ICANN to pay $2 million to keep Trademark Clearinghouse “free” for registrars

ICANN is putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to helping new gTLDs be successful, committing $2 million to keep Trademark Clearinghouse access “free” for registrars.
While TMCH pricing for trademark owners is now well-publicized, ICANN COO Akram Attalah last night revealed some of the fees for new gTLD registries and registrars.
Registries will have to pay a one-time fee of $5,000 per TLD to access the TMCH, he said.
That was reduced from $10,000 during talks with TMCH back-end provider IBM after ICANN promised to handle billing and administration, he said.
There’s also going to be a $0.30 fee for each domain that matches a TMCH record registered during Sunrise and Trademark Claims periods, he added. The specifics on this fee were a little fuzzy.
But registrars won’t have to pay a penny, it seems. Attalah said that ICANN will pay IBM $2 million to make sure the Clearinghouse is accessible and free for registrars.
“ICANN will pay $400,000 per year for five years to keep the TMCH up and running and that provides free access to all registrars,” he said on last night’s new gTLDs update webinar.
It won’t be completely free for registrars, of course.
Registrars will have to do some implementation work to support the new Trademark Claims and Sunrise specs, but the absence of fees gives them one less excuse to avoid the two rights protection periods.

Go Daddy poaches another Yahoo exec

Go Daddy has hired another Yahoo executive to join its senior management.
James Carroll, senior vice president of the consumer and global platform group, is to head Go Daddy’s international business, according to All Things D.
Go Daddy is of course now headed by former Yahoo Blake Irving, who has made international expansion one of his key growth strategies.
Irving hired Carroll at Yahoo too, All Things D reported.
With Yahoo apparently undergoing a shakeup under its new CEO Marrissa Meyer, it’s not impossible we might see more execs winding up at Go Daddy before long.

ICANN accredits .tk registry as registrar

Freedom Registry, the company behind the oft-criticized .tk domain registry, seems to have been accredited as an ICANN registrar.
The new registrar business goes by the name OpenTLD. Its domain name currently bounces visitors to Freedom’s home page.
Freedom manages .tk, the ccTLD for tiny Tokelau. It’s the fastest-growing TLD — currently the second-largest ccTLD after Germany’s .de — because it’s free to register .tk domains.
As a result, it’s also regularly recognized by the Anti-Phishing Working Group as one of the most-abused TLDs out there, though the company says its business model allows it turn off abusive domains at will.

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.

Chehade commits to grow the number of domain registrars in Africa

ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade has told African policymakers that he wants to make it easier for companies on the continent to become accredited registrars, saying he wants to grow the number five-fold in a year.
During a “Multistakeholder Internet Governance” meeting in Addis Ababa earlier this week, Chehade said he wants to see 20 more African registrars, in addition to the paltry five accredited today.
It can be hard for African firms to become accredited under ICANN’s rules due to assurances needed from banks and insurance companies, he said.

We committed to do our best. Dr Tarik Kamel and I made commitments yesterday. We will be talking to the African Development Bank, we will work with [the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa], we have relationships in the insurance industry. We will put our personal relationships — and I hope all of us cooperate on that — to change this.
We made a public commitment, that I may regret, that we will try as fast as we can by Durban to at least have some initial answers to facilitate this for the African community, because hopefully with your help and your assistance within a year we won’t be saying we have five accredited registrars, we’ll be saying we have 25.

The ICANN meeting in Durban, South Africa is slated for mid-July.
Chehade also told the audience that it didn’t make any sense that African domain registration money was flowing out of the continent due to the outdated registration practices of ccTLD operators there.
The speech largely focused on macro-policy issues of internet governance affecting the continent.
Naturalized American Chehade wore his Egyptian hat throughout, referring to Africans as “we”.
Listen to the whole 30 minutes here.

Registrars and ICANN hit impasse on new RAA

ICANN and its accredited domain name registrars have hit a brick wall in their long-running contract negotiations, after ICANN demanded the right to unilaterally amend the deal in future.
Documents published by ICANN this morning reveal that the two sides have reached agreement on almost all of their previous sticking points — including the extremely thorny issue of Whois verification — but have run into some fundamental, eleventh-hour disagreements.
As we’ve been reporting for the last couple of weeks, the big unresolved issue is ICANN’s unilateral right to amend the Registrar Accreditation Agreement in future, which registrars absolutely hate.
Death of the GNSO? Again?
The text of that proposed change has today been revealed to be identical to the text ICANN wants to insert into the Registry Agreement that all new gTLD registries must sign.
It gives ICANN’s board of directors the right, by two-thirds majority, to make essentially any changes they want to the RA and RAA in future, with minimal justification.
Registrars are just as livid about this as new gTLD applicants are.
The proposed change appears to be one of those introduced last month that ICANN said “[stems] from the call by ICANN’s CEO, Fadi Chehadé, to work to improve the image of the domain industry and to protect registrants”.
Chehadé has been on the road for the last couple of months trying to raise ICANN’s profile in various stakeholder groups in the private and public sectors around the world.
One of the memes he’s impressed upon contracted parties and others is that people don’t trust the domain name industry. Part of ICANN’s solution, it seems, is to grant its board more powers over registries and registrars.
But the Registrars Stakeholder Group reckons unilateral amendments would torpedo the multistakeholder process by emasculating the Generic Names Supporting Organization. It said:

The effect of such a clause in the primary agreements between ICANN and its commercial stakeholders would be devastating to the bottom-up, multi-stakeholder model.
First, it will effectively mean the end of the GNSO’s PDP [Policy Development Process], as the Board will become the central arena for all controversial issues, not the community.
Second, it creates an imbalance of authority in the ICANN model, with no limits on the scope or frequency of unilateral amendments, and no protections for registrars and more important registrants.

That’s the biggest barrier to an agreement right now, and it’s one shared by the entire contracted parties constituency of ICANN. Expect fireworks in Beijing next month.
Friction over new gTLDs
Registrars and registries are also angry about the fact that ICANN wants to force registrars to adopt the 2013 RAA, even if their 2009 or 2001 deals are still active, if they want to sell new gTLDs.
RrSG secretary Michele Neylon of Blacknight told DI today that it looks like ICANN is trying to “drive a wedge” between registrars and registries.
Here’s why:
ICANN is trying desperately to stick to its new gTLD program timetable, which will see it start signing Registry Agreements with new gTLD applicants in late April.
But it wants the base RA to include a clause obliging registries to only sell via registrars on the 2013 RAA.
Because the 2013 RAA is not yet finalized, registrars could potentially hold up the approval and delegation of new gTLDs if they don’t quickly agree to the changes ICANN wants.
According to Neylon, the documents released today have been published prematurely; with a little more time agreement could be reached on some of the remaining differences.
Again: expect fireworks in Beijing.
Whois records will be verified
But the new RAA is not all friction.
ICANN and registrars have finally come to agreement on important topics where there was previously sharp divergence.
Registrars have agreed to a new Whois Accuracy Program Specification that is a lot weaker than ICANN had, working from a blueprint laid out by governments and law enforcement agencies, first asked for.
Under the 2013 RAA signed-up registrars will have to start verifying certain elements of the contact information submitted by their registrants.
Notably, there’ll be a challenge-response mechanism for first-time registrants. Registrars will ask their customers to verify their email address or enter a code that has been sent to them via SMS text message or phone.
Note the “or” in that sentence. ICANN and law enforcement wanted registrars to do email “and” phone verification, but ICANN appears to have relented after months of registrars yapping about costs.
In future practice, because email verification is far easier and cheaper to implement, I’d be surprised if phone verification is used in anything but the rarest of cases.
Other data points will also be verified, but only to see that they conform to the correct formats.
Registrars will have to make sure that mailing addresses meet the Universal Postal Union standards, and that phone numbers conform to International Telecommunications Union formatting, for example.
They’ll also have to verify that the street address exists (if they have access to that data) but there will be no obligation to make sure that address and phone number actually belong to the registrant.
Registrants that provide patently false information that fails registrar verification will get 15 days to correct it or face the suspension of their domains.
ICANN wants registrars to also verify their customer records (which are usually different to the Whois records and, anecdotally, more accurate anyway) too, but registrars have so far not agreed to do so.
Taken as a whole, at first reading it’s difficult to see how the new Whois verification spec will do anything to prevent fast-turnover abuse such as phishing, but it may go a small way to help law enforcement investigate longer-term scams such as counterfeit goods sites.
The proposed 2013 RAA, along with more explanatory documents than you could possibly read in a coffee break is now open for public comment, with the reply period closing shortly after the Beijing meeting.

Go Daddy cozies up new gTLD players, drops its own .home and .casa bids

Go Daddy has changed tack in its new gTLD strategy, dropping its own applications and positioning itself strongly as a registry-neutral channel to market.
The company spent yesterday wooing new gTLD applicants at a specially convened meeting in its native Arizona; there were representatives from about half of the applied-for gTLDs in attendance.
But apart from the fact that Go Daddy has withdrawn its applications for .home and .casa — and symbolically dropped the “.com” from its logo — the company is playing its strategy pretty close to its chest.
Director of policy planning James Bladel told DI that the meeting was more about “starting a conversation” with registries, rather than laying out Go Daddy’s specific plans for new gTLDs.
The company will be a hugely important channel to market for many gTLDs, and competition for store-front space on the Go Daddy home page is expected to be fierce.
Existing big-volume “new” TLDs, such as .info and .co, can attribute much of their success to Go Daddy.
It’s responsible for well over half of all .info domains registered today and .CO Internet’s success to date can no doubt be attributed in no small part to its strong relationship with the company.
But Bladel would not be drawn on Go Daddy’s specific plans for the next wave of gTLDs.
While the company has a patent on a method of allocating shelf space via an Adsense-style bidding technology, Bladel said Go Daddy has not yet decided whether to use that system.
The company could also use other methods, algorithmic rather than commercial, for selecting which TLDs to display to users, such as geographic location, he said.
Another conversation that needs to happen relates to launch timing.
Ideas may include staggering launches to benefit from joint marketing efforts, or pooling launches into big-draw “launch day” events, Bladel speculated, noting that the company is more interested in hearing ideas from gTLD applicants right now.
While Go Daddy will continue to push its application for .godaddy dot-brand, with the loss of .home and .casa it will no longer be in the mass-market gTLD registry game.
Registry-neutral registrars may actually be a rarity in the new gTLD era.
eNom will certainly walk away with interests in more than a few gTLDs, directly and via its deal with Donuts. Tucows, Web.com and Directi will also have some, depending on contention set results.
Apart from Go Daddy, the only other top-ten registrars without their own gTLDs could be United and FastDomains.

ICANN to publish unfinished RAA tomorrow

ICANN will tomorrow publish for public comment a version of the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement that accredited registrars have not yet agreed to.
CEO Fadi Chehade told a conference call of registries and new gTLD applicants as much this afternoon, causing the Registrars Stakeholder Group to immediately state that talks have not finished yet.
However, ICANN subsequently confirmed the plan to DI, clarifying that the documents it will publish tomorrow will highlight ongoing points of divergence between ICANN and the RrSG.
The posting will comprise documents with “competing text identified that shows the similarities and differences in position between ICANN and the Registrar [Negotiating Team”, ICANN said.
I believe that the publication has been set for tomorrow to allow ICANN to hit its public comment deadlines for the big Beijing public meeting next month.
The posting was apparently agreed to at a meeting between the registrars and ICANN on Friday.
While the two sides have come to agreement on most of the changes to the RAA, sticking points remain despite now-daily talks.
I understand that a proposed unilateral right of amendment in ICANN’s favor is currently a big barrier to final agreement.

ICANN to reveal Registrant Rights & Responsibilities (and here’s a draft copy)

ICANN is set to publish and start promoting a new Registrant Rights & Responsibilities charter at some point over the next couple of days, we hear.
The one-page document is set to become an important part of CEO Fadi Chehade’s plan to make the domain name industry appear more trustworthy and likable in the eyes of the internet-using public.
He first revealed the idea during a meeting with registries and registrars in Amsterdam last month.
An ICANN-commissioned study showed that people have a very low opinion of the industry, he told them.
The new document is designed to address some of those concerns.
While the charter may be presented as originating in the industry, it was first drafted by ICANN and we hear that some registrars have been somewhat reluctant to agree to it.
“It’s like when you’re a kid and your dad gives you a birthday card to sign for your mom,” one registrar told us.
The legalese-stricken document that ICANN originally presented to them over-stretched and could have carried legal exposure, they added.
DI has been sent of copy of what we’re told is a close-to-final draft of the document, which we understand is more agreeable to most registrars. We’ve pasted it below in full.

Registrants’ Rights and Responsibilities
Domain Name Registrants’ Rights:

1. Your domain name registration and any privacy services you may use in conjunction with it must be subject to a Registration Agreement with an ICANN Accredited Registrar.
   • You are entitled to review this Registration Agreement at any time, and download a copy for your records.
2. You are entitled to accurate and accessible information about:
   • The identity of your ICANN Accredited Registrar;
   • The identity of any privacy service provider affiliated with your Registrar;
   • Your Registrar’s terms and conditions, including pricing information, applicable to domain name registrations;
   • The terms and conditions, including pricing information, applicable to any privacy services offered by your Registrar;
   • The customer support services offered by your Registrar and the privacy services provider, and how to access them;
   • How to raise concerns and resolve disputes with your Registrar and any privacy services offered by them; and
   • Instructions that explain your Registrar’s processes for registering, managing, transferring, renewing, and restoring your domain name registrations, including through any privacy services made available by your Registrar.
3. You shall not be subject to false advertising or deceptive practices by your Registrar or though any privacy services made available by your Registrar. This includes deceptive notices, hidden fees, and any practices that are illegal under the consumer protection law of your residence.

Domain Name Registrants’ Responsibilities:

1. You must comply with the terms and conditions posted by your Registrar, including applicable policies from your Registrar, the Registry and ICANN.
2. You must review your Registrar’s current Registration Agreement, along with any updates.
3. You will assume sole responsibility for the registration and use of your domain name.
4. You must provide accurate information for publication in directories such as WHOIS, and promptly update this to reflect any changes.
5. You must respond to inquiries from your Registrar within fifteen (15) days, and keep your Registrar account data current. If you choose to have your domain name registration renew automatically, you must also keep your payment information current.

It draws on changes ICANN and registrars have agreed to in the 2013 (hopefully) Registrar Accreditation Agreement, such as registrar commitments to provide basic information about themselves.
As for the 2013 RAA itself, we hear that ICANN wants to present a final version to its board of directors for approval during its public meeting in Beijing in early April.
That would mean opening it up for public comment next week, but registrars and ICANN have not yet agreed to a final draft for publication, despite now-daily negotiation meetings.
The major sticking point, we gather, is an amendment that would give ICANN a unilateral right to change the contract in future — similar to the proposed gTLD Registry Agreement provision currently causing a shitstorm in the new gTLD applicant community.
There’s also controversy about the fact that ICANN wants to restrict new gTLDs to only registrars that sign the new RAA, which is designed to be a carrot to get them to sign up even if their 2009/2001 RAAs are still active.

Demand Media mulls eNom spin-off

Are the synergies between domain name registrars and content farms not all they were cracked up to be?
That’s a question emerging from last night’s news that Demand Media is planning to spin off its domains business, which includes number-two registrar eNom, into a separate public company.
The company, reporting its fourth-quarter earnings, said that it’s looking into the possibility of breaking up content and domains into two separately-owned businesses.
The new domain company would comprise eNom (wholesale) and Name.com (retail) on the registrar side, any new gTLDs Demand manages to win, the formative registry back-end business, and its stake in NameJet.
“We believe that a separation of the two independent companies will better position each business to pursue their increasingly diverse strategic priorities and opportunities,” CEO Richard Rosenblatt told analysts.
The spin-off would have revenue of over $150 million a year and margins of almost 20%, chief financial officer Mel Tang added.
Rosenblatt said new gTLDs will be “transformative” for the domain industry, saying that Google, Amazon and dot-brands will help grow consumer awareness of the world beyond .com.
Demand has filed 26 new gTLD applications of its own, and has 50-50 rights to 107 more with Donuts.
Previously, Demand has stated in regulatory filings that it used data gathered from domain name lookups to create ideas for the content farm side of its business. It’s not clear if that would continue after a split.