Defensive registrations with Donuts could be 95% cheaper than normal domains

Portfolio gTLD applicant Donuts plans to offer trademark owners defensive registrations at 5% to 10% of the cost of a normal domain name registration, co-founder Richard Tindal said today.
Speaking at the Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress here in New York, Tindal also revealed some of Donuts’ current thinking about the Domain Protected Marks List service outlined in its gTLD applications.
DPML, which was created by Donuts rather than ICANN, is a little like ICM Registry’s Sunrise B service for .xxx — trademark owners will be able to block domains related to their trademarks.
DPML domains will not resolve, and there’ll be no annual renewal fee.
But there will likely be several differences with .xxx, as Tindal explained.
How to get a block
Each DPML listing will block a string across all of Donuts’ gTLDs, which could be as many as 307 (if Donuts wins all of its contention sets), potentially reducing administrative headaches for trademark owners.
Second, while ICM only allowed strings to be blocked that exactly matched the trademark, Donuts’ standard will merely be that the blocked domain contains the trademarked string.
Trademark owners will have to buy a DPML listing for each string they want blocked, however. It’s not going to be a “wildcard” system. ING wouldn’t be able to block everything ending in “ing”.
If Microsoft wanted to block microsoft.tlds and microsoftwindows.tlds, it would have to request both of those strings separately, but the blocks would be place across every Donuts TLD.
The standard for inclusion is probably going to be that the trademark is listed in the official Trademark Clearinghouse, and that it would qualify for a Sunrise registration (ie, it’s actually being used).
Trademarks that qualify for the Trademark Claims service but not Sunrise would not, it seems, qualify for DPML.
Un-blocks
There’s also going to be a way for trademark owners to un-block domains that have been blocked by other trademark owners.
If Apple the gadget maker blocked the string “apple” across all Donuts gTLDs, for example, Apple Records would be able to unblock apple.music (if Donuts wins .music) if it had a trademark on “apple” in the TMCH.
The standard again would be that Apple Records qualified for a Sunrise, but the unblocking could actually happen long after the .music Sunrise period was over.
If Apple the gadget maker thought it might want to use apple.tld domains in future, its best best would be to register the domains during Sunrise, Tindal said.
Pricing
DPML listings would be available for either five or 10 years (Donuts hasn’t decided yet, but it’s leaning towards five) and pricing will probably be between 5% and 10% of the cost of registering the domains normally during general availability, Tindal said.
Let’s say, for example, that Donuts wins only a certain number of its contention sets and ends up launching 200 new gTLDs, each of which is priced at $10 per domain per year.
If the 5-10% price estimate holds, trademark owners would have to pay between $0.50 and $1 per string, per gTLD, per year. For a single trademark, that would be between $100 and $200 per year, or $500 to $1,000 over the five-year period of the block.
It doesn’t sound like there’s going to be an option for trademark owners to block their sensitive strings in only selected, relevant Donuts gTLDs using DPML. It’ll be all or none.
Donuts has not yet disclosed its pricing plans for any of its proposed gTLDs, so the numbers used here are of course just examples. They could be higher or lower when the domains come to market.
In addition, if the string in question is a “premium” generic word in one or more of Donuts’ gTLDs, the price of blocking it could head sharply north.
Tindal noted that the plans outlined during today’s conference session represent Donuts’ current thinking and may be subject to change.

Google-backed new gTLD industry group appears at WhatDomain.org

The formative domain name industry trade association that DI has blogged about a few times recently has found itself a web site.
The Google-backed initiative can be found now at WhatDomain.org, which currently carries a bit of brief information about the organization’s rough plans and a call for potential members to get in touch.
The site states:

We are organizing to help educate the world on the coming changes in the domain landscape and to support the interests of the domain name industry. We are inviting any organization with a similar interest in domains to join us in working to create and launch an organization that will enable us to work together to achieve these objectives.

The association will eventually have membership tiers and fees, but those details have yet to be arranged.
We understand that while new gTLD applicant Google is doing most of the “heavy lifting” getting the project off the ground, the company wants to go as arms-length as possible very quickly.
The first informal meeting of what may or may not become officially known as WhatDomain took place at during an intersessional ICANN meeting in Amsterdam this January.
The idea is to promote new gTLDs and domain names in general, raise the reputation of the industry and promote the universal acceptance of TLDs among software developers.
During a session here at the Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress in New York yesterday, ICANN head of stakeholder engagement Sally Costeron seemed to commit ICANN to help support the initiative.

Confusion reigns over three “hijacked” ccTLDs

Control over three ccTLDs is currently up in the air due to the alleged hijacking of one of the registry operator’s domain names.
The TLDs for the Turks and Caicos Islands (.tc), the British Virgin Islands (.vg) and Grenada (.gd) are all nominally managed by a UK-based company called AdamsNames.
Last October, AdamsNames outsourced the back-end technical functions of the registry to KSRegistry, the registry sister company to German registrar Key-Systems.
But this week, it’s difficult to say who’s in charge any more.
KSRegistry, in an official statement, said yesterday that an unspecified “third party” had managed to take over the registry’s domain name, AdamsNames.net, and was operating a “shadow registry” there.

Today, the KSregistry GmbH, a hundred percent subsidiary of the Key-Systems GmbH, has learned that a third party has executed a transfer of the domain name adamsnames.net and now operates a shadow registry under this domain. According to the CEO of AdamsNames Ltd., Mr. Carsten Pauli, this transfer was not authorized by the registry operator.

Whois records show that the domain was transferred away from Key-Systems to Hexonet last week, and that the administrative contact changed from an address in London to an address in Istanbul.
The name on the records was Ertan Ulutas before and after the transfer.
So has Ulutas, by taking control over what is in effect the official registry web site, hijacked all three registries?
Statements appearing on AdamsNames.net this week tell a different story.
Whoever’s in control of the domain — presumably Ulutas — claims that the outfit is “currently experiencing a high level Corporate hijack from the minority shareholder Carsten Pauli and Key Systems GmbH.”
A statement today reads:

As you are all aware AdamsNames Ltd has been run by us for a while. Key Systems is our former Registry Backend provider. We recently noticed, the adamsnames.com domain, for which Key Systems was the Registrar had been illegally transferred into another account without any notice or authorisation from us.
Upon realising this we transferred our other gTLD domains to another Registrar. Due to this matter we lost trust in Key Systems GmbH and decided to run it ourselves. Please be aware that our Registry is fully operational.
All domains can be registered, renewed and updated as usual. We could not trust a company with three ccTLD’s if we could not trust them with one domain!

Whois records show that Pauli recently became the owner of AdamsNames.com. Ulutas was the previous owner. The domain is registered via Key-Systems.
KSRegistry, which has declined to comment beyond its prepared statement yesterday, said:

KSregistry GmbH still provides the technical back-end services for the ccTLDs .TC, .GD and .VG authorized by AdamsNames Ltd., but this is currently hampered by the actions of the third party.
In order to not endanger the integrity of the zone after addressing the issues, the Key-Systems GmbH as registrar has decided to not permit current modifications to domains under .TC, .GD and .VG. The resolution and renewal of the domains are not affected.

What seems to be happening here is that Pauli and Ulutas have had some kind of dispute, and that as a result the registrants and the reputation of three countries’ ccTLDs have been harmed.
Very amateurish.
UPDATE: Key-Systems founder and CEO Alexander Siffrin has issued the following updated statement in response to the latest claims on Adamsnames.net:

Key-Systems GmbH has at no time hijacked a domain name from Adamsnames Ltd. It has in the incident referred to by the party currently claiming to represent Adamsnames acted upon a request of the director of Adamsnames Ltd. who is also the signatory of the agreement outsourcing the technical backend of the registry to KSregistry GmbH.
On the other hand the transfer of the domain name adamsnames.net and with that the ability to change the management of the zone has to our knowledge been initiated without permission of Adamsnames Ltd.
It is noteworthy that at this time the domain names listed by the current technical operator do not list Adamsnames Ltd. as registrant:
ADAMSNAMES.NET
adamsnames.org
adamsnames.eu
You may draw your own conclusions.

.mii becomes the first new gTLD to face rejection

The applied-for new gTLD .mii is too similar to the US military gTLD .mil and will therefore be rejected by ICANN.
While many applications have been withdrawn, this is the first involuntary rejection to be announced by ICANN.
The applicant for .mii was MiTek USA, described by DI previously as the filer of the stupidest new gTLD applications of the current round.
It also applied for .connector, .mitek and .sapphire, the names of its product categories and brands.
All four of its applications will be formally rejected when ICANN publishes its Initial Evaluation results.
MiTek didn’t bother to answer the most basic questions in the new gTLD application, simply stating “TLD will not be resold. Purchased for brand protection only.” on almost every line.
The decision by the String Similarity Panel to rule .mii confusingly similar to .mil confirms what we already knew from the .hotels/.hoteis ruling — the letters I and L are confusing.
String similarity testing compares upper and lower-case letters as well as, I believe, different typefaces.

PICs could be Beijing deal-breaker for new gTLDs

ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee may delay the approval of new gTLDs if applicants don’t submit Public Interest Commitments tomorrow.
That’s the message coming out of ICANN today, on the eve of the deadline for PICs submission set less than one month ago.
PICs, you will recall, are binding, enforceable commitments that new gTLD applicants are able to voluntarily add to their registry contracts with ICANN.
They’re meant to satisfy the GAC’s request for ICANN to tighten its grip on new gTLD registries and to give applicants a way to avoid GAC Advice and formal objections against their bids.
Applicants that commit to do whatever was asked of them in GAC Early Warnings, for example, may be able to avoid having the warning mutate into a full-blown GAC Advice kiss of death.
When ICANN announced the PICs idea a month ago, it gave applicants until March 5 to submit them. It intends to publish them on Wednesday for public comment and the GAC’s perusal.
But applicants are understandably nervous (to put it mildly) to comply, given that PICs would be enforceable via a dispute process that has yet to be written but could put their contracts at risk.
Responding to these concerns during a conference call today, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade urged applicants to hit the deadline or risk the GAC delaying its Advice discussions beyond Beijing.
“I don’t think we can delay the submission of the PICs,” Chehade said. “If we do, then we will definitely not have the GAC come back to use with their committed advice in Beijing.”
“Unless we want to get them to do this advice beyond Beijing, we should stick with the 30 days or so we’ve asked people to get this done and make it happen,” he said.
The Beijing meeting runs April 7 to 11. The GAC is expected to issue its advice shortly after the meeting ends.
ICANN reckons it will be able to start approving new gTLDs April 23, but has also stated on numerous occasions that it will not approve anything before the GAC has spoken.
Chehade said today, based on his conversations with influential GAC members, that pushing the PICs deadline out beyond March 5 by even a few days would seriously endanger the current GAC Advice timeline.
New gTLD applicants are now in the tricky position of having to decide between potentially costly delays today and an unknown dispute system that could prove dangerous in future.

ICM’s claims against Manwin thrown out of court

ICM Registry has suffered a blow in its ongoing lawsuit with porn merchant Manwin Licensing, with a judge this week dismissing all of the registry’s counterclaims against the YouPorn owner.
ICM was sued by Manwin on antitrust grounds in late 2011, but returned fire last October with is own set of allegations, which also included claims that Manwin’s boycott of .xxx was anti-competitive.
But the judge in the case, Philip Gutierrez, on Tuesday granted Manwin’s motion to dismiss all of ICM’s claims.
Gutierrez ruled that ICM had failed to argue it had standing to complain under competition law, stating: “Harm to ICM only is not sufficient to constitute antitrust injury. It must allege harm to the competitive process.”
He also granted Manwin’s motion to strike ICM’s claims under California’s anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) laws, which are designed to protect free speech.
The judge decided that Manwin’s boycott of .xxx was protected under the anti-SLAPP statute.
ICM is now entitled to re-draft and re-submit its counterclaims; if it does not do so it will have to pay Manwin’s legal fees in connection with the anti-SLAPP action, Gutierrez ruled.
“The judge has granted us 30 days to amend our counterclaims. We are exploring all options open to us,” ICM CEO Stuart Lawley said.
Manwin’s owner, Fabian Thylmann, was arrested in Brussels last December and extradited to Germany to face charges of tax evasion.

Nominet to revise second-level .uk proposal after domainer outrage

Nominet has temporarily killed off its plan to allow people to register second-level .uk domain names, after vocal opposition from domain investors.
The non-profit registry said yesterday it is “not proceeding with our original proposal on ‘direct.uk’”, but may revise the concept to give more rights to existing .uk domain name owners.
Nominet had been running a community consultation since October on the idea. It said yesterday:

It was clear from the feedback that there was not a consensus of support for the direct.uk proposals as presented, with some concerns cutting across different stakeholder groups. Although shorter domains (e.g. nominet.uk rather than nominet.org.uk) were considered desirable, many respondents felt that the release mechanism did not give enough weighting to existing registrants, and could lead to confusion if they could not obtain the corresponding domain.

UK domainers had been the most prominent opponents of the plan, complaining loudly that trademark owners were to be given the right to take .uk names where they do not already own the corresponding .co.uk or .org.uk names.
This would not only harm domainers, but also big companies that own generic .co.uk domains without matching trademarks, they said, and would lead to consumer confusion.
Nominet now plans to see if it can revise the proposal to come up with a “phased release mechanism based largely on the prior registrations of domains in existing third levels within .uk”.

.info and .biz prices to go up

Afilias and Neustar have separately announced increased to the registry fees for .info and .biz domain names.
Afilias yesterday said the maximum wholesale price for a .info domain would increase to $8.16 effective September 1, a 10% increase on the current rate of $7.42 per year.
The last 10% hike, which the company is allowed to take under its ICANN registry agreement, came in July 2011.
Neustar last week also said it was taking its permitted 10% increase.
The maximum registry fee for .biz will go up to $8.63, also starting September 1. It last increased its prices in February 2012.

AIG withdraws new gTLD bid due to rebrand

The insurance company American International Group has dropped its application for .chartis, apparently due to a merger-related rebranding.
It’s the 21st gTLD application to be withdrawn. Dot-Nxt did the legwork to figure out that the company has pulled out because the .chartis brand itself is being wound up.
When we asked ICANN last week how many bids were in the withdrawal queue, we were told the magic number was three.
Two of those are expected to be .chevy and .buick, which General Motors has confirmed it is withdrawing in addition to its already-gone .chevrolet, .cadillac and .gmc; .chartis is likely the third.
That doesn’t mean it is is the last, however.
Smart dot-brand applicants that are not completely sold on the new gTLD concept will be waiting for the publication of ICANN’s string similarity evaluation panel’s results, currently expected this Friday, before making their calls.
The string similarity results will go a long way to determine whether certain strings will have potentially lethal problems being applied for in future application rounds.
If .gmc had have been ruled confusingly similar to .gmo, for example, that may have reduced GM’s chances of successfully applying for .gmc in future rounds.

Mali’s domain could change hands next week

ICANN’s board of directors will next week vote on whether to redelegate .ml, the country-code top-level domain for the war-torn nation of Mali, to a new registry operator.
The ccTLD is currently delegated to Societe des Telecommunications du Mali (Sotelma), a publicly traded telecommunications provider, but it’s not currently possible to register a .ml domain.
The reasons for a redelegation are never publicized by ICANN until after they are approved, when IANA publishes a redelegation report, so it’s not yet clear what’s going on this case.
Mali has been hitting headlines in Europe recently due to the French involvement in government efforts to retake the northern parts of the country from Islamist rebels.
Following the outbreak of hostilities a year ago, in March 2012 the Malian government was overthrown in a coup d’état that was widely condemned by the international community.
Following sanctions the military quickly ceded power to an interim president, who continues in the role today ahead of elections to find a more permanent successor, scheduled for July.
France, supported by allies including the UK, moved in to help Mali retake the north last month.
Sotelma is based in the capital, Bamako, which is not held by rebels.
The redelegation of .ml is on the main agenda — rather than the consent agenda, which is usually the case for redelegations — for ICANN’s board meeting next Thursday.