CSC (not that one) scraps its dot-brand

A company formerly known as CSC has terminated its dot-brand gTLD contract four years after discontinuing the company name.

Computer Sciences Corporation, now known as DXC Technology, has told ICANN it no longer wishes to operate .csc, saying:

This gTLD was secured right before the merger of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services merged to form DXC Technology. Consequently, the gTLD has never been used and shutting it down will have no effect on internal or external stakeholders.

The CSC-HP merger and name changed happened in 2017.

At one point, nic.csc bore a notice saying it was the “registry for the .dxc top-level domain”, which was a cool trick given .dxc doesn’t exist and has never existed.

This CSC is different from the corporate registrar of the same abbreviation, where the CSC stands for Corporation Service Company. There’s a reasonable chance that this CSC will be able to apply for .csc in the next application round.

CSC becomes first foreign registrar to get the China nod

It’s probably not the best time, politically, to be bragging about doing business in China, but CSC has nevertheless just announced that it’s been given the nod to act as a registrar in China.

The company claims to be the first non-Chinese registrar to be given an official government license to operate in the country, though many registries have obtained one over the last few years since harsh new regulations came into power.

Under the Chinese rules, web site owners need a license to operate, and they can only register domains from approved registrars in approved TLDs.

It’s basically a great big censorship tool, but it doesn’t seem to have stopped every Chinese citizen from registering domains via foreign-owed registrars.

CSC has a corporate client base, so it’s got more incentive than most to follow the rules to the letter.

“CSC’s success in becoming licensed as a foreign-owned registrar positions the company as a go-to resource for global organizations doing business in China,” the company said in a press release.

CSC removes reference to “retiring” new gTLD domain after retiring new gTLD domain

The corporate registrar and new gTLD management consultant CSC Global has ditched a new gTLD domain in favor of a .com, but edited its announcement after the poor optics became clear.

In a brief blog post this week, the company wrote:

We’re retiring cscdigitalbrand.services to give you a more user-friendly interface at cscdbs.com.

From the trusted provider of choice for Forbes Global 2000 companies, this more user-friendly site is filled with information you need to secure and protect your brand. You’ll experience a brand new look and feel, at-a-glance facts and figures, learn about the latest digital threats, access our trusted resources, and see what our customers are saying.

Visit the site to learn more about our core solutions: domain management, domain security, and brand and fraud protection.

But the current version of the post expunges the first paragraph, referring to the retirement of its .services domain, entirely.

I’m going to guess this happened after OnlineDomain reported the move.

But the original text is still in the blog’s cached RSS feed at Feedly.

It’s perhaps not surprising that CSC would not want to draw attention to the fact that it’s withdrawn to a .com from a .services, the gTLD managed by Donuts.

After all, CSC manages dozens of new gTLDs for clients including Apple, Yahoo and Home Depot, and releases quarterly reports tracking and encouraging activation of dot-brands.

Interestingly, and I’m veering a little off-topic here, there is a .csc new gTLD but CSC does not own it. It was delegated to a company called Computer Sciences Corporation (ironically through an application managed by CSC rival MarkMonitor) which also owns csc.com.

Computer Sciences Corporation never really got around to using .csc, and in 2017 merged with a unit of HP to form DXC Technology.

If you visit nic.csc today, you’ll be redirected to dxc.technology/nic, which bears a notice that it’s the “registry for the .dxc top-level domain”.

Given that the .dxc top-level domain doesn’t actually exist, I think this might make DXC the first company to openly declare its intent to go after a dot-brand in the next round of new gTLDs.

Tucows splurges $30 million on Ascio

Tucows has spent almost $30 million on rival channel-focused registrar Ascio Technologies.
The company announced this morning that the $29.44 million deal will add about 1.8 million domains to its portfolio of managed names, along with an extra 500 resellers.
Ascio was generating $4 million of annual EBITDA before the deal closed, Tucows said in a press release, adding:

The Ascio reseller base fits squarely with Tucows’ core customer profile — ISPs, web hosting companies and website builders serving quality businesses that reward outstanding customer service with long-term loyalty.

Ascio has been owned by CSC Digital Brand Services since 2016, when it was acquired as part of a bundle of registrars in the NetNames group.
As a channel play, it was not really a fit with CSC’s core brand-protection market. It is of course a fit with Tucows, which owns OpenSRS.
The deal, which closed yesterday, has reduced choice in the space, which may not sit well with some resellers.

Guess which registrars sell the most gTLDs

MarkMonitor has become the first accredited registrar to carry over 500 gTLDs.
Inspired by a recent Dynadot press release outlining its passing of the 500-TLD mark, I thought I’d put together a league table of gTLD registrars, ordered by which carries the most.
It will come as little surprise to most that brand protection registrars dominate the top end of the list.
MarkMonitor tops the league, with 504 gTLDs in its stable as of the end of June, up from 499 in May.
It’s closely followed by Ascio and CSC. Indeed, brand-focused registrars occupy many of the top 30 registrars, as you can see from this table.
[table id=45 /]
There’s no real correlation between the number of gTLDs carried and the total domains under management for the registrar.
GoDaddy, with 53 million names, is way down in 28th position, for example.
The list was compiled from the latest gTLD registry reports, which show how many domains were registered to each accredited registrar at the end of June.
The data does not not include ccTLDs, nor does it account for situations where registrars may retail a TLD via a gateway or as a reseller of another registrar.

.health backer has cop-like takedown powers for all gTLDs in Japan

LegitScript, a US company focused on eradicating illegal online pharmacies, which backs the .pharmacy and .health gTLDs, has been given police-like powers to have domain names taken down in Japan.
It has also emerged that when IP Mirror, a brand protection registrar, was hit with an embarrassing ICANN contract-breach notice in November, it was as a result of a LegitScript complaint.
Under section 3.18.2 of ICANN’s 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement, registrars must have a 24/7 abuse hotline that can be used by “law enforcement, consumer protection, quasi-governmental or other similar authorities” to report illegal activity.
Registrars must act on complaints made to the hotline within 24 hours, but only authorities designated by national governments get to use it.
Now, it transpires that LegitScript has been formally designated a 3.18.2 authority by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
That means the US company’s complaints about domains hosting potentially illegal pharmacy sites have the same weight as complaints from the Japanese police, when made to registrars that have an office in Japan, even if they’re headquartered elsewhere.
IP Mirror, which was recently acquired by CSC Digital Brand Services, is based in Singapore but has an office in Tokyo.
As far as I can tell, most of the top 10 registrars do not have offices in Japan. KeyDrive (Moniker, Key-Systems etc) may be the exception. GMO is the largest registrar based in Japan.
LegitScript announced its relationship with the Japanese ministry in September (I missed it at the time) and company president John Horton provided some context to the IP Mirror breach notice on CircleID today.
I only report the deal today because it strikes me as noteworthy that a private enterprise has been given the same powers under the 2013 RAA as law enforcement and government consumer protection agencies — and it’s not even in its home territory.
Horton told DI today that while LegitScript is legally based in the US and has offices in the EU, only Japan has so far formally granted it 3.18.2 powers. He said in an email:

We only have formal Section 3.18.2 designation in Japan at present. We have some other endorsements or recommendations by or on behalf of government authorities, although they do not specifically reference Section 3.18.2. We work closely with the Italian Medicines Agency and the Irish Medicines Board, for example, and report rogue Internet pharmacies in consultation with them.

Horton pointed out that anybody is able to to file abuse complaints under the 2013 RAA — and registrars are obliged to “take reasonable and prompt steps to investigate and respond appropriately”.
His CircleID piece cites two instances in which such complaints from LegitScript resulted in ICANN breach notices.
The chief difference is that under 3.18.2 registrars do not have much flexibility in their response times. They have to “take necessary and appropriate actions” within a black-and-white 24-hour deadline.

Melbourne IT gets out of brand protection with $157m sale to CSC

Corporation Service Company has acquired Melbourne IT’s flagship digital brand management service for a ridiculously expensive AUD 152.5 million ($157m).
The shock news takes Melbourne out of the high-margin defensive registration and brand monitoring market, leaving it as a basic domain registrar focused on small businesses.
For CSC, the deal leaves it with a considerably strengthened hand in the DBS space, which is poised to benefit from the massive influx of new gTLDs over the next few years.
It also means that all of the over 100 new gTLD applications Melbourne was supporting as a consultant will now be managed by CSC.
The price of AUD 152.5 million is far more than Melbourne IT could have hoped to ask for, equal to almost its entire market capitalization of AUD 160 million.
Melbourne has had a rocky time on the markets of late, and had previously disclosed that it was looking to sell off some units in order to appease shareholders and rationalize its business.
But DBS was considered a core business, bigger now than Melbourne’s regular domains business, and likely not for sale. CSC’s high-premium offer was too good, it seems, to be responsibly refused.
“While this was not a business that we had specifically earmarked for sale, given the value creation provided by the transaction, this was an opportunity which could not be ignored,” CEO Theo Hnarakis, said in a statement.
The deal follows the sale of MarkMonitor, a key Melbourne competitor, to Thomson Reuters last July. When it comes to brand protection in the domain name space, it’s a big boy’s game nowadays.
Melbourne will remain a domain registrar with over four million names under management.
The DBS business was formed in 2008, largely as a result of Melbourne’s purchase of Verisign’s brand services division for $50 million.

.xxx sunrise auctions delayed after 80k applications

ICM Registry has apparently delayed the results of its just-closed .xxx sunrise period until December to give it a chance to clear its backlog of unverified applications.
Corporation Services Company, a major brand-protection registrar, is reporting tonight that ICM and its validation firm, IProta, does not expect to finish validating trademark claims until November 28.
That’s a week later than ICM had planned to kick off the auction phase of the sunrise period, during which contested domains will be awarded to the highest bidder.
“The results of the applications that were submitted during the Sunrise phase will therefore not be available until the first week of December,” CSC said on its blog.
ICM announced yesterday that it has received almost 80,000 sunrise applications from trademark owners and porn companies seeking .xxx domains to match their .coms.
Almost half of those applications were filed during the last week of sunrise. Each trademark claim needs to be individually validated against government databases by IProta.
The plan, according to ICM’s web site, was to start auctioning contested sunrise domains November 21 and to take .xxx into general availability December 6.
Landrush kicks off next Tuesday, running for 17 days. Landrush auctions are scheduled to commence December 12, according to ICM’s web site.