Find domain keywords with new VeriSign apps

VeriSign has released a suite of cute applications for visualizing keywords mined from newly registered domain names.
DomainView has been around for a few months as a tag cloud on the VeriSign web site, but it’s now also an embeddable web widget and a scrolling ticker plug-in for Firefox and Chrome browsers.
The service samples recently registered .com and .net domains for recurring keywords, and spits those keywords back out, along with a short list of related domains that are available to register.
The company is planning to release an iPhone app in the near future, and there’s an API for developers to use today.
I’ve installed the ticker. It’s a nice idea, but it does get a bit distracting after a few minutes. Thankfully, it can be hidden through the options menu.
You can find the new applications here.

1 Comment Tagged: domainview, verisign

Go Daddy to sell .xxx domains

Go Daddy has become the latest registrar to agree to sell .xxx domain names.
It’s a bit of a big deal for ICM Registry, given how dominant Go Daddy is in the registrar channel.
There are about 50 .xxx registrars on this ICANN web page, which lists all the accredited registrars along with which top-level domains they’re approved to sell.
Go Daddy isn’t listed as a .xxx registrar yet, but its accreditation was just announced in a press release.
Read more at The Register.

5 Comments Tagged: go daddy, icm registry, xxx

Second .music applicant is Demand Media partner

Far Further has come out as the second company to say it plans to apply to ICANN for the .music top-level domain.
It’s also, I believe, the first applicant to reveal that it has partnered with Demand Media registrar eNom for its back-end registry services.
Far Further is one of a number of likely applicants for .music. The only other applicant to go public to date is Constantine Roussos’ dotMusic.
The new company is headed by former Warner Music record producer Loren Balman, CEO, and former music journalist John Styll, president. Former PIR chief Alexa Raad of Architelos is advising.
Far Further says its .music will “provide the global music community a secure identifying Internet address that supports the promotion of music, the protection of intellectual property rights, and the advancement of global access to music education.”
It’s my belief that the successful .music applicant will be the one that can secure the support of organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America and its overseas counterparts.
The RIAA’s concerns about piracy spreading through .music domains, however misplaced, suggest that any other applicant is likely to find itself on the receiving end of objections, if not lawsuits.
Support from such organizations would also be critical to any bid that plans to invoke a Community Priority Evaluation — a trump card that well-supported applications can play in the ICANN process.
Perhaps the most interesting revelation about Far Further is the company’s selection of eNom, and its Shared Registry System, as its back-end technology services provider.
eNom is of course the world’s second-largest domain name registrar, with over 11 million domains under management, but it has yet to enter the registry services market.
There’s still a bit of a question mark over eNom’s ability to pass ICANN’s background checks, due to its UDRP losses, but this may not be a problem if it is merely the back-end provider, rather than the applicant itself.

13 Comments Tagged: .music, architelos, demand media, dotmusic, enom, far further, ICANN, new TLDs

Atlas shrugs after movie UDRPs

The producers of a movie based on the cult novel Atlas Shrugged have become the latest recipients of conflicting Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy decisions.
In two recent WIPO decisions, both written by the same panelist, Atlas Productions won its complaint over atlasshruggedmovies.com (plural), but lost another over atlasshruggedmovie.com (singular).
The company released a movie adaptation of the 1957 Ayn Rand book in April, having secured the rights in 1992, but did not appear to have a registered trademark on the name.
The split decisions, both made by WIPO panelist Richard Lyon, rested largely on whether the company had secured, through its investment, common law rights to “Atlas Shrugged”.
In the atlasshruggedmovies.com case, the panelist decided on balance it had rights, and awarded the domain to Atlas without discussing whether the domain had been registered in bad faith.
The decision to allow atlasshruggedmovie.com to remain with the original registrant appears to be because it was registered in 2004, well before Atlas started promoting its movie, and because the respondent made a convincing case that he is a writer/director of spoof movies.
Lyon noted: “There is much to spoof in Atlas Shrugged the novel.”
The fact that the respondent was lawyered up (represented by the law firm Greenberg Traurig) probably helped matters also.
By contrast, the respondent in the atlasshruggedmovies.com sent WIPO an email that constituted the entirety of his defense:

I am the owner of ‘atlasshruggedmovies.com’
I have no motives to go into infringe on any copyrights.
I am in fact the rightful owner and am waiting the interested party to contact me and make a reasonable communications regarding the domain.
I am not permitting the transfer of this domain to any parties at this time.
Thanks for your considerations.

His domain was registered in 2009, around the same time Atlas started plugging its movie, so it was a more clear-cut case of cybersquatting.

Comment Tagged: atlas shrugged, atlasshruggedmovie.com, atlasshruggedmovies.com, udrp

Feds did not seize conspiracy domain

I reported earlier in the week that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency had seized a domain name belonging to an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist.
It seems I may have jumped the gun. The seizure of lowellsfacts.com almost certainly didn’t happen.
Ars Technica called up ICE for the affidavit used to win the court order to seize the domain, and received this statement from an apparently baffled press officer:

ICE has not taken any enforcement action against this site. The site owner/administration redirected www.lowellsfacts.com to our name server, where the seizure banner is hosted.

If this is true, it seems that any idiot can change their name servers to ns1.seizedservers.com and ns2.seizedservers.com and ICE will happily serve up a warning about copyright infringement without even checking whether the domain has actually been seized.
While the lowellsfacts.com case did seem odd, I had assumed that ICE was doing some basic domain verification before displaying its increasingly infamous banner.
This was not an unreasonable assumption – previously, domains seized due to child pornography have displayed a different banner to those involvement with counterfeiting.
There is some code on the site checking the incoming domains before displaying the banner, in other words, apparently just not enough to stop the wave of spoof seizures we’re now likely to see.

2 Comments Tagged: correction, ice, lowellsfacts.com, seizures

IPv6 addresses are the new domain hacks

It’s World IPv6 Day today, and a number of companies have decided to get a little playful with their new IP addresses, using them to spell out their brands.
IPv6 uses hexadecimal notation – the 10 digits and the letters A through F – so it’s possible to use them as “vanity” addresses using something like h4x0r-speak or license plate hacks.
Here’s a few IPv6 “hacks” I’ve found in AAAA records so far today:

BBC – bbc.net.uk – 2001:4b10:bbc::1
Facebook – facebook.com – 2620:0:1c18:0:face:b00c:0:3
Cisco – cisco.com – 2001:420:80:1:c:15c0:d06:f00d (Cisco dog food)
F5 Networks – f5.com – 2001:19b8:101:2::f5f5:1d
US Department of Commerce – commerce.gov – 2610:20:0:20:5ec:d0c:d0c:d0c

A few more, such as Daily Kos’ 2001:48c8:1:c::feeb:beef, seem deliberate but don’t seem to pertain particularly to the site’s brand.
I don’t think anybody’s going to use these addresses to navigate, but I suppose they make prove useful mnemonics for address administrators within those companies.

3 Comments Tagged: domain hacks, ipv6

Salesforce.com pays over $1.5m for data.com

Salesforce.com has bought the domain name data.com for “an amount that significantly exceeds the $1.5 million reserve”, according to Oversee.net.
The domain had been due to be auctioned during the company’s DOMAINFest in Barcelona tomorrow, but was taken out of contention early with the private sale.
While Oversee did not disclose the buyer or final sales price, the Whois record already shows Salesforce.com as the new owner. It was previously owned by United Business Media.
Oversee said the deal brings its year-to-date sales to $11 million.

Comment Tagged: data.com, domainfest, moniker, oversee.net, salesforce.com, snapnames

ICANN hiring CSRs for new TLD program

ICANN has advertised for four new staff to support its new generic top-level domains program.
The organization is looking for three Lead Application Coordinators, to be based in Marina Del Rey, Hong Kong and Brussels, and one Application Coordinator for Marina Del Rey.
The roles are all fairly similar – essentially senior customer support representatives for new gTLD applicants. The lead positions require more than five years call center experience and a university degree.
With the number of applicants in the first round expected to be around the 400 mark, I think that’s a pretty solid ratio of CSRs to applicants, assuming the application process runs smoothly.
The hiring move is obviously a pretty strong indication that ICANN expects the new gTLD program to kick off fairly soon.
ICANN has also recently started advertising for a vice president of Europe, which I believe is a new position. It currently has 18 open positions in total, according to its hiring page.

1 Comment Tagged: ICANN, new TLDs

Senior ICANN staffer hired by .bank project

Craig Schwartz, ICANN’s chief gTLD registry liaison, has been headhunted by BITS, the tech arm of the Financial Services Roundtable, to head up its .bank top-level domain application.
Schwartz will become BITS’ general manager of registry programs in early July, following the conclusion of the next ICANN meeting in Singapore.
BITS has yet to reveal the TLDs it plans to apply for, but .bank is the no-brainer. I understand it is also considering complementary strings, such as .finance and .insurance
The organization has already said that it plans to use VeriSign as its back-end registry services provider.
Schwartz is a five-year ICANN veteran, and his experience dealing with registries will no doubt be missed, particularly at a time when the number of gTLDs is set to expand dramatically.
His replacement will have plenty of time to settle into the role, however. The first new gTLDs approved under the program are not likely to go live until late 2012 at the earliest.

9 Comments Tagged: .bank, bits, craig schwartz, financial services roundtable, ICANN, verisign

Final call for .xxx policy volunteers

The International Foundation For Online Responsibility, which will set policies for the .xxx top-level domain, has issued its final call for Policy Council volunteers.
The deadline for nominations for the nine PC seats has been set at July 5, and IFFOR plans to announce the successful candidates in late August.
Five of the seats are reserved for members of the porn industry. Another will represent privacy/security interests, one will be drawn from the world of child protection, and one will be a free speech advocate.
The final seat will be occupied by ICM Registry, the .xxx manager.
My understanding is that a front-runner for the child protection role is Sharon Girling, a former British police officer who played a key role in child abuse stings including Operation Ore.
I know of a few people who have applied for the free speech spot. Most recently, outspoken .xxx critic “DarkLady”, author of the Dot-XXX Opposition blog, revealed she had put herself forward for the job.
While the PC members are ostensibly volunteers, they do get a $15,000 annual stipend and their travel expenses paid for.
IFFOR will receive $10 from ICM for every .xxx domain that is registered.

1 Comment Tagged: icm registry, iffor, policy council, xxx