Marriott: we probably won’t use .hotel

Could .hotel be the next .travel?
That’s one view that emerged from a conference organized by the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse discussing ICANN’s new generic top-level domains program earlier this week.
“We think .hotel will launch,” Elizabeth Escobar, a senior IP lawyer with the hotel chain Marriott, said during one session at What’s At Stake on Tuesday. “We will probably blanket .hotel with a slew of defensive registrations most of which, like .travel, we will never use.”
Does she have a point?
The most prominent .hotel applicant, Luxembourg-based DotHotel, is backed by the International Hotel & Restaurant Association, suggesting that the concept does enjoy some support.
But restricted gTLD have performed poorly in the past. The .travel space, which launched in 2006, is generally regarded as having failed to live up to expectations.
It’s currently a 26,000-domain gTLD, and has only ever topped 50,000 domains under management due to a desperate, experimental foray into pay-per-click speculation.
It’s barely making enough money to fulfill its financial commitments to former owner TheGlobe.com, which acquired the original registry, Tralliance, during the later stages of its own death rattle, before .travel ever had a chance to execute.
But its lackluster performance is also no doubt also a result of its restrictive registration policies, which may well be mimicked by a .hotel gTLD approved next year, and its lack of channel adoption.
Could a .hotel succeed, where .travel has (so far) failed, if leading hotel chains see it purely as a defensive play?

.xxx sunrise auctions delayed after 80k applications

ICM Registry has apparently delayed the results of its just-closed .xxx sunrise period until December to give it a chance to clear its backlog of unverified applications.
Corporation Services Company, a major brand-protection registrar, is reporting tonight that ICM and its validation firm, IProta, does not expect to finish validating trademark claims until November 28.
That’s a week later than ICM had planned to kick off the auction phase of the sunrise period, during which contested domains will be awarded to the highest bidder.
“The results of the applications that were submitted during the Sunrise phase will therefore not be available until the first week of December,” CSC said on its blog.
ICM announced yesterday that it has received almost 80,000 sunrise applications from trademark owners and porn companies seeking .xxx domains to match their .coms.
Almost half of those applications were filed during the last week of sunrise. Each trademark claim needs to be individually validated against government databases by IProta.
The plan, according to ICM’s web site, was to start auctioning contested sunrise domains November 21 and to take .xxx into general availability December 6.
Landrush kicks off next Tuesday, running for 17 days. Landrush auctions are scheduled to commence December 12, according to ICM’s web site.

ICM extends .xxx sunrise

ICM Registry, which has evidently seen a last-minute rush of defensive registration applications this week, has extended its sunrise period until Monday.
It had been due to end at 4pm UTC today.
The company just issued this statement:

Due to unprecedented demand in the last week and following several requests from major registrars for more processing time for their backlogs, ICM Registry has extended the Sunrise A and Sunrise B registration periods for an additional three days to conclude Monday, October 31, 2011 at 16:00 UTC (Noon ET). This extension provides prospective registrants valuable time to secure their domains and protect their brands.

Sunrise A is for people in the porn business, B is the “block” for companies outside the “biz” that want to make sure their brands do not become associated with porn.
Guess which has been most popular. (It’s B.)
ICM originally said it expected 10,000 sunrise registrations, but it blew through that estimate weeks ago. The last published count was 42,000, on Monday, with “thousands” coming in daily,
If it hits 70,000 by Monday I will not be surprised.

dotFree settles Microsoft botnet lawsuit

One of the companies that plans to apply for the .free top-level domain next year has settled a lawsuit filed by Microsoft over claims it was involved in running the Kelihos botnet.
The suit, filed in late September, had alleged that Czech-based dotFree Group and its CEO, Dominique Piatti, were behind dozens of domains used to spread malware.
dotFree already runs the free .cz.cc subdomain service, which isn’t what you’d call a trustworthy namespace. The whole .cz.cc zone appears to be currently banned from Google’s index.
This week, Microsoft has dropped its claims against the company and Piatti, saying it will instead work with the company to try to help clean up the free .cz.cc space.
Microsoft said on its official blog:

Since the Kelihos takedown, we have been in talks with Mr. Piatti and dotFREE Group s.r.o. and, after reviewing the evidence voluntarily provided by Mr. Piatti, we believe that neither he nor his business were involved in controlling the subdomains used to host the Kelihos botnet. Rather, the controllers of the Kelihos botnet leveraged the subdomain services offered by Mr. Piatti’s cz.cc domain.
As part of the settlement, Mr. Piatti has agreed to delete or transfer all the subdomains used to either operate the Kelihos botnet, or used for other illegitimate purposes, to Microsoft. Additionally, Mr. Piatti and dotFREE Group have agreed to work with us to create and implement best practices to prevent abuse of free subdomains and, ultimately, apply these same best practices to establish a secure free Top Level Domain as they expand their business going forward.

Expect this issue to be raised if and when .free becomes a contested gTLD application.

Norid sued over .co.no domains

The registrant of the domain name co.no has sued Norwegian registry Norid over claims that it tried to hold up the launch of .co.no as an alternative namespace.
Elineweb registered the domain back in 2001.
Last October, along with back-end partner CoDNS, the company said it would offer third-level .co.no domains to the public as an alternative to second-level .no names.
The idea was to bring gTLD-style friendliness to the strictly regulated .no ccTLD – where at the time companies were limited to 20 domains each.
Elineweb concluded a sunrise period this February, but subsequently delayed its full launch after Norid started asking it questions about the co.no domain’s ownership.
Norid was evidently not pleased. For the best part of 2011, it’s been conducting an investigation into whether the .co.no project complies with its policies.
In 2009, Norid added co.no and other two-letter domains to a reserved list. Already-registered domains on the list could continue to be used, but could not be transferred between registrants.
Norid has reportedly concluded that co.no has technically changed hands, hence Elineweb’s lawsuit. It wants the court to rule that its proposed service is legal.
“.CO.NO is a common initiative between Elineweb AS the registrant of the domain name and CoDNS BV, the technical back-end provider,” Elineweb said in a press release.
“We never tried to hide the fact that Elineweb is the registrant of the domain name, which is, besides a public information displayed in NORID whois database,” manager Sander Scholten said.
CoDNS, owned by Luxembourg registrar EuroDNS, is already the back-end provider for .co.nl, a pseudo-TLD offered in the Netherlands.
News of the lawsuit comes just a couple of weeks after Norid announced that it would raise the limit on the number of .no domains any given company can register to 100.

.xxx sunrise on track for 50,000 domains

ICM Registry has seen over 42,000 sunrise applications since September 7, with “thousands more pouring in each day”, according to the company.
With a last-minute rush possible by porn-scared brand owners before the process closes this Friday, .xxx may well hit 50,000 sunrise applications.
The 42,000 number seems to cover all three sunrise phases – the ‘B’ process for non-porn companies and the AT and AD processes for pornographers.
Sunrise B applications cost $162 at the registry level and over $200 from registrars. ICM’s breakeven point was 10,000 applications, so it will be profitable to the tune of several million dollars.
Because Sunrise B applications incur a one-time fee, ICM has essentially made a windfall now at the expense of recurring revenues from renewals.

Aussies to apply for four geo-TLDs

The Australian state governments of New South Wales and Victoria have put out a tender for a registry provider for up to four new top-level domains.
They want to apply to ICANN next year for geographic gTLDs including .victoria, .sydney, .melbourne and possibly .nsw, according to the RFP.
The new gTLDs would be self-funded commercial ventures, with some names reserved for public use, it says. Revenue would be shared between the government and the operator.
If a local presence is taken into account then ARI Registry Services, which recently changed its name from AusRegistry International to dilute the perception that it was too Australia-focused, could be considered a likely front-runner for the gigs.
The tender closes November 15.

Paris.hilton? CentralNic pitches gTLDs at super-rich

Just when you thought you’d seen everything, CentralNic is angling for the wallets of the “ultra-wealthy” with its new pitch for .familyname top-level domains.
The alternative TLD registry today launched dotFamilyName, a companion to its dotBrandSolutions site designed to give “prominent families” an “online legacy” in the form of a new gTLD.
Think .hilton, .kennedy, .rockefeller.
If own a squadron of private jets, if you’re a card-carrying member of the Illuminati, if you have your own parking spot outside the Bilderberg Club, then CentralNic wants to hear from you.
The company is basically proposing to apply to ICANN for and manage a .familyname gTLD on behalf of the more-money-than-taste crowd for a start-up fee of about $500,000.
Here’s the pitch from the press release:

Your dotFamilyName TLD can be used in a variety of ways:
1) To create a network of private family websites – a discreet, centralized destination for use by family members containing classified content and images.
2) To create an authenticated source of family information for public consumption.
3) To establish a legacy for generations to come, ensuring that the bond between generations will be kept alive.
4) To ensure that you remain amongst a privileged few in owning a personalized TLD on the World Wide Web.
5) To maintain control over your official web presence, acting as a state of the art security system for your personal reputation.
6) To ensure that, among the families sharing your name, your family controls it.

A commenter on one of my articles for The Register recently joked that new gTLDs could create confusion between hilton.paris, the hotel, and paris.hilton, the heiress.
But it’s not April 1, so I guess this is for real.
ICANN has a ban on individuals applying for new gTLDs, but there’s no particular prohibition on personal-use extensions, as long as they have a corporate entity behind them.
Could it work?

VeriSign yanks domain seizure power request

That was quick.
VeriSign has withdrawn its request for new powers to delete domain names being used for abusive purposes, just a few days after filing it with ICANN.
The company had proposed a policy that would give law enforcement the ability to seize .com and .net names apparently without a court order, and a new malware scanning service.
The former came in for immediate criticism from groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, while the latter appeared to have unnerved some registrars.
But now both proposals have been yanked from ICANN’s Registry Services Evaluation Process queue.
This is not without precedent. Last year, VeriSign filed for and then withdrew requests to auction off one-letter .net names and a “Domain Name Exchange” service that looked a bit like domain tasting.
Both came in for criticism, and have not reappeared.
Whether the latest abuse proposals will make a reappearance after VeriSign has had time to work out some of the more controversial kinks remains to be seen.

Corsica seeks new gTLD registry operator

The local government of the French island of Corsica is looking for contractors to apply for and manage a .corsica top-level domain.
The Executive Council of the Collectivité Territoriale de Corse issued an RFP in late September. The deadline for responses is October 17, a week from now.
The desired string appears to be the Anglicized .corsica, rather than the French .corse.
Corsica, situated in the Mediterranean, is one of France’s 22 official regions. According to Wikipedia, it has slightly more political power than its mainland counterparts.
Under ICANN’s new gTLD application rules, geographical strings need the approval of the relevant local government before they can be accepted.
I expect any .corsica application would need a letter of support or non-objection from the French national government as well as the Corsican executive, before it is approved.
(via Jean Guillon)