German geo .ruhr enters the root

Verisign today delegated the new gTLD .ruhr to the DNS root zone, making it the 35th new gTLD to go live.
It’s a geographic string, meant for residents of the north-west German region of Ruhr, operated by Regiodot.
nic.ruhr is already resolving.
Regiodot is already taking pre-registrations via approximately 10 signed-up registrars, which all appear to operate in German-speaking countries.
The Ruhr (in German, it’s short for Ruhrgebiet) has over eight million inhabitants, according to Wikipedia, making the potential market for .ruhr larger than many European ccTLDs.

ICANN floats new rules for dot-brands

Dot-brand gTLDs could get big exemptions to the standard new gTLD Registry Agreement under new rules published for public comment by ICANN over the weekend.
The proposed changes were negotiated by ICANN and the Brand Registry Group, a coalition of dot-brand applicants that one day plans to become a formal part of ICANN’s policy-making structure.
“The changes will allow trademark owners who have applied for new TLDs to promote and maintain trust in their .Brand registries,” the BRG said in a statement supporting the changes.
Dot-brands would be completely exempt from the standard Code of Conduct, which requires registries to treat all accredited registrars equally.
They’d be explicitly allowed to work with only one trusted registrar.
Given that dot-brands are all essentially single-registrants spaces (limited to the brand owner, its affiliates and trademark licensees) it makes sense to eschew the usual competitive registrar market.
Brand owners were also very worried about ICANN’s right to re-delegate defunct gTLDs, including dot-brands, to new registry operators, which could be seen as extreme brand dilution.
So the proposed RA amendment would also prevent ICANN from redelegating dot-brands for two years after the agreement expires, unless there’s a compelling public-interest reason to do so.
If ICANN chose to redelegate during that period, the former dot-brand would be able to object.
Nothing would stop a third party applying for the vacated gTLD in a subsequent application round.
The changes appear to prevent brand registries from claiming exclusive rights to gTLD strings in perpetuity, while still giving them breathing space to wind down and attempt to avoid brand confusion.
The definition of a “brand” seems to have been written in order to prevent gaming by companies with trademarks on generic strings.
To qualify to become a dot-brand, a registry would have to prove that its gTLD string is a trademark it owns for non-domain industry they’re already playing in. Strings starting with dots would be excluded.
ICANN would determine which gTLDs are eligible, and would be able to revoke the dot-brand status if the registry changed its business plans in future.
The proposal has been negotiated by ICANN legal staff and the BRG and has not yet been approved by the New gTLD Program Committee or the ICANN board.
It’s open for public comment until January 31, here.

Oh no! Cement company withdraws dot-brand bid

FLSmidth, a Danish cement company, has withdrawn its application for the new gTLD .fls.
It’s the first dot-brand to be withdrawn from the program in months.
FLSmidth had passed Initial Evaluation and was not facing any objections or Governmental Advisory Committee advice, so it’s not immediately clear why the company decided to pull out.
The company recently reported a fall in profitability, so perhaps it’s just trying to cut costs by eliminating superfluous expenses.

TLDH ditches .roma bid after GAC trouble

Top Level Domain Holdings has withdrawn its bid for the .roma gTLD, after apparently running afoul of the Italian government.
The gTLD was to represent the city of Rome, but Italy issued the company with an Early Warning (pdf) a year ago saying the company had “No involvement or support from the local authorities” and should withdraw.
TLDH disputed this, saying in November 2012:

In fact the Company had engaged extensively with the relevant local authority and will provide supporting documentation to the Italian GAC member. Once this evidence has been submitted, the Directors believe that the objection will be withdrawn.

The warning did not escalate to full-blown Governmental Advisory Committee advice, but .roma nevertheless failed Initial Evaluation (pdf) due to the lack of documented government support with its application.
The bid was eligible for Extended Evaluation, but it seems that TLDH was unable to get the required level of support or non-objection from Italy to allow the bid to pass.
It’s the second of TLDH’s applications to get killed off by a GAC member. It withdrew its non-geo application for .spa as soon as Belgium started making noises about its own city of Spa.
The company also ditched plans to apply for .mumbai in 2011 due to confusion about whether the city’s government actually supported it or not.

Donuts’ portfolio swells as ICANN signs 31 new gTLD contracts

ICANN signed 31 new gTLD Registry Agreements yesterday, 24 of which were with Donuts subsidiaries.
Back-end registry provider Neustar was among a handful of companies signing RAs for their dot-brands too.
Donuts signed contracts for: .haus, .properties, .maison, .productions, .parts, .cruises, .foundation, .industries, .vacations, .consulting, .report, .villas, .condos, .cards, .vision, .dating, .catering, .cleaning, .community, .rentals, .partners, .events, .flights and .exposed.
Top Level Design signed for .ink, which is expected to compete with Uniregistry’s already-delegated .tattoo.
XYZ.com signed for its uber-generic budget offering .xyz.
BusinessRalliart is now contracted for its Japanese geo .okinawa.
IRI Domain Management, affiliated with the Mormon church, got its .mormon RA, for what is expected to be a “highly restricted” religious namespace.
KRG Department of Information Technology got .krd, which it wants to use to serve the Kurdish people and Kurdistan region of Iraq.
Finally, Italian management consultancy Praxi got its dot-brand .praxi.

Superstitious launch planned for Chinese gTLDs

TLD Registry plans to time its Chinese new gTLD launch dates to coincide with days considered lucky in Chinese astrology.
The Sunrise period for .在线 (“.online”) and .中文网 (“.chinesewebsite”) will start January 17 and end March 17.
According to the registry:

Both the start and end days of Sunrise fall on highly auspicious days for “starting new businesses” in the ancient Chinese almanac. The Chinese almanac was created during the Han Dynasty around 200BC, and continues to be an important guide to the lives and businesses of more than a billion Chinese people.

A landrush period will follow starting March 20, “an auspicious day for ‘breaking ground'”, and ending April 24.
TLD Registry will also run a live/online auction for “the most valuable and sought-after” names in Macau on March 21.
General availability is slated for April 28, “a highly auspicious date for ‘starting new businesses’ and ‘grand openings'”
It’s cute marketing, and no mistake.
The Chinese almanac, like all astrology, is of course utter nonsense.

.eu names to be sold outside the EU

EURid is to expand sales of .eu domains to three countries outside the European Union from January 8.
Companies and individuals from Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway will get to register .eu names, due to a rule change at the registry.
The three countries are members of the European Economic Area, which enjoys many of the trade benefits of the Union but without full EU membership.
EURid said that the 2002 European Parliament regulation that created .eu always envisaged the eventual expansion of the ccTLD to the EEA.
The change expands the registry’s addressable market by fewer than 5.4 million people, five million of whom are Norwegian.

DotKiwi puts $7 million of premium names on sale

DotKiwi has put NZD 8.5 milion ($7 million) of “premium” domain names on the market in advance of the delegation of .kiwi, which it expects to happen this week.
There are 4,668 names on sale right now, ranging in price from NZD 501.50 ($410) to NZD 124,626.71 ($102,000).
The highest price belongs to hotels.kiwi.
The average asking price is NZD 1,832.39 ($1,500).
The registry said:

All premium names have been valued in collaboration with third parties that specialise in valuing domain names around the globe. The value of a .kiwi premium name is determined using historical sales data, search engine popularity and traffic.

There are 32 domains priced at over $10,000. These are the top 10 highest-priced names:
[table id=23 /]
Unlike other new gTLD registries that have introduced tiered renewal pricing for premium names, DotKiwi plans to charge a standard NZD 40 ($33) annual fee for premiums.
DotKiwi tells us that the names have all been reserved, so they’re ineligible for the mandatory Sunrise period (expected to start later this month).
But the names won’t actually be activated until after Sunrise is over. Then, they’ll still be subject to the Trademark Claims service, which alerts trademark owners when their mark has been registered.

Let’s Learn IDNs — .中文网 (Chinese Website)

Today, the belated first in an irregular series of articles devoted to making new IDN gTLDs more recognizable to the majority of DI readers who use the Latin alphabet in their native tongue.
Let’s Learn IDNs, as I said in my introduction to the series, won’t teach you Greek, but it will hopefully make it easier to instinctively know what a Greek IDN means when you see it.
I’m hoping this will prove very useful for everyone with an interest in the new gTLD program, bringing meaning to what otherwise would be an incomprehensible string of gibberish.
For the first lesson, we’re looking at TLD Registry‘s .中文网, which I guarantee after today you’ll never forget.
U-Label
.中文网
A-Label
.xn--fiq228c5hs
Translation
“.chinesewebsite”
Script
Chinese (Simplified)
Language(s)
Chinese. According to the registry, this includes “Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka and over 250 other Chinese dialects.”
Transliteration
Zhōng Wén Wǎng
Pronunciation
Jong (rhymes with long)
When (as in “when are you arriving”)
Wong (rhymes with long)
How to Learn this IDN
In Chinese, each character generally represents a syllable and will often also have meaning as a word in its own right, which is the case with the three characters of .中文网.
Helpfully, these characters are also pictograms that pretty much explain themselves.
中 (Zhōng) is a line going through the middle of a box. It means “middle”. It’s also the first character of the Chinese word for “China” — 中国, which literally means “Middle Kingdom”.
文 (Wén) looks like a little writing desk with a quill on top. It means “language”. Combine it with 中 to get 中文, which means “Chinese Language”.
网 (Wǎng) looks like a net (or maybe a cobweb). It’s the Simplified Chinese word for “net”, which the Chinese also use to refer to the internet or web.
“Altogether, 中文网 as a gTLD string, is two words that make one common Chinese language expression: Chinese-language (中文) website (网),” said TLD Registry’s head of comms Simon Cousins.
Dead easy, right?
Certainly, since Cousins first explained this to me a few months ago, I’ve never failed to recognize .中文网 whenever I’ve seen it.

Two more new gTLDs delegated

The new gTLDs .menu and .uno have gone live on the internet.
Both appear to have been delegated to the DNS root zone at some point over the last few days — nic.menu and nic.uno are both resolving right now, though nic.uno takes you to an Apache status page.
The Latino-focused .uno is the first gTLD of the 10 applications linked to Kanasas-based DotRegistry to become active; .menu is the first for What Box?, which now has three remaining applications.
What Box has already partnered with Go Daddy to offer .menu domains, priced at $49.99 a year or $199.99 a year if you buy a “priority pre-registration”.
I believe the current total of new gTLDs in the root is 34, 26 of which belong to Donuts.