ICANN terminates three registrars

ICANN has pulled the plug on three accredited domain name registrars, saying they all failed to comply with an audit.
Lime Labs, R Lee Chambers Company (DomainsToBeSeen.com) and Central Registrar (Domainmonger.com) have been given 30 days notice that their accreditations are being yanked and that their domains will be transferred to other registrars.
About 12,000 domains will be affected, the vast majority of which are managed by Lime Labs.
The three registrars were among 10 that ICANN pounced on last month when they failed to respond to its Contractual Compliance Audit Program.
This program is a three-year initiative to make sure registrars and registries are complying with their contractual requirements. A third of registrars were randomly selected to take part late last year.
According to ICANN’s termination notices, all three registrars ignored last month’s warnings and did not submit the data required for the audit.
DomainsToBeSeen and Domainmonger both have just a few hundred gTLD domain names under management each. Lime Labs is much larger, with over 11,000.
The terminations will come into affect March 13.

Frank Schilling’s Uniregistry gets accredited as a registrar

Portfolio new gTLD applicant Uniregistry has taken the first step towards bringing its proposed new gTLDs to market by getting accredited as a registrar by ICANN.
Uniregistrar Corp shares its Cayman Islands address with Uniregistry.
The company’s web site states:

Uniregistrar is a new ICANN accredited registrar designed to let you create domain names in the new top level domain extensions offered by Uniregistry.
Beginning in 2014 anyone will be able to create and manage their domain names using the simple site we plan to create here. The names offered by Uniregistrar will be shorter, clearer, easier to use and manage than the .com .net or .org names you know from the past.

Given that its IANA number does not yet appear on the official list, the accreditation must have been granted pretty recently.
Uniregistrar is already accredited to sell .asia, .biz, .com, .info, .jobs, .mobi, .name, .net, .org, .pro, .travel and .xxx names, suggesting that the company plans to sell more than just its own TLDs.
Schilling’s existing accredited registrar, iRegistry, which is used primarily (or exclusively) to manage Name Administration’s massive portfolio of domains, is only accredited in .com, .net, .org and .xxx.
Uniregistry is an applicant for 54 new gTLDs, including .auction, .sexy, .christmas and .blackfriday.
Unlike the current regime, under ICANN’s rules for new gTLDs, “vertical integration” — where a registry can own a registrar that sells domains in its TLDs — is permitted.

Go Daddy claims half-boobed Super Bowl ads success

Go Daddy reckons its two commercials broadcast in the US during the Super Bowl last night were the most successful in the company’s history, according to two key metrics.
The company said in a press release:

Last night’s ads delivered more new customers and more overall sales, as compared to any other Super Bowl campaign in the company’s history.

Go Daddy has been advertising during the game for nine years. This year was the third in which is has partnered with .CO Internet, the .co registry, on one of the ads.
One of the ads was shameless, vintage, attention-grabbing Go Daddy — primarily comprising a lingering shot of a passionate kiss between an attractive female model and a male geek archetype.
The other, which advertised .co, largely eschewed mammary glands in favor of the “Underpants Gnomes” theory of domain name advertising, in which registering a domain somehow leads to fabulous wealth.
ICM Registry used a similar tactic in its launch advertising late 2011.

The Super Bowl is the season finale of a little-played fringe sport known as “American Football”.
Viewers of the annual US broadcast traditionally pay special attention to the regular commercial interludes because the brief, fleeting moments of actual sport are so soul-sappingly tedious.

United Domains has 1 million new gTLD pre-regs

United Domains announced today that its new gTLD pre-registration program has racked up its millionth domain.
The registrar has been accepting no-commitment pre-regs since mid-2011, and currently lets customers express interest in over 120 not-yet-approved gTLDs.
The most popular is .web, with over 123,000 expressions of interest to date.
Customers are not of course guaranteed anything in return for handing over their email addresses, but for registrars and registries such programs are a useful way to measure (and drum up) interest.
Some say such programs do little more than sow confusion among registrants, however.

NameCheap resurrects anti-SOPA transfers promo

NameCheap has decided to bring back the promotion that saw roughly 20,000 domain names transferred to it from Go Daddy, in protest of the company’s stance on US legislation, a year ago.
Its “second annual Move Your Domain Day” will be on January 22, with inbound transfers costing $3.99 (a buck cheaper than last year) on domains in the five biggest gTLDs.
It will donate $0.50 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for every transfer, escalating to $1 and $1.50 if it gets more than 10,000 and 20,000 domains respectively.
The original promo was an opportunistic move to capitalize on Go Daddy’s support for the censor-happy Stop Online Piracy Act, which caused a great deal of controversy a year ago.
SOPA is now of course dead, and the senior Go Daddy executive who was most vocally in support of the bill, general counsel Christine Jones, is no longer with the company.

Ten registrars spanked for ignoring ICANN audit

ICANN has sent breach notices to 10 domain name registrars for failing to respond to its ongoing contract compliance audit.
The 10 registrars with breach notices are: Crosscert, Mat Bao, DomainsToBeSeen.com, USA Webhost, Internet NAYANA Inc, Cheapies.com, Domainmonger.com, Lime Labs, Namevault.com, and Power Brand Center.
According to ICANN, these registrars failed to provide the requested documentation as required by their Registrar Accreditation Agreement.
The Contractual Compliance Audit Program is a proactive three-year effort to check that all registries and registrars are abiding by the terms of their agreements.
ICANN selected 317 registrars at random for the first year of the program. As of January 4, 22 had not responded to these notices.
Only registrars signed up to the 2009 version of the RAA are contractually obliged to respond.
Verisign, which was one of six gTLD registries selected to participate this year, has controversially refused to let ICANN audit .net, saying it is not obliged to do so.
While the .net contract does have some audit requirements, we understand they’re not as wide-ranging as ICANN’s audit envisages.
The 10 registrars have been given until February 1 to provide ICANN with the necessary information or risk losing their accreditations.

Registrars sought as Pool.com shuts down drop-catching business

ICANN is looking for new homes for approximately 67,000 domain names, after a decision by Momentous to dump 85 of its domain name registrar accreditations.
The accreditations were used primarily for drop-catching, according to an email sent to registrars last Friday, and each has between 200 and 3,000 gTLD domains under management.
While most affected domains are recently caught drops, there may be some regular registrants scattered throughout the customer base, according to ICANN.
Momentous, owner of Pool.com, announced that it was getting rid of its drop-catching registrars in an email to customers late last year, as several domainer blogs reported at the time.
Pool plans to “refocus its business away from an emphasis on the secondary market”, the email said.
The company wanted to consolidate all of the domains in its NameScout registrar with the transfer fees waived, but ICANN declined its request, according to the email.
Some customers are not happy with how Pool has handled the situation.
The domainer “Acro” is currently pursuing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau in Momentous’ native Canada, according to a recent blog post.
The 85 accreditations are due to expire January 10. Registrars wishing to take over the portfolios had a deadline of this afternoon to express an interest with ICANN.

Name.com “will carry as many TLDs as possible”

Demand Media executive vice president Taryn Naidu said newly acquired registrar Name.com plans to carry as many TLDs as possible, but urged new gTLD applicants to start distribution talks with registrars as soon as possible.
“It’s going to be challenging to offer all of them,” Naidu told DI today. “We’re asking registries to come talk to Name.com early and often to make sure they get the shelf space.”
“They have to come with a plan, and make sure they’re ready to go to market,” he said.
Demand Media announced the acquisition of Name.com earlier today. The deal, for an undisclosed amount, will see the 30-strong Denver, Colorado-based company join number two registrar eNom in the Demand stable.
Name.com is almost 10 years old and has almost 1.5 million domains under management, the majority of them in gTLDs. eNom has over 12 million domains spread across scores of registrar accreditations.
Naidu said that the forthcoming new gTLD market was a major reason for the deal.
While eNom is primarily a channel player, Name.com is all about the customer-facing retail side of the registrar business.
Owning Name.com could give Demand Media a faster way to market the dozens of new gTLDs that it has itself applied for, as well as the 300 it has partnered with uber-applicant Donuts on.
Naidu declined to comment on details of the Donuts relationship, but I’d be quite surprised if a commitment to carry its TLDs is not part of the deal.
He also said he’s not too worried about alienating eNom’s existing reseller channel, pointing out that main retail rivals such as Go Daddy and Tucows also have extensive reseller networks.
“In many regards having access to a retail player like this will help us serve our resellers by better understanding their needs,” he said.

Vietnamese registrar on the ICANN naughty step

ICANN has issued a broad breach notice against Vietnamese domain name registrar Mat Bao.
The company hasn’t escrowed its registrant data as required since February, according to ICANN, and it owes over $4,500 in accreditation fees.
It also hasn’t given ICANN a URL for its registrar web site, nor is it providing Whois service, according to the breach notice.
The registrar has fewer than 1,000 gTLD domain names under management, according to the latest registry reports.
ICANN has given it until January 17 to resolve its problems or risk losing its accreditation.

Another deadline missed in registrar contract talks

ICANN and domain name registrars will fail to agree on a new Registrar Accreditation Agreement by the end of the year, ICANN has admitted.
In a statement Friday, ICANN said that it will likely miss its end-of-year target for completing the RAA talks:

While the registrars and ICANN explored potential dates for negotiation in December 2012, both sides have agreed that between holidays, difficult travel schedules and the ICANN Prioritization Draw for New gTLDs, a December meeting is not feasible. Therefore, negotiations will resume in January 2013, and the anticipated date for publication of a draft RAA for community comment will be announced in January as well.

The sticking point appears to still be the recommendations for strengthening registrars’ Whois accuracy commitments, as requested by law enforcement agencies and governments.
At the Toronto meeting in October, progress appeared to have been made on all 12 of the LEA recommendations, but the nitty-gritty of the Whois verification asks had yet to be ironed out.
Potentially confusing matters, ICANN has launched a parallel root-and-branch Whois policy reform initiative, a community process which may come to starkly different conclusions to the RAA talks.
Before the LEA issues are settled, ICANN doesn’t want to start dealing with requests for RAA changes from the registrars themselves, which include items such as dumping their “burdensome” port 43 Whois obligations for gTLD registries that have thick Whois databases.
ICANN said Friday:

Both ICANN and the registrars have additional proposed changes which have not yet been negotiated. As previously discussed, it has been ICANN’s position that the negotiations on key topics within the law enforcement recommendations need to come to resolution prior to concluding negotiations on these additional areas.

Registrars agreed under duress to start renegotiating the RAA following a public berating from the Governmental Advisory Committee at the ICANN Dakar meeting October 2011.
At the time, the law enforcement demands had already been in play for two years with no substantial progress. Following Dakar, ICANN and the registrars said they planned to have a new RAA ready by March 2012.
Judging by the latest update, it seems quite likely that the new RAA will be a full year late.
ICANN has targeted the Beijing meeting in April next year for approval of the RAA. It’s one of the 12 targets Chehade set himself following Toronto.
Given that the draft agreement will need a 42-day public comment period first, talks are going to have to conclude before the end of February if there’s any hope of hitting that deadline.