Panel throws out ludicrous .shop confusion ruling

The new gTLD strings .shop and .通販 are not too confusingly similar-looking to coexist on the internet.
While that may be blindingly obvious to anyone who is not already blind, it’s taken the ICANN process three years to arrive at this conclusion.
An August 18 ruling by a three-person International Centre for Dispute Resolution appeals panel has “reversed, replaced and superseded” a two-year-old decision by a lone String Confusion Objection panelist. The appeals panel found:

the [original] expert panel could not have reasonably come to the decision reached by it in connection with the underlying String Confusion Objection
…
The two strings indisputably have no visual or aural similarity, are in different languages, written in different scripts that look very different, and have different phonetic spellings and pronunciations.

.通販 is the Japanese for “.onlineshopping”, applied for by Amazon in the 2012 new gTLD round.
.shop is a contested string applied for by Commercial Connect and others.
The two strings were ruled dissimilar by the String Similarity Panel in February 2013, but Commercial Connect filed the SCO a few weeks later.
In an SCO, the complainant must show that it is “probable, not merely possible” that the two strings will get mixed up by internet users.
In August 2013, ICDR panelist Robert Nau ignored that burden of proof and inexplicably ruled that the two strings were too similar to coexist and should therefore be placed in a contention set.
Nau would later rule that .shop and .shopping are also confusingly similar.
The .通販 decision was widely criticized for being completely mad.
Amazon appealed the decision via the ICANN Request for Reconsideration, but predictably lost.
After much lobbying, last October ICANN’s board of directors created an appeals process for SCO decisions, but limited the appellant pool to Amazon with .通販 and applicants for .cam (which had been ruled similar to .com).
Now, 10 months later, we finally have a sane decision in the Amazon case. Its application will presumably now be removed from the .shop contention set.
Read the final ruling here.

Direct .au regs closer to reality

Australians could soon get the ability to register domain names directly under .au for the first time.
Following in the footsteps of the UK and New Zealand, a panel of .au policy body auDA has recommended that the second level should be opened up for registrations, pending further consultation.
In a consultation paper (pdf), the panel wrote:

direct registrations would create names which are shorter, more appealing and more memorable. They would make the domain name system simpler and easier to use. Moreover, the proposed change would open a wide range of new choices for registrants, and would provide a better option, especially for some groups; in particular, the Panel thinks that the biggest benefit will be for individuals, who would be able to obtain an Australian domain name in a simple and straightforward way.

Trademark owners need to pay attention, because the panel has recommended that the release does not include a sunrise period, due to .au’s “no hierarchy of rights” principle.
But the panel is recommending that existing .au registrants should get first dibs on matching second-level names.
Unlike the UK, where .co.uk registrants had preference over registrants in other SLDs, the auDA panel says .com.au owners would not be treated any differently to, for example, .org.au owners.
The panel has also raised the idea of implementing ICANN’s Uniform Rapid Suspension policy.
Registry providers might want to take note that the panel says that .au back-end AusRegistry, now part of Neustar, will not automatically get the contract to run the direct .au registry; an RFP may be in auDA’s future.
The recommendations are now open for comment until September 30.

ZACR hits a million .za names

South Africa’s .za ccTLD has crossed the one million domain mark, according to the registry.
ZA Central Registry is currently reporting on its web site that 1,000,666 names have been registered.
The millionth name was reportedly vulindlela-hpt.co.za, registered to a consulting firm and inexplicably redirecting to the typo vulindlela-htp.co.za.
CEO Lucky Masilela reportedly said: “ZACR has now joined a small group of registry operators worldwide who administer a six-figure domain space.”
So perhaps the numbers the company are reporting are not entirely reliable. [/snark]

Radix targets 25,000 names for .online’s first day

Radix Registry reckons .online will move at least 15,000 domains in its first day of general availability, but it’s aiming higher.
“We are confident .online will be amongst the biggest new gTLDs that have launched,” Radix business head Sandeep Ramchandani said in a press release today.
“The same sentiment across several Registrar Partners has reinforced our beliefs. We expect to start off with at least 15,000 registrations at launch and would love to break .club’s launch record,” he said.
When .CLUB Domains launched .club in 2014, its zone file showed over 25,000 domains after the first 10 hours.
Radix is basing its projections not only on its registrar conversations, but also on .online’s sunrise period, which ended yesterday with 775 sales.
That number is of course low by pre-2012 standards, but it’s in the top tier of sunrise periods for non-controversial new gTLDs.
The only strings to top 1,000 names to date have been ICM Registry’s .porn and .adult and Vox Populi’s .sucks.
.CLUB’s sunrise weighed in at 454 domains.
Radix had better hope .online is successful — the gTLD sold for seven or eight figures at private auction.
The gTLD will go to its Early Access Period tomorrow before settling down to regular pricing August 26.

No, CentralNic isn’t the biggest new gTLD back-end

CentralNic’s registry back-end business may have got a big boost by last week’s news that Google has adopted a .xyz domain for its new parent, but it is not yet the biggest back-end provider.
That honor still belongs to Rightside, which currently leads CentralNic by a few hundred thousand names, according to zone files.
When Google started using abc.xyz as the primary domain for its new company last Monday, it caused a sharp spike in .xyz’s daily zone file growth.
The volume-leading new gTLD’s zone had been netting about 3,000 domains per day over the previous week, but that number has risen to almost 8,000 on average since the Google announcement.
While undoubtedly good news for XYZ.com and CentralNic, the growth has not been enough to propel CentralNic into the top-spot just yet.
CentralNic said in a press release today that it currently has 1,444,210 domains, making it the “number one registry backend”.
But according to DI’s numbers, Rightside has at least 1,701,316 domains in new gTLDs running on its back-end.
The CentralNic press release, as well as an earlier piece on The Domains, both cite ntldstats.com as their source.
That site had been listing Donuts as the top new gTLD back-end provider for over a year, with CentralNic in second place.
The problem is that Donuts is not a back-end provider. Never has been.
The portfolio registry disclosed right from the start that it was using Rightside (then Demand Media).
A Donuts spokesperson confirmed to DI today that it still uses Rightside.
The company runs its 190 delegated new gTLDs on Rightside’s back-end. Rightside manages another 39 of its own on the same infrastructure.
Combined, these gTLDs make up 1,701,316 second-level domains, making it the largest back-end registry provider.

After abc.xyz, will Google now switch to .google?

Google provided the new gTLD industry with one of its most prominent endorsements to date when it revealed this week that its new parent company, Alphabet, will use a .xyz domain name.
But it could just be the first move away from traditional TLDs such as .com — its new gTLD .google entered its “general availability” phase today.
Alphabet will be the holding company for Google the search engine provider, as well as many other subsidiaries focused on non-core areas of its business, and will replace Google as the publicly traded entity.
The new company will use abc.xyz as its primary domain.
XYZ.com CEO Daniel Negari told Wired that the move is “the ultimate validation”, and it’s hard to disagree.
Despite this, almost all the coverage in the tech and mainstream media over the last 24 hours has been about the fact that it does not own alphabet.com.
A Google News search for “alphabet.com” today returns over 67,000 results. Refine the search to include “abc.xyz” and you’re left with fewer than 2,700.
This is perhaps to be expected; BMW owns alphabet.com and has told the New York Times it does not intend to sell it. Journalists naturally gravitate towards conflict, or potential conflict.
Some reporters even suggested, with mind-boggling naivety, that Google hadn’t even done the most cursory research into its new brand before embarking on the biggest restructuring in its history as a public company.
But perhaps the reality is a little simpler: owning a .com that exactly matches your brand just isn’t that important any more.
If any company has insight into the truth of that hypothesis, it’s Google.
It should hardly be surprising that Google digs the possibilities offered by new gTLDs — remember, it applied for 101 strings and has 42 of them already delegated.
Its senior engineers have also blogged repeatedly that all gTLDs, including .com, are treated equally by its search algorithms.
Now that it has made the decision to brand its holding company on a new gTLD domain, could we expect it be similarly nonchalant about a switch to .google?
The dot-brand today came out of its pre-launch phase and entered “general availability”, meaning that the gTLD is now free for it to use.
The .google zone file only has a few domains in it at present, so we’re probably not going to see anything deployed there overnight, but I’d be surprised if we have to wait a long time before .google is put to use in one way or another.
The company set up a fleeting April Fool’s Day website at com.google earlier this year.
Google’s application for .google states:

The mission of the proposed gTLD, .google is to make the worldʹs information universally accessible and useful through the streamlined provision of Google services. The purpose of the proposed gTLD is to provide a dedicated Internet space in which Google can continue to innovate on its Internet offerings. The proposed gTLD will augment Googleʹs online presence in other registries, provide Google with greater ability to categorize its present online locations around the world, and in turn, deliver a more recognizable, branded, trusted web space to both the general Internet population and Google employees. It will also generate efficiencies and increase security by reducing Google’s current dependence on third-party infrastructure.

The company has also stated on its Google Registry web site that it intends to use .google, .youtube and .plus “for Google products”.

SEO site toppled as most-popular new gTLD domain

There’s a new domain topping the charts as the most-visited new gTLD site.
A few days ago, namu.wiki replaced searchengines.guru in the top spot, the first time the leading position has changed hands since DI PRO first started tracking daily Alexa scores in July 2014.
namu.wiki appears to be a Japanese Korean wiki site dedicated to some kind of manga/anime thing. It was registered in April.
searchengines.guru is a Russian forum devoted to discussions of search engine optimization.
The Japanese Korean site has an Alexa rank of 1,875 today, compared to 1,994 for the SEO site. The highest score we’ve ever recorded for a new gTLD domain was 717.
Interestingly, only two of the site in the top 10 are in English. Two appear to be associated with spam.
The usual caveats about the reliability of Alexa data applies.

.music applicant caught using bogus Wikipedia page

DotMusic Limited, the .music applicant founded by Constantine Roussos, is using a highly suspicious Wikipedia page in its attempt to win the .music contention set.
The applicant and many supporters have been citing the Wikipedia “music community” page in support of DotMusic’s ongoing Community Priority Evaluation, despite the fact that the page draws text, without citation, from DotMusic’s own application.
The Wikipedia page was created October 21, 2014, just two weeks after rival .music applicant Far Further spectacularly failed in its own Community Priority Evaluation bid.
In March this year, DotMusic cited (pdf) a November 26 version of the Wikipedia page in whole in a controversial application change request.
Three of its supporters (Jeunesses Musicales International, International Society of Music Education, and International Federation of Musicians) have cited the Wikipedia article in DotMusic-drafted letters sent to ICANN.
An early version of the sign-and-submit form letter DotMusic is encouraging supporters to send to ICANN included the Wikipedia reference (this one, for example) but it appears to have been removed from form comments sent after the end of July.
Its web site currently says that its definition of “music community” is “confirmed by Wikipedia”.
In fact, the Wikipedia page pulls lots of its language from DotMusic’s 2012 new gTLD application, as represented in the table below.
[table id=34 /]
The phrase “logical alliance” originates in the ICANN Applicant Guidebook, as part of the CPE rules.
But that still leaves two sentences that appear to have been only lightly edited after being taken wholesale from the DotMusic application.
The Wikipedia page does not refer to domain names or ICANN, nor does it cite DotMusic as a source, despite the fact (per a Google search) that phrases such as “socio-economic interactions between music creators” have only ever appeared in .music’s application.
That’s unusual, because the citations in the article, many of which are to weighty, barely comprehensible scholarly works, give the impression of a well-researched and well-sourced piece.
Only one Wikipedia editor, known by the handle Dr. Blofeld, has contributed anything of substance to the page. Three others have provided cosmetic edits.
While a prolific editor since 2006, the closest he had previously come to writing an article about music were his contributions to a page about a green Versace dress once worn by singer Jennifer Lopez, according to Blofeld’s user page.
He seems to be much more interested in nature, architecture and film (including James Bond films, naturally).
On wonders why he had the sudden urge to scratch-build a 375-word article about the “music community”, having evidently read a dozen academic works on the topic, that fails to cite DotMusic’s application as the source of some of the text.
In summary, the evidence points towards the article being created solely for the purpose of assisting DotMusic towards a CPE victory that would save it the seven-figure sum .music is likely to fetch if it goes to auction.
There are eight applicants for .music in total.

Sharp wants dot-brand Whois requirement relaxed

Electronics firm Sharp wants to remove part of its new gTLD registry contract relating to Whois.
The company has filed a Registry Services Evaluation Process request to get its requirement to offer “searchable Whois” dropped. RSEP is the mechanism registries use to amend their contracts.
ICANN’s initial review has not found any security, stability or competition problems and has now opened the request up for public comment.
Because .sharp will be a dot-brand, all the domains would belong to Sharp and its affiliates, reducing the value of searchable Whois.
Searchable Whois is an enhanced Whois service that allows users to search on all fields (such as registrant, email address, etc) rather than just the domain name.
Such services are not mandatory under ICANN’s new gTLD rules, but applicants that said they would offer them could score an extra point in their Initial Evaluation.
In Sharp’s case, a one-point difference would not have affected the outcome of its IE. In any event, it did not score the extra point.
Sharp said it was requesting the change because it’s switching back-ends from GMO Internet to JPRS, which apparently does not or does not want to support searchable Whois.

Neustar becomes “world’s largest registry” with $87m ARI buy

Consolidation in the domain name industry continued last night with Neustar’s $87 million acquisition of Bombora Technologies, the holding group for ARI Registry Services and AusRegistry.
Bombora CEO Adrian Kinderis told DI that the deal makes Neustar the “biggest registry services back-end provider on the market”, as measured by the number of TLDs on its platform, which now weighs in at over 400.
Kinderis and Neustar registry VP Sean Kaine said that the acquisition — conceived as so many deals are, Kinderis joked, in a “drunken ICANN bar” — is not so much about consolidation and more about growth opportunities.
Neustar will be able to cross-sell its suite of identity, security and marketing services, which Bombora does not offer, into ARI’s 100+ TLD client base. It will also be able to pitch ARI’s consulting services to its own clients.
Neustar also gets a “beachhead” in the Asia-Pacific region. While Bombora may not be a hell of a lot closer to Asia than Neustar, it’s in a much more convenient time zone.
Neustar currently faces the losing about half of its annual revenue — some $475 million — due to the loss of its contract to administer telephone number portability in North America.
That contract has been won by Ericsson, but Neustar has sued the US Federal Communications Commission in an attempt to keep it.
The Bombora acquisition won’t exactly fill the gap. The company had $20.6 million in revenue in 2014 and is expected to contribute $8 million to Neustar’s top line in 2015.
The deal is for AUD 118 million, which works out to roughly USD 87 million. Kinderis and business partner Simon Delzoppo will be the primary beneficiaries — between them they held a majority shareholding in Bombora.
The deal includes all of the company’s subsidiaries: ARI, AusRegistry and new gTLD operators such as dotShabaka.
ARI clients will notice a change of branding — the ARI and Bombora brands are to go almost immediately — but no technical changes at first.
“We’re going to continue to operate two registry systems right now,” Kaine said.
One business where there will be even less visible change is AusRegistry, which operates .au.
The AusRegistry brand is staying and .au will continue to be run in Australia, per the terms of the company’s contract with ccTLD policy overseer auDA.
“The .au contract is very important to Bombora,” Kinderis said. “If we had thought there would be any negative impact to that contract we would not have embarked on a deal.”
Kinderis, whose new job title has yet to be agreed, said he expects to take a “prominent role” in Neustar’s registry business. He said he expects to stay with the company “for a long time yet”.
“I want to see Neustar snapping at the heels of Verisign and I’d love to be able to contribute to that,” he said. “We’ve been punching above our weight and now we’re one of the heavyweights.”