AusRegistry wins .jewelers deal

GJB Partners, one of the few companies to recently announce a commercial new top-level domain bid, has selected AusRegistry International to provide the back-end registry for .jewelers.

It’s the first non-geographic TLD contract win AusRegistry has announced this year.

While it’s probably a small deal, it’s notable because one of GJB’s managing partners is George Bundy, CEO of BRS Media, the registry for .fm and a potential .radio applicant.

BRS is currently the only public reference customer for Espresso, the registry platform offered by Minds + Machines, an AusRegistry competitor.

M+M offers .brand gTLDs from $25k

Minds + Machines is promoting its gTLD registry services to brand owners at the International Trademark Association meeting in Washington DC, revealing prices as low as $25,000 a year.

Its .brand package covers preparing and filing the application with ICANN and then running the technical back-end.

The company also appears to have introduced a price ceiling of $100,000 a year for .brand clients, according to a press release.

M+M is even offering to throw in a private, ICANN-accredited registrar. I believe the company may be the first registry to publicize this kind of bundled service.

The company is targeting brand owners that may not be convinced by the attractiveness of a .brand, and may have no clue what to do with one, but which nevertheless do not want to be left behind in the event that the second round of new gTLD applications is delayed for many years.

M+M CEO Antony Van Couvering is quoted as saying:

There are a lot of innovative ways for brands to use new gTLDs, but most brands want to first secure their gTLD for a reasonable price, and maybe use it internally, before deciding on the next step.

M+M, which hired former ICANN chair Peter Dengate Thrush as chairman in June, has been among the most aggressive marketers of new gTLDs (which are, after all, it’s entire raison d’etre).

Its enthusiasm has already caused a couple of raised eyebrows.

A teaser announcement from M+M earlier this week, which mentioned how its “registry platform is connected with all major registrars, including MarkMonitor” caused MarkMonitor to issue a clarification stating that it has “no business relationship” with the company.

While MarkMonitor is plugged into CoCCA, the registry platform that handles dozens of ccTLDs, it is not plugged into Espresso, which is M+M’s in-house version of the open-source CoCCA software, the company said in a blog post.

(UPDATE: M+M’s Antony Van Couvering notes in the comments below that MarkMonitor accepts .fm registrations, and that the .fm registry uses Espresso)

CoCCA itself felt compelled to issue a statement in July, clarifying that CoCCA and M+M are not working together on Espresso, as some had inferred from an M+M interview.

M+M surprised by .mumbai snub

One of Minds + Machines’ key top-level domain applications has been thrown into confusion after government support for its .mumbai bid was apparently revoked.

In a letter that surfaced on the ICANN web site this week, Y.S. Mahangade, deputy director of IT at the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, wrote (pdf):

Honorable Deputy Mayor of MCGM inadvertently issued a letter to one organization which has been revoked later by Honorable Deputy Major of MCGM. It may please be noted that the official position of the City of Mumbai is communicated by Municipal Commissioner.

Under ICANN’s rules, all applications for geographical gTLDs must be backed officially by the local government, otherwise they get rejected.

According to Wikipedia, the Mayor of Mumbai (and presumably the deputy) has a “largely ceremonial” function, “as the real powers are vested in the Municipal Commissioner”.

Wikipedia does not say what kind of power the deputy director of IT wields. I’m guessing it’s not much.

M+M CEO Antony Van Couvering said in a statement:

This is the first we have heard about this and we are looking into the matter with our client, India TL Domain Pvt Ltd, to whom the original letter of appointment was issued by the Deputy Mayor of Mumbai. Once we understand what the situation is viz-a-viz India TL Domain Pvt Ltd and the City of Mumbai, we will provide an update.

You can view the letter of support from the deputy mayor here.

M+M announced its deal with the .mumbai applicant, India TL Domain, in June. As I noted at the time, not much is known about the company.

But according to official records, the company’s managing director is Ashok Hiremath, who’s also chairman of Mumbai-based fungicide manufacturer Astec Lifesciences.

His brother Suresh, now apparently a British citizen living in London, appears to be the only one of the company’s three directors to have engaged, albeit lightly, in ICANN policy development.

The third director is also Astec’s corporate secretary. The company shares its address with Astec.

In June, M+M’s parent company, Top Level Domain Holdings, issued two million new shares to an unnamed consultant as a result of the .mumbai deal, raising £160,000 ($260,000).

This is not the first time a geographic gTLD applicant that apparently raised support from the necessary governmental entity has had its plans thrown into doubt.

The same happened to DotConnectAfrica, a potential .africa bidder, in May, after the African Union apparently did an about-face.

Mumbai is India’s largest city, with over 20 million citizens. It’s also the richest (although the poverty there is enough to make you weep) making .mumbai a potentially lucrative gTLD.

Former ICANN chair joins M+M

Peter Dengate Thrush, the former ICANN chairman who pushed through approval of the new top-level domains program less than a month ago, is to join new gTLD firm Minds + Machines.

He has become executive chairman of Top Level Domain Holdings, M+M’s parent company, which is listed on the Alternative Investment Market.

The hire will undoubtedly boost M+M’s credibility and raise its profile, but is already also raising eyebrows.

TLDH plans to apply to ICANN for potentially dozens of new gTLD contracts next year, both with partners and customers and on its own.

Dengate Thrush has been granted options to buy 15 million TLDH shares for 8p each, roughly the same as its current price, which he can exercise at a rate of 1.25 million per quarter through July 2014.

TLDH currently has no revenue to speak of. Its future share price will depend on its ability to sign registry services customers and win new gTLDs through the ICANN process.

It’s fairly easy to extrapolate scenarios where Dengate Thrush’s compensation package is worth millions.

His chairmanship of ICANN’s board of directors came to an end June 24, just a few days after it voted to approve the new gTLD program.

During that vote, dissenting director Mike Silber accused the board of voting too soon, saying it was being hurried by “ego-driven deadlines”.

This was a reference to Dengate Thrush and fellow new gTLD cheerleader Rita Rodin Johnston, both of whom were due to see their terms on the board expire that week.

Dengate Thrush is the first ICANN chair to take a high-paying domain name industry job following his time with ICANN.

His predecessor, Vint Cerf, joined Google. Earlier, Esther Dyson went on to invest in and work with a number of technology start-ups.

ICANN does not have a policy preventing former employees or directors taking lucrative jobs working for the companies that they were previously essentially regulating.

Indeed, some of its directors currently work for such companies.

Few in the ICANN community doubted that Dengate Thrush, an IP lawyer by trade, would join a new gTLD company. The question was which one.

I asked him, along with CEO Rod Beckstrom and senior VP Kurt Pritz, at a press conference in Singapore, whether they would be prevented from joining a new gTLD firm.

The answer, basically, was: “No.”

ICANN staff and board sign confidentiality agreements that prevent them taking secrets into future employers, but there’s nothing to prevent a “revolving door” between industry and regulator.

There have already been calls from parts of the ICANN community to create a new ethics policy, after senior registry liaison Craig Schwartz left to join the VeriSign-backed .bank project.

GNSO Council chair Stephane Van Gelder of the French registrar Indom suggested in a blog post this morning that ICANN should consider hiring independent directors and barring them from working in the industry for a year after their terms end.

It would be pretty difficult to enforce such a rule on the board as it is currently made up, given that it draws some of its members, by design, from the domain name industry.

ICANN’s new vice chair Bruce Tonkin works for Melbourne IT, a registrar, for example. He recused himself from the new gTLD vote because of this conflict of interest.

It would be silly for ICANN to ban him from working for Melbourne IT after his term expires if he’s allowed to work there during the term itself.

While no rules appear to have been broken, M+M’s new hire may sit uncomfortably with some.

It will certainly reinforce beliefs, where they are held, that the new gTLD program is largely a money-grabbing exercise by the domain industry.

M+M intros flat-rate new TLD services

Minds + Machines is to offer its back-end registry services to new top-level domain applicants for a flat $100,000 annual fee, the company has announced.

The deal represents a bit of a switch for the registry market, which typically charges on a per-domain, per-year basis and doesn’t talk about pricing.

The $100,000 offer will not be extended to potentially high-volume gTLDs, such as .music, or geographic strings such as .nyc, M+M said.

Customers deemed “disadvantaged or needy” will get a 50% discount.

It’s a pretty aggressive move by the company, which has been waiting for years for ICANN to approve the new gTLD program and needs to grab market and mindshare quickly.

M+M was recently compelled to partner with a larger rival, Neustar, to run the back ends for geo-TLDs supported by governmental entities nervous about using a relatively inexperienced player.

“Until now, pricing for registry services has been shrouded in secrecy, and potential applicants have had to try to decipher convoluted pricing tiers,” M+M CEO Antony Van Couvering said in a press release.

He’s not wrong.

The large incumbent registry players have not publicly disclosed pricing, but I gather it’s usually around a couple of dollars per domain per year, with some additional flat fees.

From up-and-coming registry operators, I’ve heard figures as low as $0.75 per domain per year. Competition for applicant customers is, I’m told, getting pretty fierce.

While the new M+M pricing structure is obviously simpler, it will appeal largely to applicants expecting to take a relatively low registration volume, but still high enough that $100,000 does not work out to a ludicrous per-domain fee.

A 25,000-name community registry, for example, would pay the equivalent of $4 per domain per year, which might not make a heck of a lot of sense if they can get an equivalent service for a buck a name elsewhere.

On the other hand, a company targeting a stable base of 250,000 names may lose money in the years it ramps up to that goal, but it will see its margins swell as its registration volume grows.

Still, the new gTLD program is all about innovation (right?) and this seems to be one of the first tangible examples, so it will be very interesting to see how well it plays in the market.