Donuts: “eco” registrants could get their names back

Registrants whose domains were deleted by Donuts this week could get their names back, should ICANN release them from its reserved lists in future, the company said today.
In an email to affected registrants, believed to number a few dozen, Donuts said:

We are actively lobbying ICANN to make the domain names you registered available to you. We hope to be successful and, though you are under no obligation to do so, we think it would be helpful if you voiced your opinion to ICANN about it directly.
To get these domain names to you as soon as possible, we are maintaining a record of your details in the event ICANN releases these names for registration. If and when ICANN does, we will contact you and have these names registered to you for free.

The only names affected by the screw-up were “eco” and “00” at the second level in any of Donuts new gTLDs.
The company had accidentally removed both strings from its list of reserved names, making the domains available for registration.
The string “eco” is reserved because it matches the acronym of the Economic Cooperation Organization, an intergovernmental organization, while “00” is reserved along with all two-character strings.
Whether “eco” is released will rather depend on whether the ICANN board of directors sides with the Generic Names Supporting Organization, which wants acronyms removed from the reserved list, or the Governmental Advisory Committee, which wants the protection to remain.
For “00”, it’s a slightly different story. There’s no move I’m aware of to relax the two-character rule, which is designed to protect current and future ccTLDs.
But it does seem a bit strange for numeric domains to be reserved in this way, given that there’s virtually no chance of a future nation being assigned a numeric country code by the UN.
It may not be impossible for “00” to be released, but I think it might take a bit longer.

Donuts’ “eco” debacle affected two-character domains too

Donuts has clawed back a couple dozen premium domain names from their erstwhile owners after accidentally selling names that were supposed to be restricted.
The second-level strings “eco” and “00” were inadvertently released for sale in Donuts’ new gTLDs, even though they’re on ICANN’s lists of names that must not be registered.
After noticing its error, the company started deleting the affected domains, notifying registrants that they would be receiving a refund.
Mike Berkens of The Domains reported that he had lost eco.domains. One of his readers claimed he’d already rebranded his whole company around eco.gallery, costing him dearly.
The domains were deleted because they’re on one of the several lists of reserved names attached to Donuts’ ICANN contracts.
ECO is the acronym for the Economic Cooperation Organization, which is on a temporary list of reservations related to international governmental organizations.
00 is an ASCII two-character label that is supposed to be reserved under a measure designed to prevent clashes with existing and future ccTLDs. The rule also captures numeric strings for some reason.
Donuts said in a statement:

We understand the confusion regarding certain second level registrations. Donuts inadvertently made two strings — “eco” and “00” — available for registration due to a registry error and is sorry for the inconvenience.
We WISH we could sell these names, and frustrating as it may be, these strings are on at least two lists of ICANN-prohibited registrations, so we were obligated to take this step in order for Donuts, registrars and registrants to be in compliance with ICANN requirements.

The IGO acronyms rule is extremely controversial.
It was demanded by ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee following requests from IGOs, which generally do not enjoy trademark protection and would be unable to use new gTLD rights protection mechanisms.
But the Generic Names Supporting Organization, representing a more diverse range of interests, came to a unanimous consensus that only the names — not the acronyms — of IGOs should be reserved.
Acronyms of course have multiple uses, as the ECO case amply illustrates. ECO the organization doesn’t even own “eco” in any legacy TLD, operating its web site at ecosecretariat.org.

Will .exposed see a big sunrise?

Donuts’ new gTLD .exposed goes into sunrise today, but will it put the fear into trademark owners?
It’s arguably the first “ransom” TLD to go live in the current round and the first since .xxx, which scared mark holders into blocking over 80,000 domains back in late 2011.
Most new gTLD sunrise periods to date — most of which have been focused on vertical niches — have had sunrise registrations measured in tens or hundreds rather than thousands.
But .exposed, I would say, is in the same free speech zone as yet-to-launch .sucks and .gripe, which lend themselves well to having a company, product or personal name at the second level.
Brand protection registrars are encouraging their clients to pay special attention to this type of gTLD.
Will this cause a spike in sunrise sales for Donuts over the next 60 days?
It might be difficult to tell, given that Donuts also offers brand owners a blocking mechanism via the Domain Protected Marks List service, so the domains don’t show up in the zone files.
But DPML blocks can be overturned by others with matching trademarks, so some trademark owners may decide to register the name instead for an overabundance of caution.

Google giving away 5,000 free new gTLD domains

Google is giving away free .みんな domains.
According to a company spokesperson, the first 5,000 people to submit a .みんな web site idea via a campaign web site will receive a coupon for a free one-year registration in the new namespace.
The offer expires April 5.
The regular retail price at registrars appears to be about $13 a year.
.みんな means “everyone” in Japanese and is apparently pronounced “.minna”. It’s the second IDN gTLD to go to general availability so far, and currently has roughly 2,500 registered names.
The web site appears to show examples of domains that are being registered under the program, as well as commentary from something called Google+, which appears to be some kind of social network.

PIR goes live with three non-Latin .org gTLDs

The internet has its first IDN versions of legacy gTLDs.
Public Interest Registry had three new gTLDs delegated over the weekend, all non-Latin versions of its flagship .org.
The gTLDs were .संगठन, which means “organization” in Hindi, and the Chinese .机构 and .组织机构, which seem to be two ways of saying “organization” too.
They’re not strictly speaking transliterations, as they represent whole dictionary words conceptually related to .org, rather than trying to approximate the spoken sound of “org”.
The .com equivalents Verisign has applied for in other scripts are actually meant to sound the same as “com” without actually meaning “commercial” or “company” in their language.
Because PIR has taken a different approach, there’s no grandfathering for existing .org registrants.
These three new gTLDs will be unrestricted, according to PIR’s applications, but will have slightly stricter rules on abuse — no porn will be allowed, for example.

.secure applicant loses CTO to Yahoo!

Yahoo has reportedly hired a new chief information security officer in the form of Alex Stamos, outspoken CTO of .secure new gTLD applicant Artemis Internet.
The news of Stamos’ departure was first reported by Re/code, citing unnamed sources, a week ago.
Stamos did not respond to a DI request for comment but I gather he’s been flagging up his departure from Artemis on ICANN mailing lists.
According to Re/code, he’s going to be Yahoo’s first CISO for a year.
Stamos’ departure will be a blow for Artemis, which is owned by escrow provide NCC Group. He has been, I think, I pretty good front man for the company over the last couple of years.
I also wonder whether he sensed which way the wind is blowing in the .secure contention set, in which Artemis is in a two-horse race with the much wealthier Amazon.
NCC also recently bought the .trust application from Deutsche Post, which looked a bit to me like a backup plan.

Final .eco applicant completes evaluation

Planet Dot Eco has finally passed its ICANN evaluation, meaning the four-way contention set for one of the oldest public new gTLD ideas, .eco, can move forward a little.
In its Initial Evaluation last August, the company scored a miserable 1 point on its financial evaluation, failing to hit the target of 8 points, and scored a 0 on one of its technical criteria.
But with the Extended Evaluation results published today (pdf), Planet Dot Eco managed to scrape passing scores on both parts of the evaluation.
This means that the .eco contention set, which also includes Donuts, Minds + Machines and Big Room, is no longer being held up by evaluations.
However, Big Room’s is a Community application and the company has indicated that it will go for a Community Priority Evaluation.
Unless Big Room wins the CPE (which strikes me as unlikely), that will also delay any possibility of contention resolution.

Google’s first new gTLD racks up 2,300 domains

Google’s Charleston Road Registry reached 2,300 .みんな domain names on the new gTLD’s first day of general availability, immediately making it the biggest IDN gTLD by volume so far.
The string is Japanese for “everyone”. As you might expect, it’s an unrestricted space.
About 230 names — 10% of the TLD — are non-IDNs. I believe the number also includes some sunrise registrations.
It actually went into GA on Tuesday, but data was not available yesterday.
While it’s not in the same ballpark as the likes of .guru, it nevertheless overtook the only other IDN gTLD to launch so far, dotShabaka’s شبكة. (Arabic for “web”), which has 1,643 names.
Google sold the names via 17 accredited registrars, only one of which appears to be Japanese. The list excludes most of the biggest registrars.
.みんな is unusual in that Google intends to run its Trademark Claims service forever, rather than turning it off after the 90 days required by its Registry Agreement with ICANN.

New gTLDs pass 200,000 registrations

The number of domain names in new gTLDs passed 200,000 last night, according to zone files.
The exact number, according to the DI PRO database, is 201,184.
It’s based on incremental organic growth over the last week since the last batch of new gTLDs went into general availability, rather than any big launch events or surges.
Here are the top 10 zones, all of which belong to Donuts.
[table id=28/]
What the 200,000 count does not reflect is the first day of general availability for Google’s first-to-launch gTLD, .みんな (Japanese for “everyone”), which I’m expecting to start showing numbers tomorrow.
In related news, the DI PRO new gTLD zone file league table service (here) was upgraded today to make it a bit more useful during periods of patchy data availability.
The service will now show all delegated new gTLDs that have started publishing zone files, along with the most-recent domain counts, on days when the file was for whatever reason not available.

.club “will overtake .guru” in week one

Now that we’ve seen how many domain names are actually being sold in new gTLDs, you might reasonably expect some registries to rein in their more ambitious sales targets.
Not so with .CLUB Domains, which plans to go to general availability with .club on May 7.
CEO Colin Campbell told DI today that he’s sticking by his target of selling five million .club names in the first five years.
What’s more, he has big hopes for the gTLD’s first week on the market.
“I firmly believe that .CLUB will exceed all other new generic top level domains in the first week of launch in registrations and overtake .GURU as the leader,” Campbell said in an email.
Donuts’ .guru has over 41,000 domains today and is adding 250-500 more per day. It could be around the 60,000 mark by the time .club hits registrar storefronts.
Campbell notes that all the new gTLDs to launch so far have been uncontested — .CLUB beat out two other applicants for .club in the first private auction last June.
He also reckons .club’s .com-level pricing will help sales — most of the new gTLDs launched to date are priced at over $20 a year.
I don’t doubt that .club will be a decent seller — it has lots of use cases — but five million names in five years still seems wildly ambitious to me.