ICANN apologizes for gTLD privacy snafu

ICANN’s top brass have sent personal apologies to the people whose home addresses were exposed when it published their new gTLD applications last week.
The organization blamed “human error” and said it is now conducting an “investigation” to figure out what went wrong.
The note, which is signed by CEO Rod Beckstrom, chairman Steve Crocker, and COO Akram Atallah, reads:

Dear [name of the affected executive],
On behalf of ICANN, we want to personally apologize for our error in exposing your postal address on the TLD Application website. This was a human error, and we have corrected it. We are conducting an internal investigation in order to learn from this mistake and to ensure that it does not happen again.
In the meantime, please be assured that the New Generic Top-level Domain Program remains on track. We are moving ahead with the screening and evaluation of applications, and returning to our shared goal of bringing competition and choice to the Internet’s domain name space.
We are committed to serving you to the very best of our ability and to ensuring the integrity of the New gTLD Program. If you have questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us directly.
Sincerely,
ICANN

As I blogged last week, ICANN accidentally neglected to redact the home addresses of many applicants’ named primary and secondary contacts when it published all 1,930 applications last week.
It has since removed the offending information.

The stupidest gTLD applications I’ve seen so far

Who the hell advised these guys?
Mitek USA, a maker of prefabricated building components (hinges, brackets, etc), has applied for four new generic top-level domains with the shoddiest applications I’ve seen so far.
For pretty much every question that requires any thought to answer, the company has simply replied “TLD will not be resold. Purchased for brand protection only.”
The phrase appears 13 times in each of the four applications.
The applications — for .mitek, .connectors, .sapphire (a brand) and .mii — therefore all appear to be a colossal waste of money.
With no answers to any technical questions beyond “TLD will not be resold. Purchased for brand protection only”, there’s no way they can pass the technical portion of the Initial Evaluation.
The bids, therefore, are completely useless. Even if the strings had been contended (they’re not), there’s no advantage to having a horse in the race if it’s guaranteed to fall at the first fence.
I ask again: who the hell advised these guys?

The registry back-end market numbers are in

The top five registry back-end providers account for almost 72% of all new generic top-level domain applications, according to DI’s preliminary numbers.
Neustar, Demand Media, Afilias, Verisign and ARI Registry Services take the top five spots in our new market share league table (see below).
Thirty-eight companies are listed as back-end providers (including those that plan to self-host their gTLDs) according to our initial analysis of ICANN’s 1,930 applications.
Big portfolio applicants obviously skew the numbers significantly.
All of the 101 applications naming Google as the back-end are from Google’s own subsidiaries, and Amazon’s 76 bids are responsible for Neustar’s position at the top of the table.
Likewise, more than 300 of Demand Media’s strings are associated with one client, Donuts, and 54 of Internet Systems Consortium’s 58 are from Uniregistry, the new Frank Schilling venture.
ARI (.au) is the most successful back-end from the ccTLD world, with 160 applications, followed by Minds + Machines (.fm) with 91, CentralNic (.la) with 60 and Afnic (.fr) with 17.
[table id=8 /]
The four N/A applications on the list were all filed by the same poorly advised applicant.
Some numbers differ slightly from what the respective companies announced. In some cases this could be accounted for by applicants withdrawing bids before Reveal Day.
The data above was generated semi-automatically from the DI PRO New gTLD Application Database, which matches each application to its back-end, and is preliminary in nature.
A full report will follow in due course.
UPDATE (June 19): Three applications originally assigned to KSRegistry have now been reassigned to Registry.net.
UPDATE (June 20): Four applications originally assigned to Minds + Machines have been reassigned to Neustar.

Afilias’ magic number is 305

Afilias is involved in 305 new gTLD applications, the company has just announced.
Thirty-one of the bids are being filed in Afilias’ own name, the rest are for clients. This two-pronged strategy is probably going to set the company apart from its main competitors; we’ll find out for sure tomorrow.
Afilias said in a press release:

The applications span a range of new TLD ideas, and include 18 Internationalized TLDs (for example, Chinese and Cyrillic), four community domains, four geographic domains and more than 170 “dot Brand” names.

Added to Neustar’s 358 and Verisign’s 220 applications, Afilias brings the total number of wannabe gTLDs signed up to incumbent gTLD registry service providers to 883, or about 45% of the new gTLD market.
Crossovers from the ccTLD world to disclose so far include ARI Registry Services (161), Nominet (seven), Nic.at (11) and Afnic (16).
New entrants include Minds + Machines (92, including 68 of its own), Demand Media (at least 307 with Donuts and 26 more of its own) and Internet Systems Consortium (at least 54 with Uniregistry).

Fourth digital archery service launches

Knipp has become the fourth company to reveal a service to help new gTLD applicants automate their participation in ICANN’s digital archery application batching system.
With First Come First Batch, you only pay if you get into the first batch.
It appears to be the cheapest such service to launch so far, with “early bird” pricing starting at $7,500. If you sign up after June 20, it will set you back $12,500, still the cheapest on the market.
The service is limited to 500 gTLDs, with a limited number per ICANN region and a Europe bias.
Knipp is the outfit behind the Germany-based back-end provider Tango Registry Services which has partnered with Minds + Machines on the .nrw (North Rhine-Westphalia) application.

ICANNWiki boss applies for 10 gTLDs

A new company run by ICANNWiki founder Raymond King and business partner Peter Brual has applied to ICANN for 10 new generic top level domains.
Top Level Design has applied for: .blog, .llc, .group, .wiki, .gay, .art, .style, .design, .ink, and .photography.
The company is entering contention sets on most of those, but I believe it’s the first .wiki bid announced to date.
It’s also the only portfolio player so far to announce that it’s using CentralNIC, best known for pseudo-gTLDs such as uk.com, as its back-end registry provider.
The company said the venture “will not interfere with the presentation or neutrality of ICANNWiki.com”.

Key-Systems has 31 gTLD clients, offers digital archery services

Key-Systems has become the third company to announce it is providing new gTLD applicants with a chance to possibly increase their chances of success with digital archery.
The service costs €15,000 ($18,800) if the company gets your application into ICANN’s first evaluation batch.
Almost as an aside, the company also revealed in a press release today that its KSRegistry back-end service is the named registry services provider for 31 gTLD applications.
Digital archery services are also being offered by Pool.com and Digital Archery Experts.
Today, Digital Archery Experts announced that it will split the cost of its service between clients if it winds up shooting arrows on behalf of multiple applicants in the same contention set.

Demand Media applies for 26 gTLDs, partners with Donuts on 107 more

Demand Media, owner of eNom, has applied to ICANN for 26 new generic top-level domains, and may acquire rights in 107 more if applications submitted by Donuts are approved.
The company has not yet revealed which strings it’s going for.
Donuts said last week that it’s applying for 307 gTLDs with Demand Media as its back-end provider, but it seems that Demand will not have ownership rights in 200 of those.
The deal with Donuts, which was founded by eNom alum, is a “strategic relationship”, according to a press release.

Neustar gets 358 back-end contracts, beating Verisign

Neustar has revealed that it is contracted to supply registry services for 358 new generic top-level domain applications.
Given the over 1,900 applications ICANN has received, the deals give the .biz/.us manager roughly 19% of the new gTLD back-end market.
It’s more than Verisign, which announced last month that it’s named on 220 applications. Afilias is now the only one of the big incumbent gTLD registry service providers yet to disclose its magic number.
Neustar was pretty aggressive about recruiting dot-brand applicants from the outset, announcing a $10,000 entry-level offering just a few days after ICANN approved the gTLD program a year ago.
The company also confirmed today that it’s behind the official .nyc bid, and that it has applied for .neustar.

Schilling applies for “scores” of new gTLDs

Domaining icon Frank Schilling’s new venture, Uniregistry, has applied for “scores” of new generic top-level domains, “most” of which he expects to be contested.
Schilling won’t say exactly how many or which strings Uniregistry is pursuing, but he did reveal that while he is not going for .web, he will be in contention with Google for .lol.
“It’s closer to TLDH than Donuts,” Schilling told DI in an interview this evening, referring to the announcements of Top Level Domain Holdings’ 68 and Donuts’ 307 applications.
I’m guessing it’s around the 40 to 50 mark.
Despite the portfolio and Schilling’s history in domain investing, Uniregistry isn’t what you might call a “domainer” play.
The company doesn’t plan on keeping whole swathes of premium real estate for itself or for auction, Schilling said. Nor does it intend to rip off trademark owners.
“We’ve seen good TLDs fail with bad business plans,” he said, pointing to premium-priced .tv as an example. “You need to allow other people to profit, to evangelize your space.”
“I’m not going to get as rich from this as some of our registrants,” he said.
Uniregistry only plans to hold back a “handful” of premium names, Schilling said. The rest will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.
To avoid creating wastelands of parked domains, the company plans to deploy technical countermeasures to prevent too many domains falling into too few hands.
“The way we’re going stage the landrush it will be very difficult to game it,” he said. “There’ll be significant rate limiting, so you can’t come and take 500 domains in ten milliseconds.”
“What we want to avoid is someone going in and getting 100,000 of the best ones on day one. It’s not fair, and it’s unhealthy for the space.”
Schilling is one of the industry’s most successful domainers. His company, Name Administration, is one of the largest single owners of second-level domain names.
Now Schilling says he’s brought his considerable experience as a domain name registrant Uniregistry’s business model and policies.
The company’s message is that it’s “registrant-centered”.
While that sounds like an easy, glib marketing statement, Schilling is backing it up with some interesting policies.
He’s thinking about a much closer relationship between the registry and the registrant that you’d see in the .com space.
When a second-level domain in a Uniregistry gTLD expires, registrants will get 180 days to claim it back from the registry, possibly even circumventing the registrar.
Uniregistry will even directly alert the registrant that their name is going to expire, a policy that Schilling said has been modeled in part on what Nominet does in the .uk space.
“Registrants have the ability to go to the registry to manage their .co.uk, to transfer the domain, to change certain pieces of information,” he said.
The 180-day policy is designed in part to prevent registrars harvesting their customers most valuable domains when they forget to renew them.
Rogue registrars and registrars competing against their own customers are things that evidently irk Schilling.
“I prefer a system that protects registrants,” he said.
But existing registrars are still the company’s proposed primary channel to market, he said. Uniregistry plans to price its domains in such a way as to give registrars a 50% margin.
“I think there’s enough margin in these strings for registrars to make a great living,” Schilling said.
Schilling hasn’t ruled out an in-house pocket registrar, but said it wouldn’t be created to undercut the regular channel.
The company has hired Internet Systems Consortium, maker of BIND and operator of the F-Root, as its back-end registry provider.
Judging by Uniregistry’s web site, which carries photos of many ISC staff, it’s an unusually close relationship.
I’ll have more on Uniregistry’s plans for Whois and trademark protection in a post later.