Nominet shuts down “hostile” discussion forum

Nominet has angered members by unilaterally shutting down a discussion forum that has been for many years the main place for discussions about .uk policy.

The forum, which Nominet hosted on its web site, went dark abruptly during the company’s annual general meeting yesterday.

Speaking to members tuning in to the live webcast, CEO Russell Haworth said that the forum was “dominated by a handful of posters, and has increasingly become aggressive and hostile, not least towards our staff”.

And then it was gone.

Haworth said he expected criticism over the move, which was “fine”, adding that posters have plenty of other venues to air their grievances.

He also suggested periodic Zoom calls to communicate with members.

The decision to close the forum is being greeted poorly by affected members (presumably the ones who most actively used it) on social media and seen as a way for power to be further consolidated among Nominet’s biggest revenue-generators.

Nominet recently came in for criticism for its efforts to grab a slice of the drop-catching pie by charging registrars an extra £600 a year (now, members note, up to £1,000) for additional EPP tunnels.

It also recently admitted privately to members that it last year miscalculated how many votes members they should get in directorship elections, but insisted the error did not have an effect on the outcome of the most recent poll.

The move is not entirely without precedent. Those of you with as many grey hairs as me may recall the old Domain-Policy mailing list, once the central hub for community discussions, going dark back in 2001.

But Verisign, which hosted the list and its archives, explained that move as a measure to reduce redundancy, rather than straight-up admitting that it was a PR move to silence its legion of critics.

Donuts to launch .contact next week

Almost a year and a half after buying it, Donuts is ready to launch its newest gTLD, .contact.

According to ICANN records, the sunrise period for the domain will run from September 29 to November 28.

Registrars report that general availability will begin December 9. Retail pricing is expected to be competitive with .com.

Donuts will also run its traditional Early Access Period, from December 2, a week during which prices start very high and decline day by day.

It will be an unrestricted space, as it Donuts’ wont, and I imagine the suggested use case is something similar to the .tel model — the publication of contact information.

Donuts acquired .contact from Top Level Spectrum for an undisclosed amount in April 2019.

Portugal reports lockdown boom continued through the summer

While the coronavirus pandemic is well past its first peak in western Europe, the lingering effects of government restrictions is a gift that continues to give for at least one ccTLD.

Associação DNS.PT today reported that total registrations of .pt names in August (6,843) were 35% higher than during the same period last year, and that July’s number was 17.28% higher than the year-ago month.

The registry added that the trend seems to be continuing into September.

The company said that registrations were mostly driven by “catering and domestic service companies, gyms and social solidarity projects” getting online for the first time due to pandemic restrictions.

Oddly, the new numbers appear to have been presented today at an in-person, though socially distanced, lecture by DNS.PT and government officials.

ZADNA hikes up the price of .za domains

South African ccTLD registry ZADNA has upped the price of .za domains after a consultation.

Standard pricing will increase by ZAR 10 to ZAR 55 ($3.35), which works out at about a 22% increase, from April 1 next year.

There’s also a ZAR 10 increase on customers of its old, pre-EPP legacy system, where the base price is currently ZAR 130 ($7.58). That kicks in January 1.

ZADNA has been increasing the legacy pricing for years to encourage registrants onto its industry-standard EPP infrastructure.

The changes come despite receiving comments from the local internet community about affordability and the current economic conditions.

GoDaddy could lose control of .co this week

It looks like GoDaddy’s recently acquired .co registry could lose formal control of the ccTLD this week.

ICANN’s board of directors has “Transfer of the .CO (Colombia) top-level domain to the Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies” on its agenda for its meeting this Thursday.

Since 2009, IANA record for .co shows the Colombian company .CO Internet as the sponsor, admin contact and tech contact.

.CO Internet was acquired by Neustar for $109 million in 2014. Neustar’s registry business, including the .co contract, was acquired by GoDaddy earlier this year. Most of .CO Internet’s original staff are still with the company.

GoDaddy now has the contract to run .co for the next five years, but as a service provider rather than having full administrative control of the TLD.

A redelegation to the Colombian ministry will not affect that contract, and in fact seems to have been envisaged by it.

Back in April when the renewal was announced, MinTIC said it would in future “be in charge of its [.co’s] administration through a group dedicated to Internet governance with technical personnel with knowledge and ability to manage and administer the domain”.

The new deal also sees Colombia receive 81% of the profits from .co, compared to the 6-7% it received under the old deal.

Assuming the ICANN board gives the redelegation the nod this week, it usually only takes IANA a day or two to make the appropriate updates to its registry.

Verisign measures the industry’s lockdown bump

The domain name industry added a net 400,000 extra domain registrations in the second quarter, when compared to the same quarter a year ago.

That’s according to Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief, which is arguably the most comprehensive data on how domain names fared while much of the developed world was subject to coronavirus lockdown.

The second quarter of 2020 ended with 370.1 million regs across all TLDs, up by 3.3 million sequentially and 15.3 million year over year, Verisign said.

That compares to a Q2 2019 increase of 2.9 million domains.

ccTLDs appear — at least at first glance — to have performed particularly strongly, adding a net 2.6 million regs to end June at 160 million. That compared to Q2 2019 net adds of 1.9 million.

Unfortunately, those numbers include the free ccTLD .tk, which never deletes a domain, and that space saw 2.4 million adds in the quarter, dramatically damaging the optics for ccTLDs as a whole.

New gTLDs as a whole fared poorly, losing a net 600,000 names during the period, to end Q2 at 31.6 million.

Most of that dip is attributable to the fast-selling new gTLD .icu, which lost 400,000 domains during the quarter due to the effects of its first junk drop.

Verisign’s own .com was up by at 1.4 million names to 148.7 million at the end of June; .net was flat at 13.4 million.

The company sold 1.1 million more domains in Q2 2020 than it did in Q2 2019.

You can read the Q2 DNIB here (pdf).

Told us so? Nominet ditches auctions plan, will charge drop-catchers higher fees instead

Nominet has ruled out auctioning off expired .uk domains names, after a member rebellion.

The .uk registry said last Thursday that it “will not pursue an auction model”, despite previously indicating that it was the best option for how to reform the dropping domains market.

This means the most likely model in future is going to be a huge increase in fees for registrars that aggressively engage in drop-catching.

A month ago, Nominet said that it was considering changing how it handles dropping domains, with either a system of registry-managed auctions or a system of increased fees for drop-catchers.

It appeared to many (yours truly included), based on a Nominet scoring system for each available option, that auctions were the preferred choice.

The registry originally denied that auctions were a shoo-in and now, apparently responding to critics, has ruled that option out completely.

Registry MD Eleanor Bradley wrote:

we will not pursue an auction model. While a proportion of responses from a wide range of sectors including the drop–catching market supported this approach, the prevailing view was this is not the role of the Registry.

…

Introducing a new approach for those that wish to drop–catch names where participants can purchase connections is the option we will pursue further.

Nominet says that some kind of change is “necessary” because currently .uk drop-catchers are sometimes in the habit of creating spurious Nominet memberships in order to increase the number of simultaneous EPP connections they can use, maximizing their chances of securing drops.

The registry calls this “collusion” and against its acceptable use policies.

In future, it seems drop-catchers will instead have to directly buy extra connections from Nominet. An annual price of £600 ($800) for a batch of six connections, up to a maximum of £6,000 for 60, has previously been floated.

Bradley said that the final details of the plan have yet to be determined.

The decision follows a consultation which received 107 comments and a member petition.

No lockdown bump for .eu as domain base shrinks in Q2

The European Union ccTLD .eu did not see an overall benefit from the pandemic lockdowns that affected many of its member states in the second quarter.

Registry operator EURid this week said that its total domains under management for .eu was 3,606,143 at the end of June, down by 16,907 from 3,623,050 at the end of March.

The company blamed Brexit for the decline, as Brits will no longer be eligible for .eu domains after the political transition period expires at the end of the year and many are therefore being allowed to expire.

This has been EURid’s story for many quarters, with the exception of a discount-related Portuguese aberration in Q1.

The number of regs from the UK dropped by 16.6% year-over-year and 5.1% quarter-over-quarter, to wind up at 135,355.

But .eu did not see the lockdown bump experienced by many other registries and registrars during the quarter either.

New regs in Q2 were at 163,277, compared to 190,011 in Q1 and 164,906 in Q2 2019. It sold fewer domains, even as its peers reported significant increases in sales.

I expect this is fairly easily explained.

Anecdotally, much of the pandemic-related boost the industry has experienced has been due to bricks-and-mortar microbusinesses such as mom-n-pop retailers, bars and restaurants selling online for the first time and needing domain names to make the switch.

These types of registrants, serving a small local area, don’t need a TLD reflecting their membership of a vast trading union, and are probably better served by their national ccTLD or a descriptive generic, so .eu got overlooked.

When it comes to the lockdown bump, it appears .eu was the exception to the rule.

After a year’s delay, .gay reveals launch dates

Top Level Design has revealed the launch plan for its .gay gTLD, after almost a year of delays.

General availability was originally planned for October last year, but it was pushed out twice, first due to marketing reasons and then because of coronavirus.

The new plan is for GA to begin at 1500 UTC on September 16. Unlike last year’s planned launch, there does not appear to be any special symbolism to the date.

There’s also going to be an early access period first, from September 8 through 15. This is the period where reg prices start high and reduce every day until they settle at regular GA pricing.

As I’ve previously reported, the registry has reserved five tiers of premium names, from $12,500 down to $100, all of which will renew at premium prices to deter domainers.

The base registry fee is $25, but expect to pay more at the checkout.

Most of the large registrars are on board, with half a dozen set to offer pre-regs, but I don’t see any of the big Chinese registrars on the registry’s list.

Countries ask Amazon for thousands more domain blocks

The eight South American nations of the Amazon region are demanding Amazon block more domain names in the recently delegated .amazon gTLD.

Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization secretary general Alexandra Moreira has written to Amazon VP of public policy Brian Huseman to complain that Amazon’s current set of “cultural” safeguards do not go far enough.

The August 14 letter, which was forwarded to DI, seems to mark a new phase of bilateral talks, after ICANN washed its hands of its reluctant role of third-party facilitator last month.

Currently, .amazon is governed by a set of Public Interest Commitments in its registry contract designed to protect the “Culture and Heritage specific to the Amazonia region”.

ACTO, as well as disagreeing with the use of the term “Amazonia”, has a narrow interpretation of the PICs that Moreira says is “insufficient to ensure respect for the historic and cultural heritage of the Amazon region”.

Under ACTO’s reading, Amazon is only obliged to block a handful of domains from use, namely the words “OTCA”, “culture”, “heritage”, “forest”, “river”, “rainforest”, the names of indigenous peoples and national symbols.

Moreira writes:

That would leave out a vast number of terms that can still cause confusion or mislead the public about matters specific to the Amazon region, such as the names of cities, villages, mountains, rivers, animals, plants, food and other expressions of the Amazon biome, biodiversity, folklore and culture.

ACTO wants the list of protected domains to be expanded to include these additional categories, and for Amazon and ACTO to sign a binding agreement to that effect.

Given that the Amazon forest is home to literally tens of thousands of distinct species and Brazil alone has over 5,500 municipalities, this could translate to a hell of a long list.

I should probably note that the .amazon PICs also offer ACTO the chance to block 1,500 strings of its own choosing, so ACTO’s narrow interpretation may not tell the whole story.