.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It’s the 21st gTLD application to be withdrawn.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.

.transformers gTLD bid transforms into pile of burnt cash

Toy-maker Hasbro has withdrawn its application for the .transformers new gTLD.
It was Hasbro’s only application, and it’s the first example of an applicant that paid to participate in ICANN’s new gTLD prioritization draw last December subsequently withdrawing its bid.
One of the longer and more eyebrow-raising applied-for strings, .transformers brings the number of withdrawn applications to 18, most of which were dot-brands. Now, 1,912 bids remain.
The bid had a prioritization number of 131, putting it toward the very top of the queue of non-IDN applications.
If many more applications with high prioritization numbers withdraw, it would raise serious questions about the validity of the argument that participating in the draw indicates a non-defensive bid.
Hasbro’s application suggested that it was filed mainly defensively, it’s “Mission/Purpose” stated as primarily: “To secure and protect the Applicant’s key brand (“TRANSFORMERS”) as a gTLD”.
Maybe it was worried that an electrical parts manufacturer might go for the same string?
It’s the sixth application to be withdrawn in a week, following General Motors’ pulling of its .gmc, .cadillac and .chevrolet bids and Hartford Fire Insurance’s withdrawal of .thehartford.
UPDATE (February 20): ICANN tells me that there are currently only three more new gTLD applications in its withdrawal pipeline.

Hackers may have stolen .edu domain passwords

Owners of .edu domain names have been told to change their passwords after hackers compromised a server belonging to registry manager Educause.
The registry said today that it has deactivated the admin passwords for all .edu domains after discovering a “security breach” that gave attackers access to hashed passwords for .edu registrants.
The attack also compromised passwords for users of the Educause web site, the organization said.
The .edu domain is of course reserved for US-based educational institutions, and is considered one of the most secure and prestigious TLDs available.
Educause said it “immediate steps to contain this breach and is working with Federal law enforcement, investigators, and security experts to make sure this incident is properly addressed.”
The registry did not say whether the attack is related to the attack against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last month, which reportedly was enabled via an Educase hack.

PIR starts pre-registration for .ngo domain names

Public Interest Registry has become the first major gTLD registry to start taking pre-registrations for a not-yet-approved gTLD.
PIR said today that it’s allowing non-governmental organizations to register an “expression of interest” for .ngo and .ong domains.
Pre-registrations are of course free and non-binding. They’re mainly a way to opening the marketing communications channel with customers well in advance of the launch of a TLD.
PIR does not expect to launch .ngo or .ong until 2014. Its ICANN evaluation priority numbers for the two TLDs are 810 and 958, in the first half of the list.
Pre-registration is not a new concept, of course, but it’s one generally embraced more often by registrars (eNom and United Domains are the two most prominent examples) rather than incumbent registries.
For PIR to start engaging directly with potential registrants is one of the first signs that, in the wake of ICANN’s lifting of the ban on vertical integration between registries and registrars, the new gTLD market won’t be playing by the old rules.

Two more dot-brand gTLD bids withdrawn

Two applications for “dot-brand” new gTLDs were pulled last week.
General Motors has withdrawn its bid for .gmc and Hartford Fire Insurance Company dropped .thehartford.
Both bids had been assigned priority numbers in ICANN’s prioritization draw last December, but neither applicant had purchased tickets, suggesting a lack of interest in operating the TLDs.
The withdrawal of .gmc at this time, less than two weeks before the publication by ICANN of string similarity evaluation results, is particularly interesting, and a little strategically puzzling.
There’s an active application by GMO Internet for .gmo, which could conceivably be ruled confusingly visually similar to .gmc.
By pulling out now, GM has lost its right to file a string similar challenge at a later date, and may have lost its ability to win .gmc in all future application rounds too (if .gmo is approved this time around, GMO could claim confusing similarity against future .gmc bids).
But GM still has active bids for the much more meaningful .chevrolet, .buick, .chevy and .cadillac, all of which also have prioritization numbers suggesting GM mainly applied defensively.
Hartford’s .thehartford was its only application.
The two withdrawals bring the total to date to 15, at least 10 of which were dot-brands. There are now 1,915 applications still in play.
The new gTLD consultants involved in the withdrawn bids — which one assumes were mostly filed defensively based on advice received — are a fairly mixed bunch so far.

ICANN seeks more power over new gTLD registries

When ICANN published a new draft of its basic Registry Agreement for wannabe new gTLD operators last week, much of the focus was on the new Public Interest Commitments mechanism, but a whole bunch of other big changes were also proposed.
ICANN has floated some quite significant amendments that would give it greater powers to approve mergers and acquisitions and more or less unilaterally change registries’ contracts in future.
Here’s my take on the biggest changes.
Regulating M&A activity
When a new gTLD registry business is acquired, ICANN wants to have greater rights to approve the transaction.
Changes to Section 7.5 would enable ICANN to check that the buyer and its ultimate parent company “meets the ICANN-adopted specification or policy on registry operator criteria then in effect”.
That would specifically include fresh background checks on the acquirer and its parent company.
For new gTLD applicants planning to flip their gTLDs in future, it means the buyers would be subject to the same scrutiny as the applicants themselves are today.
But — and it could turn out to be a big but — these checks would not be carried out if the registry’s buyer was already itself a compliant, ICANN-contracted gTLD registry.
In other words, it is going to be much easier for gTLD registries to acquire each other than it will be for outsiders to acquire them.
Had the rules been in place before now they would have complicated, for example, the acquisition of .pro by Hostway (not already a registry), but not its subsequent acquisition by Afilias (which already had .info).
Powers to change the contract
ICANN wants to grant itself the ability to make “Special Amendments” to all gTLD registry agreements in future without the consent of the registries.
Under the current version of the Registry Agreement, such amendments would need the approval of registries representing two-thirds of all registry fees paid to ICANN before they became law.
(It’s possible that this would give Verisign, as .com/.net registry, a de facto veto due to its market share).
But ICANN wants to change this rule to give its own board of directors the ability to impose amendments to the contract on registries, even if the registries vote against them.
The board would need a supermajority vote (66%, which pretty much every board vote receives anyway) and would need to be “justified by a substantial and compelling need”, quite a subjective threshold, in order to ignore the registries’ protests.
Special Amendments could not cover basic things like pricing or the definition of “registry services”.
ICANN, no doubt bruised by 18 months of laborious Registrar Accreditation Agreement renegotiations, says the change is “of fundamental importance and deserves careful attention given the long-term nature of registry agreements”.
But ICANN contracted parties are usually pretty reluctant to give ICANN more powers over their businesses, especially when it comes to sacrificing their right to renegotiate their contracts, so I can’t see these proposed changes to the Registry Agreement being accepted without hot debate.
Reserved Names
Section 2 of the agreement has been tweaked to make it a bit clearer under what circumstances registries are able to register names for their own use, or block them, and when they have to pay ICANN fees to do so.
The new language makes it clear that registries will not have to pay ICANN fees, and won’t have to use accredited registrars, for domains that are completely blocked from registration and are not used by the registry or anyone else.
By my reading, this could cover the kind of defensive blocking services that many applicants plan to offer to trademark owners, and other anti-abuse mechanisms, but not domains that registries plans to “reserve” for their own use.
At first glance, this might be seen as something that primarily affects dot-brands (which own all the second-level domains in their gTLDs) but most will probably be protected by the 50,000-domain threshold that must be passed before per-domain ICANN fees kick in.
Names that are held back for the registry to use would still have to be registered through a registrar and would incur ICANN fees, with a handful of named exceptions (nic.tld, www.tld, etc).
The new Registry Agreement also includes the final list of strings related to the Red Cross and International Olympic Committee that need to be reserved at the second level, along with a placeholder for reservations of strings related to other intergovernmental organizations.
Other stuff
There are quite a lot of proposed changes (pdf) to the agreement, which are currently open for public comment, and it’s possible I may have missed something equally important as the above.
I’m wondering, for example, about the possible impact of the changes to Specification 7 that seem to make registries responsible if their registrars do not uphold intellectual property rights protection mechanisms.
Also, do the changes to Spec 4 suggest that ICANN plans to outsource the job of Centralized Zone Data Access Provider? What’s the impact on applicants of the changes to Continuing Operations Instrument?
What have you spotted?

How .pw signed up more launch registrars than .xxx

Directi has signed up more registrars for its launch of the .pw top-level domain than .xxx managed a year ago, crediting pricing and “operating in new gTLD mode” for its progress.
Sandeep Ramchandani, business head of .pw at the company, said that over 90 registrars are currently accredited. That’s compared to the about 80 that ICM Registry launched .xxx with in December 2011.
The ccTLD for the tiny nation of Palau (pop. 20,956), .pw isn’t what you’d call an intrinsically exciting string, despite Directi’s attempt to rebrand it as “Professional Web”, making its relatively strong launch channel a bit of a head-scratcher.
The fact that Directi also runs registrar-in-a-box provider LogicBoxes has helped it add some registrars, no doubt.
But Ramchandani reckons a combination of low pricing, open registration policies, a focus on developing markets, and attractive registrar incentives, are helping the TLD gain channel traction.
“There’s going to be a massive shift in power from registries to registrars,” he said. “We’re basically operating .pw in the new gTLD mode.”
I had assumed that many registrars might have wanted to plug in to .pw in order to ease the need for integration work with Directi’s registry if/when the company launches the 30-odd gTLD it has applied for, but Ramchandani pointed out that this is not the case.
The company is using CentralNic as the back-end for .pw, but it’s signed up to use ARI Registry Services for its gTLDs.
“This is not something related to our gTLD business, because we’re working off a completely different platform,” Ramchandani said.
But with the imminent launch of new gTLDs, there’s recently been an increased industry focus on how registrars should be paying their registry fees. Typically, they prepay each TLD registry before they sell domains to registrants, tying up capital that they could be using for other purposes.
That model may work in a world of 1,700 registrars and 18 gTLDs, but it will become increasingly cumbersome and uneconomical for registrars as the number of TLDs approaches 1,000.
Some say it will make more sense for registries to scrap the prepay model, if they want to attract more registrars.
While Directi has stopped short of offering blanket post-pay to its registrars, Ramchandani said it will offer the model in some cases (unlike ICANN-contracted gTLDs, .pw has leeway to treat registrars differently).
“We will be asking for prepayment, but if a registrar is doing significant volume… If they feel they’re blocking a lot of capital and require a more convenient and flexible model we could offer post-payment,” he said. “But it’s not something we can offer every registrar.”
It’s also offering what it says is a more attractive way of handling promotional pricing.
Typically, if a gTLD registry runs a pricing promotion today it will rebate its registrars the difference between the promo price and the regular fee monthly or quarterly based on their sales volumes.
Ramchandani said the .pw model is more attractive to registrars: “With our programs, we will charge the discounted amount up-front, as opposed to charging the full amount and rebating later.”
“We will be coming up with some very, very aggressive promotions that will bring down the first-year registration cost a lot,” he added.
In contrast to SX Registry’s .sx (for the new nation of Sint Maarten), which is launching with prices of around $50 a year, Directi is selling .pw domains with a registry fee “sub-.com” before discounts.
Exact registry pricing for .pw domains has not been publicly disclosed, and Ramchandani declined to give out that information, but given current .com prices we can estimate a ceiling of about $7.85.
Directi reckons the low prices will drive volumes in developing markets, such as its native India.
The .pw launch is currently in the last few days of sunrise — which like so many other recent sunrise periods has been extended to cope with last-minute filings — during which trademark holders can defensively register their brands as domain names for a higher fee.
Not ever registrar is participating in sunrise; eNom, for example, which is .pw’s biggest registrar signing to date, does not plan to get involved until landrush.
Directi has something interesting planned for landrush, which begins next Monday, too.
According to Ramchandani, the registry will release and promote a list of unreserved “premium” domains that are available for registration during the landrush period.
This is slightly different to the standard registry practice of holding back premiums for auction. The names .pw will promote will not be “reserved”, they’ll just be examples of decent strings picked out of the available pool.
Each could technically be sold for the basic landrush fee if only one registrant attempts to register them. In practice, due to the promotion, there’s a higher likelihood of the domains going to auction, however.
“We’re making available a much larger set of premium names during landrush,” Ramchandani said. “We think it will help raise awareness to say: ‘Hey, these are the top picks.'”
“Since those names are generally reserved by the registry, we think it’s important to say: these are available,” he added.
The full list of registrars participating in .pw’s launch is available here.
Directi is promoting those registrars that have committed some marketing resources to the TLD, such as by creating dedicated landing pages.
It has not yet signed up Go Daddy, which is typically responsible for a quarter or more of all sales in gTLDs it sells, but Ramchandani said he expects more “top five” registrars to follow eNom in supporting .pw soon.

.web lawsuit thrown out of court, “too generic” to be a trademark

A California lawsuit that threatened to scupper all seven applications for the .web new gTLD has been thrown out.
The judge in Image Online Design v ICANN yesterday granted ICANN’s motion to dismiss the case, saying that IOD had no claim for breach of contract and, significantly, that “.web” is too generic to be a trademark.
Here’s the money quote:

This court agrees with ICANN that the mark .WEB used in relation to Internet registry services is generic and cannot enjoy trademark protection.

IOD applied for .web during ICANN’s proof-of-concept new gTLD round in 2000, but was not approved.
It sued ICANN last October, claiming breach of contract and trademark infringement and interference with its business.
The company has been running .web in an alternate DNS root, where hardly anyone uses it, since the 1990s.
Unfortunately for IOD, when it applied in 2000 it signed a document releasing ICANN from all legal liability in relation to the application, so the judge yesterday ruled that it could not sue for breach of contract.
The court also upheld the longstanding position of the US courts that top-level domains cannot be trademarks.
The US Patent & Trademark Office is of the view that TLDs do not indicate the source of goods or services; only the second-level domain does.
IOD had argued in court that, with the imminent introduction of dot-brands, the USPTO expects to modify its position. The judge in this case, Dean Pregerson, agreed in part, stating:

For instance, if ICANN were to introduce the TLD .APPLE, the user would arguably expect that that TLD is administered by Apple Inc. In such a case, the TLD might be considered a source indicator. If Sony tried to administer the TLD .APPLE, Apple Inc. would likely argue and possibly prevail on a trademark infringement claim.
This said, it appears to the court that today only the most famous of marks could have a source indicating function as a TLD. Some marks, such as .WEB, might remain generic even if they were famous, since .WEB in connection with registry services for the World Wide Web appears to refer to the service offered, rather than to only a particular producer’s registry service.
…
the mark .WEB is not protectable under traditional trademark analysis because it “seems to represent a genus of a type of website” and thus answers the question “What are you?” rather than “Who vouches for you?”

IOD’s other claims were also thrown out. Read the court’s order here.
The ruling means that a similar lawsuit filed by fellow 2000-round new gTLD applicant Name.Space, which is looking for an injunction against 189 gTLD applications, may be on shaky ground too.