since been withdrawn.
According to ICANN’s Applicant Guidebook, if you want to run a geographic gTLD representing multiple countries, you need the express support or non-objection of 60% of those countries.
I’m pretty certain DCA doesn’t have this support, but the AU’s membership does include more than 60% of the nations in Africa.
Is DCA applying in order to get a pay-off from the Uniforum bid? It’s possible, but without the required government support its negotiating position appears to be pretty weak.
Expect objections.

1 Comment Tagged: africa, african union, dotconnectafrica, ICANN, new gTLDs, uniforum