Has .sucks abandoned its Sunrise Premium program?

Vox Populi Registry has done away with the “Sunrise Premium” part of its .sucks launch strategy, if only in name.
The pricing page of the company’s web site no longer makes any reference to Sunrise Premium, the controversial, trademark-heavy list of .sucks domains that would cost over $2,000 a year to register and renew.
Instead, there are two new categories of names: Registry Premium and Market Premium.
Registry Premium appears to be what it was previously just calling “Premium” — individually priced high-value domains such as divorce.sucks and life.sucks. That’s in tune with standard registry practice.
The new Market Premium category appears to be the replacement for Sunrise Premium. The web site describes it like this:

In General Availability, dotSucks has created a list of domains called Market Premium names. These are names that the market over time have designated as having a high value.

Previously, Vox Pop CEO John Berard told DI and other reporters that the Sunrise Premium list had been compiled from names registered or blocked in previous sunrise periods in other TLDs.
It was characterized as an additional protection against cybersquatting, but intellectual property interests saw it as a shakedown.
It’s not obvious from the updated Vox Pop web site whether Market Premium is a ground-up rethink of the Sunrise Premium concept, or is merely an empty re-branding.
The name “Sunrise Premium” was confusing, given that such domains are not actually available during the formal sunrise period. Also, the name inextricably suggested that it was a list of trademarks.
Market Premium names are priced exactly the same as Sunrise Premium — that is, $1,999 at the registry level, with a suggested retail price of $2,499.
Market Premium names will also not be eligible for the discounted “Block” service but will “likely” be eligible for the Consumer Subsidy program. That’s no change from the policies governing the Sunrise Premium incarnation.
The registry web site now also states that purchasers of the Block service, which carries a $149 registry fee, will be able to unblock their domains if they wish to actively use them, but doing so will convert the domain into a $1,999 Market Premium name.
Defensive blocking could therefore have the eventual effect of stuffing the Market Premium list with trademarks anyway (assuming any trademark holders with blocks wish to activate their .sucks names, which seems unlikely).
I’ve put in a request for clarification about Market Premium with the registry and will provide updates when I get them.
Other updates on the .sucks price list include a removal of the $9.95 suggested retail price for Consumer Subsidy names.
Consumer Subsidy names are supposedly going to be run by a third party consumer advocacy group from Everything.sucks, but that group has not been identified by Vox Pop yet.
The fact that the registry seemingly had no deal in place but already knew the price suggested to many that Everything.sucks would just be another shell company managed by Vox Pop owner Momentous. Berard reportedly denied this publicly at the INTA 2015 conference last week.
The Vox Pop web site now states “dotSucks is hopeful that this will bring the individual consumer price below 10 dollars.”

Congress to put .sucks on trial

The US Congress is to hold a hearing to look into the .sucks gTLD and ICANN accountability.
A hearing entitled “Stakeholder Perspectives on ICANN: The .sucks Domain and Essential Steps to Guarantee Trust and Accountability in the Internet’s Operation” has been scheduled by the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet
It will take place in Washington DC next Wednesday, May 13.
The list of witnesses does not yet appear to have been published.
I would guess we’d be looking at, at the very least, somebody senior from ICANN, somebody senior from .sucks registry Vox Populi, and an intellectual property lawyer.
It was ICANN’s Intellectual Property Constituency that complained about .sucks’ sunrise policies and fees, causing ICANN to refer the matter to US and Canadian trade regulators.
The title of the House hearing suggests that the .sucks controversy will be inextricably tied to the broader issue of ICANN accountability, which is currently undergoing a significant review as ICANN seeks to split permanently from US government oversight.
That’s not great optics for ICANN; I’m sure the organization would rather not have its performance judged on what is quite an unusual edge case emerging from the new gTLD program.

.porn and .adult sunrises net around 8,000 sales

The sunrise periods for .porn and .adult netted just shy of 4,000 domains per TLD, according to ICM Registry.
The company said .porn received 3,995 registrations while .adult trailed slightly with 3,902.
Those numbers are a combination of regular Trademark Clearinghouse sunrise registrations and Sunrise B registrations.
The ICANN-mandated sunrise periods ended April 1 and were followed by unique Sunrise B periods, during which anyone who bought a .xxx block in 2011 could register the matching new gTLD names.
This time, however, Sunrise B domains actually do resolve.
I believe the the Sunrise B phases accounted for something like 1,500 names apiece.
The previous high bar for 2012-round new gTLD sunrises was .london, with just over 800 registrations.
While .porn and .adult may be record breakers for this round, sales were just a twentieth of the levels seen when .xxx launched in 2011 — about 80,000 names were defensively registered back then.
Later this week, ICM will kick off another launch phase — Domain Matching — during which anyone who owned a .xxx domain prior to April 30 can get their matching .porn and .adult names.
General availability is scheduled for June 4.

ICANN in “fact-finding” mode over potential .sucks breach

ICANN is playing its cards close to its chest when pressed on what it thinks Vox Populi may have done wrong with its .sucks launch pricing and policies.
The organization told DI in a statement that it is currently “fact-finding”, and will not speculate on what parts of the Registry Agreement may have been breached.
ICANN on Thursday reported Vox Pop to the US and Canadian trade regulators, asking them to judge whether the registry’s $2,000 sunrise fee broke any laws.
Its Intellectual Property Constituency reckons the launch, which also places thousands of trademarks on permanent, high-priced “Sunrise Premium” list amounts to nothing more than a “shakedown” of brand owners.
Vox Pop CEO John Berard told DI last week that the referral to the US Federal Trade Commission, despite that fact that the company and its owners are Canadian, amounted to “appeasement” of the IPC.
In response, ICANN told DI in a statement:

The registry is offering domain name registrations to registrants located in jurisdictions around the world. It¹s possible that a registry’s activities could violate the law in the registry’s own jurisdiction; it is also possible that a registry’s activities could violate the law in the jurisdiction of a registrar or registrant where the registry offers domain name registrations. In this case, the IPC letter was signed by an attorney based in New York City, and ICANN thought it appropriate to ask both U.S. and Canadian authorities to consider the IPC allegations.

ICANN seems to be saying on the one hand that registries are beholden to the laws of wherever their registrants are based and on the other hand that the jurisdiction of the IPC’s current president, Greg Shatan, somehow has a bearing on what laws gTLD registries are obliged to obey.
I await correction from more knowledgeable readers, but I don’t think either of those statements is accurate.
If the latter is true, then perhaps the IPC should in future elect its leaders from only the countries with the most trademark-friendly regimes.
In ICANN’s letters to the FTC and IPC, the organization said it was “evaluating other remedies”. From the context, it seems that ICANN is thinking it could initiate some kind of compliance action against .sucks regardless of the what governmental regulators say.
Asked to explain this, ICANN told DI:

We¹re currently doing some fact-finding and analysis to assess whether there has been any breach by the registry of its obligations, and, based on the results of that analysis, we will try to determine what remedies, if any, may be available. Obviously, it will depend on all the facts and circumstances. Beyond that, since we haven¹t finished that evaluation process it would be inappropriate to speculate about possible remedies.

That’s not saying much, but it leaves the door open for ICANN Compliance to do something even if the FTC and Office of Consumer Affairs deem that no laws have been broken.
One possible “breach” that has been floated relates to the differential pricing created by the Sunrise Premium list. However, my take on this is that, under the new gTLD contracts, it’s not massively different to other kinds of premium pricing program.
Differential pricing protections only apply to renewal fees. If the registrant is told at the point of sale that their renewal fees will be high, that enables registries to put different fees on different domains.
There have also been theories put forward about ICANN’s motivation for referring .sucks to regulators.
The idea that ICANN can defer to the FTC and others on legal matter is not entirely new. In cases where registries intend to merge, ICANN is allowed under its contracts to refer the deals to regulators before approving them.
But this is the first time ICANN has referred new gTLD pricing to competition authorities.
Is it a case of ICANN ass-covering?
ICANN is taking unique fees worth up to $1 million extra from Vox Populi and, as I wrote two weeks ago, the optics of this are bad for ICANN, which could look like it is profiteering from .sucks.
ICANN has explained that the extra fees related to entities that were owned by Vox Pop parent Momentous, the Canadian registrar that had many subsidiaries go out of business owing ICANN a tonne of cash.
By punting the IPC’s complaint to regulators, ICANN could deflect criticism that it is not doing enough to protect rights holders and registrants while avoiding having to make a tricky decision itself.
Regardless, the FTC referral and the fact that ICANN is charging Vox Pop special fees sends a strong message that ICANN does not trust the registry one bit.

Kevin Spacey among first .sucks buyers

Kevin Spacey, Google, Apple and Microsoft are among the first to buy .sucks domains in apparent attempts to protect their reputations.
Vox Populi Registry, which took .sucks to its sunrise period on Monday, has started publishing the names of sunrise registrants on its web site.
Names scrolling past on a ticker stream this morning include kevinspacey.sucks, gmail.sucks, siri.sucks and windowsphone.sucks.
Other brands to register so far include Instagram, WordPress, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Wal-Mart.
The dominant registrars on the ticker are MarkMonitor, CSC and LexSynergy, which all specialize in brand protection.
It’s notable that some of the registered strings are secondary brands covering products and services, rather than merely the company’s name.
That could suggest that trademark owners are being somewhat aggressive in their defensive registrations in .sucks.
Actor Kevin Spacey, the only celebrity I spotted on the ticker, has a track record of protecting his personal brand online.
In 2002, he won a cybersquatting complaint over kevinspacey.com, which is now his official web site.
Spacey… well, let’s just say he has been the subject of many speculative media reports over the years. We have mutual acquaintances and from what I hear I can see why he wouldn’t want his brand in third-party hands.
UPDATE: Taylor Swift’s people, who made headelines a few weeks ago by buying taylorswift.porn, have also acquired taylorswift.sucks via MarkMonitor.

.sucks launches despite trademark lobby outrage

Vox Populi took its .sucks new gTLD into its sunrise period as planned today, despite an 11th-hour outcry from trademark lawyers.
Pricing varies wildly between registrars.
Registry CEO John Berard told DI today that the TLD became available to trademark owners at a minute after midnight UTC this morning as scheduled.
ICANN’s Intellectual Property Constituency had asked ICANN’s top brass late Friday (mid-way through California’s final working day before the sunrise was due to begin) to “halt” the launch.
I’ve yet to hear confirmation from ICANN that it will not take action as a result of the IPC’s letter, but it has evidently not so far chosen to intervene.
The IPC described .sucks, with its suggested $2,500 sunrise fee, as a “shakedown” and a “perversion” of the new gTLD program’s rights protection mechanisms.
Vox Pop has also published its registry-level fees.
It turns out its sunrise fee is $1,999, with a suggested retail price of $2,499.
That’s an attractive mark-up for registrars, but it’s not clear from the registry’s web site how many of its 30-plus contracted registrars have chosen to participate in the sunrise phase.
With the current volume of sunrise registrations running at fewer than 1,000 per TLD, and most registrations coming via a small number of brand protection registrars, it’s debateable whether it’s worthwhile for most registrars to bother with the extra implementation work.
Several retail registrars I checked are not currently offering sunrise names.
One corporate registrar, IPC member MarkMonitor, has promised to only mark up registrations by $25 per name, saying it refuses to profit from .sucks. Presumably, therefore, it is selling sunrise names for $2,024.
Of the registrars I checked that publish their prices on their web sites, Marcaria and 101domain are selling for $2,199. LexSynergy is priced in GBP that works out to $2,533 a year. Rebel.com has gone for $2,600 (including a $100 non-refundable application fee).

Here’s why trademark owners will think .sucks sucks

Vox Populi Registry is to launch its .sucks gTLD at the end of the month, and its plans are likely to piss off trademark owners no end.
As previously reported, the company has backpedaled on its idea of pricing its sunrise period names at $25,000 per name per year, but it’s introducing some new concepts that seem almost designed to get hackles up in the IP community.
From March 30 to May 29, any company with a trademark registered in the Trademark Clearinghouse will be able to buy their matching .sucks domains at sunrise for $2,499. That’s also the annual renewal fee.
It’s a tenth of the price previously touted, but still pretty steep even by sunrise standards.
Vox Pop isn’t doing anything particularly unusual with its sunrise, which is governed by policies closely regulated by ICANN.
But its big new idea is its “Sunrise Premium” list, a list of strings dominated by famous trademarks.
Vox Pop CEO John Berard told DI yesterday that the Sunrise Premium list has been compiled from strings registered or blocked in other TLDs’ sunrise periods.
While he declined to characterize it as a list of trademarks, he acknowledged that it will be trademark-heavy.
If your mark is on this list, you will never be able to get a .sucks domain at the regular general availability retail price of $249 a year. It will always be $2,499 a year.
Despite the name, Sunrise Premium names are only available during general availability, which begins June 1.
On the one hand, this mandatory premium pricing for the world’s most well-defended marks appears to have benefits for some trademark owners.
While Sunrise Premium names are not restricted to owners of matching marks, the $2,499 fee applies whether you’re the mark owner, a legitimate third-party registrant, or a cybersquatter.
So the high price looks like a deterrent to cybersquatting, suggesting that Vox Pop is fighting from the IP corner.
But then we discover that Sunrise Premium names will never be eligible for the .sucks “Block” service — similar to .xxx’s Sunrise B, a Block is a non-resolving registry reservation — which is expected to retail at a discounted $199 per year.
Berard said that the registry wants to encourage use.
“If you are on the Sunrise Premium list or want a premium name, those can’t be blocked,” Berard said. “It’s all part and parcel of us trying to put more power in the hands of individuals and to cultivate a commitment on behalf of the commercial world to participate in the dialogue.”
But the fact remains: if you have a track record of defensively registering your trademark, Vox Pop is essentially penalizing you with higher fees.
Feel those hackles rising yet?
Vox Pop’s stated goals are to give companies a way to manage customer feedback and individuals a way to exercise their rights to criticize.
“A company would be smart to register its name because of the value that consumer criticism has in improving customer loyalty, delivering good customer service, understanding new product and service possibilities,” Berard said.
“They’re spending a lot more on marketing and customer service and research. This domain can another plank in that platform,” he said. “On the other hand, we also want to make sure that these names are also accessible to individuals who have something to say.”
Companies on the Sunrise Premium list have an additional thing to worry about: the .sucks Consumer Advocate Subsidy, which will bring the price of a .sucks domain down to $9.95 per year.
The subsidy will only be available to registrants unaffiliated with the trademark-owning company, and they’ll have to direct their domains to a discussion forum platform called Everything.sucks.
Berard said Everything.sucks will be operated by a third party, but could not yet disclose the details.
The subsidy program will be available on regular and Sunrise Premium names, but not Sunrise names. It is not expected to launch until September.
It’s not yet clear how flexible and configurable the service will be.
It seems likely that if somebody wants to write a blog, say, criticizing a certain company, product, service or public figure, they will incur the usual $249 annual reg fee.
It’s not exactly “free” speech.
On the whole, the finalized policies and fees may look like they’re specifically designed to irk the IP lobby, but they do seem to be aligned with Vox Pop’s mission statement.
If you’re of the view that trademark owners should have the sole right to use the string matching their mark as a domain name, you’re likely to be unhappy with what Vox Pop is doing.
If, on the other hand, you’re an advocate of the right of every free person to stick it to The Man, you may view the policies more favorably.
Either way, it could be a money-spinner for Vox Pop.
I’m expecting .sucks to be only the third new gTLD to top 1,000 sunrise registrations (assuming .porn and .adult will be the first).
Assuming the registry’s slice of the $2,499 fee is over $2,000, the company is looking to clear in excess of $2 million in annually recurring sunrise revenue alone.

.porn now the biggest new gTLD sunrise

.porn and .adult have taken the crown of the most-subscribed new gTLD sunrise periods to date.
The two ICM Registry spaces opened up for registrations from users of the Trademark Clearinghouse on March 2.
A little over a week later, the company tells DI that both gTLDs have individually exceeded the previous sunrise record holder.
My understanding is that .london was the new gTLD with the most sunrise registrations, selling just over 800 names to TMCH customers during its combined sunrise/landrush, which ended last July.
ICM revealed in a webinar last week that it expected its new gTLDs to have to biggest sunrise numbers to date.
“Both .porn and .adult will have exceeded that [.london] number comfortably,” ICM president Stuart Lawley confirmed to DI today.
.adult is “almost neck and neck” with .porn, Lawley said.
The numbers are still pretty small compared to ICM’s 2003-round gTLD, .xxx, which had over 80,000 sunrise applications in October 2011.
They’re also pretty small compared to the TMCH’s overall number of registrations, which at the last public disclosure was a little under 35,000.
But ICM has another couple opportunities for trademark owners to defensively register that may work out cheaper.
First, from April 6 to April 30 companies that bought non-resolving “blocked” names in the .xxx Sunrise B will be able to block the same strings in .porn and .adult.
ICM says registrars are offering discounts for five-year blocks.
Then, from May 6 to May 31 the Domain Matching program starts. That’s open to any .xxx registrant, defensive or otherwise, but not to those with .xxx Sunrise B blocks.

.cancerresearch — a role model for dot-brands?

.cancerresearch went live today with an interesting, and possibly unique to date, take on the new gTLD concept.
It’s technically not a dot-brand under ICANN rules, but there are no firm plans to start selling registrations to third parties yet and the people running it are pointing to it as a possible model from which dot-brands could draw inspiration.
The registry, the charitable Australian Cancer Research Foundation, is working heavily with back-end provider ARI Registry Services and has recruited the ad agency M&C Saatchi for the promotion.
It’s reserved about 80 .cancerresearch domain names for its own “promotional purposes” — permissible under ICANN rules — and gone live today with a handful of web sites designed to raise awareness about and funds for cancer research.
I say it looks possibly unique because, despite the multiple domains in play, it basically looks and feels like one web site.
Start at home.cancerresearch, click a link entitled “Donate” and you’ll be taken to donate.cancerrresearch. Click a link about lung cancer, you’ll go to lung.cancerresearch. There’s another link to theone.cancerresearch, soliciting donations.
Unless you’re looking at the address bar in your browser, you’d be forgiven for assuming you’re on the same web site. The sites on the different domains are using the same style, same imagery, and are obviously part of the same campaign.
That’s not particularly innovative, of course. Redirecting users to other domains within the same web site experience happens all the time. But I don’t think I’ve seen it done before with a new gTLD. Navigation-wise, it seems to have a degree of novelty.
Tony Kirsch, head of global consulting at ARI, said that what the ACRF is doing could “help give dot-brand holders struggling with a wait-and-see approach a real example of what can be done”.
.cancerresearch isn’t a dot-brand under ICANN’s strict Specification 13 rules, however. It’s more like an unofficial ‘closed generic’ at this point.
The gTLD is launching today — with mainstream media coverage — without a confirmed Sunrise date. Right now, nobody apart from the registry can own a domain there.
And while Kirsch told DI that .cancerresearch will be available to third parties, he also said that there will be strict eligibility requirements. Those requirements are still “TBD”, however.
There are also no accredited registrars for the gTLD at this point, he confirmed.

.top says Facebook shakedown was just a typo

Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technology, the .top registry, is blaming a typo for a Facebook executive’s claim that it wanted $30,000 or more for facebook.top.
Information provided to the ICANN GNSO Council by Facebook domain manager Susan Kawaguchi yesterday showed that .top wanted RMB 180,000 (currently $29,000) for a trademarked name that previously had been blocked due to ICANN’s name collisions policy.
But Mason Zhang, manager of the registry’s overseas channel division, told DI today that the price is actually RMB 18,000 ($2,900):

We were shocked when seeing that our register price for TMCH protected names like Facebook during Exclusive Registration Period is changed from “eighteen thousand” into what is written, the “one hundred and eighty thousand”.
I think that might be a type mistake from our side, and we checked and we are certain that the price is CNY EIGHTEEN THOUSAND.

The 18,000-yuan sunrise fee is published on the registry’s official web site, as I noted yesterday.
The registry email sent to Facebook is reproduced in this PDF.
I wondered yesterday whether a breakdown in communication may to be blame. Perhaps I was correct.
While $3,000 is still rather high for a defensive registration, it doesn’t stink of extortion quite as badly as $30,000.
Still, it’s moderately good news for Facebook and any other company worried they were going to have to shell out record-breaking prices to defensively register their brands.