$44 billion company is latest deadbeat gTLD registry

Indian car-making giant Tata Motors has become the latest new gTLD registry to fail to pay its ICANN fees.
According to a breach notice (pdf), $44 billion-a-year Tata hasn’t paid its $6,250 quarterly registry fee since at least November last year (though probably much earlier).
Listed on the New York Stock Exchange and elsewhere and part of the Indian conglomerate Tata Group, the company runs .tatamotors as a dot-brand gTLD.
The breach notice, dated 10 days ago, also says that the company is in breach of its contract for failing to publish an abuse contact on its nic.tatamotors web site, something it seems to have corrected.
.tatamotors had half a dozen domains under management at the last count and seems to have at least experimented with using the TLD for private purposes.
Tata becomes the second dot-brand registry to get a slap for non-payment this year.
Back in April, the bank Kuwait Finance House, with revenues of $700 million a year, was also told it was late paying its fees.

After ICANN nod, MMX buys .xxx

MMX has closed the acquisition of porn-focused ICM Registry, after receiving the all-clear from ICANN for the contract transfers.
The deal is worth roughly $41 million — $10 million cash and about $31 million in stock.
ICM runs .xxx from the 2003 gTLD application round (though it didn’t go live until 2011) and .porn, .adult and .sex from the 2012 round.
MMX, which now has 29 fully-owned TLDs and another five in partnerships, will now become roughly a quarter-owned by former ICM employees and its back-end provider, Afilias.
ICM president Stuart Lawley now owns 15% of MMX and is its largest shareholder.
CEO Toby Hall said in a statement to the markets that he has “identified a number areas of potential growth and synergy”.
The company noted that the deal increases the share of its revenue coming from the US and Europe, implicitly highlighting the reduction of its exposure to the volatile Chinese market, where .vip has been its biggest money-spinner to date.
ICM had something like 152,000 .xxx domains under management at the last count, but over 80,000 of those are reservations. It has about 92,000 names in its zone file currently.
The three 2012-round names are faring less well, with about 8,000 to 10,000 names apiece in their zones.
Somebody once jokingly told me that ICM stood for “Internet Cash Machine”, due to the perception that porn-focused names would sell like, well, porn. Just thought I’d mention that.

Donuts buys back .fan, ignores plural .fans

Donuts has purchased the unlaunched new gTLD .fan from its struggling owner, just three years after selling it.
The company said today that .fan will become its 241st TLD in its portfolio, having inked a deal with Asiamix Digital.
Asiamix also runs the plural .fans, which Donuts has not acquired.
A Donuts spokesperson said the singular variant was the only acquisition considered, but did not say why.
The gTLD has a colorful ownership history, given that it has not even launched yet.
It was originally owned by Donuts, which won it unopposed in the 2012 application round.
The company then transferred it to then-independent Rightside under a deal the two companies had covering about 100 applications.
Rightside then in 2015 briskly sold the contract to Asiamix, which already had the rights to the plural .fans and presumably wanted to reduce market confusion.
For whatever reason, Asiamix sat on .fan and never even announced launch plans.
Rightside was then acquired by Donuts last year.
Donuts’ spokesperson declined to disclose whether the latest re-acquisition was for the same, more, or less than the original 2015 transaction.
Asiamix is currently very likely facing the death of its business, having failed to make a go of .fans.
The plural has never had more than about 1,500 names in its zone file.
Donuts plans to launch .fan in short order, with general availability expected in mid-September. We should be looking at a sunrise period fairly soon.

Failure to launch: 10 years-old gTLDs that are still dormant

Over six years after the last new gTLD application window closed, more than one in 10 new gTLDs have yet to launch, even though some have been delegated for over four years.
Once you filter out duplicates, withdrawals and terminations from the original 1,930 applications, there were a maximum of roughly 1,300 potential new gTLDs from the 2012 round.
But, by my calculations, 144 of those have yet to even get around to their sunrise period. Most of those haven’t even filed their launch plans with ICANN yet.
Here’s 10 from that list I’ve picked based on how interesting they appear to me, in no particular order.
Yes, DI is doing listicles now. Hate-mail to the usual address.
.forum
This one’s owned by Jay Westerdal’s Top Level Spectrum, the same company behind .feedback, .realty and others. I quite like the potential of this string — the internet is chock-full of forums due to the easy availability of open-source forum software — but so far nobody’s gotten to register one. It was delegated back in June 2015 and doesn’t have a published launch plan as yet. An FAQ reading just saying “Jay was here !!!!! Test deploy..delete me later…” has been up on its site since at least last September. TLS is also sitting on .contact and .pid (for “personal ID”) with no launch dates in sight.
.scholarships
Owned by Scholarships.com, there’s a whiff of the defensive about this one. It’s been in the root since March 2015 but its site states the registry “is still finishing launch plans and will provide updates as they become available”. Scholarships.com is a site that connects would-be higher education students to potential sources of funding. It’s difficult to imagine many ways the matching gTLD could possibly help in that mission.
.giving
JustGiving, the UK-based charity campaign aggregator, won this gTLD and had it delegated in August 2015, but seemingly still hasn’t figured out what it wants to do with it. It’s not a dot-brand, so it’s presumably mulling over ways to give .giving domains to fundraisers in a way that does not compromise credibility. Whatever its plans, it’s taking its sweet time over them.
.cancerresearch
This is a weird one. Delegated four years ago, the Australian Cancer Research Foundation rather quickly went live with a bunch of interlinked .cancerresearch web sites, using its contractually permitted allotment of promotional domains. Contractually, it’s not a dot-brand, but it’s basically acting like one, having never actually given ICANN any info about sunrise, eligibility, trademark claims, general availability, etc. Technically, it’s still pre-launch, and I can’t see any reason why it would want to budge from that status. Huge loophole in the ICANN rules?
.beauty
Another whiff of gaming here. International woman-shaming powerhouse L’Oreal still has no announced plans to launch .beauty, .skin or .hair, which it had originally wanted to run as so-called “closed generics” (presumably to keep the keywords out of the hands of competitors). Of its small portfolio of generic gTLDs, delegated in 2016, it has actually launched .makeup already, with a $6,000 retail price and a strategy seemingly based on registry-owned domains matching the names of makeup-focused social media influencers. At least it’s actually selling names, even if nobody’s bought one yet.
.budapest
One of three city TLDs that were delegated back in 2014 but have yet to start selling domains. MMX is to run it in partnership with the local government of the Hungarian city, if it ever gets off the ground. Madrid (.madrid) and Zurich (.zuerich) have both also yet to roll out, although Zurich has settled on early 2019 for its launch.
.fan
Regular DI readers won’t be surprised to see this one on the list. In what may turn out to be a shocking waste of money, .fans registry Asiamix Digital acquired the singular .fan from Donuts back in 2015 and promptly let it sit idle for the next three years. Currently, with .fans turning out to be a flop, Asiamix has money troubles and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it under new ownership before too long. It’s not a terrible string, so there’s some potential there.
.ком, etc
.ком is one of 11 internationalized domain name transliterations of .com — .कॉम, .ком, .点看, .คอม, .नेट, .닷컴, .大拿, .닷넷, .コム, .كوم and .קוֹם — that Verisign had delegated back in 2015. To date, only the Japanese .コム has launched, and the registry reportedly arsed it up quite badly. Records show .コム peaked at over 28,000 names and sits at fewer than 7,000 today. None of the remaining IDNs have launch dates attached.
Anything owned by Google or Amazon
When it comes to sitting on dormant gTLDs, you can’t top Google and Amazon for sheer numbers. Google has 19 strings in pre-launch states right now, while Amazon has a whopping 34. Amazon is letting the likes of .free, .wow, .now, .deal, .save and .secure sit idle, while Google is still stroking its chin on the likes of .eat, .meme, .fly and .channel. At the snail’s pace these companies roll out gTLDs, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these strings never hit the market.
.bom
Portuguese for “.good”, .bom was delegated to local ccTLD registry Nic.br in 2015 but has no published launch dates and no content on its nic.bom registry web site. I’d say more, but I expect a certain prolific DI commenter could do a better job of it, so I’ll turn it over to him…

Donuts freezes .place gTLD ahead of new geofencing rules

Donuts has taken its .place gTLD temporarily off the market as it repurposes the space as a restricted zone for “geofencing” related uses.
That’s right, the biggest gTLD portfolio play and historically staunch advocate of open gTLDs is actually planning to introduce eligibility requirements into a currently unrestricted TLD.
Details are light ahead of a formal announcement, but I’m told all new .place registrants will have to agree to use their domains for geofencing purposes.
This looks a bit like it could be a taste of the “innovation” we were all promised from the new gTLD program.
Geofencing refers to systems that divide the world up into fenced-off virtual parcels of land based on GPS coordinates, enabling location-based services.
It’s an area Donuts has been looking at for a while, having invested in early-stage geofencing company GeoFrenzy, since rebranded as Geo.Network, two years ago.
While Donuts puts its new .place model in place — ICANN and registrars have been given the heads-up — it should not be possible to register any new .place domains.
Major registrars such as GoDaddy, Namecheap, Uniregistry and Donuts-owned Name.com were not returning results for .place domains on their storefronts when I checked over the weekend.
Other registrars did still appear to be offering the names, but I did not attempt to register one to check whether the sale would complete.
I gather that the new eligibility requirements will not apply retroactively, so anyone who currently owns a .place name will get to keep it on an unrestricted basis.
There are around 7,000 active .place domains currently.

Domainers not welcome in this Whois database

Inquiries from domain investors are specifically barred under one registry’s take on GDPR compliance.
The Austrian ccTLD registry, nic.at, yesterday stopped publishing the personal information of human registrants in its public Whois database, unless the registrant has opted to have their data public.
The company said it will provide thick Whois records only to “people who provide proof of identity and are able to prove a legitimate interest for finding out who the domain holder is”.
But this specifically excludes people who are trying to buy the domain in question.
“A buying interest or the wish to contact the domain holder is definitely no legitimate interest,” the company said in a statement.
It quotes its head of legal, Barbara Schlossbauer, saying: “I am also not able to investigate a car driver’s address over his license number just because I like his car and want to buy it.”
She said that those able to access records include “law enforcement agencies, lawyers or people who contact nic.at following domain disputes and who can prove that their rights have been infringed”.
While nic.at is bound by GDPR, as a ccTLD registry it is not bound by the new GDPR-compliant Whois policy announced by ICANN overnight, where who will be able to request thick Whois records is still an open question.

New gTLD registries get $6 million refund

ICANN has offered new gTLD registries refunds totaling over $6 million after allegedly double-charging them for access to the Trademark Clearinghouse.
At the weekend, its board of directors resolved:

to provide a refund of $5,000, as soon as practicable, to the contracted registries or registry operators (including those that have terminated their contracts or whose TLD delegation has been revoked) that have paid to ICANN the one-time RPM access fee

The five grand fee was levied on each new gTLD as a way of funding the TMCH, which handles trademark validation for sunrise periods and other rights protection mechanisms.
But registries pointed out last October that this kind of thing was precisely what their original $185,000 applications fees were meant to cover.
The Registries Stakeholder Group said back then:

All other systems and programs related to the New gTLD Program were funded from application fees. The TMCH should have been no different and there was no reason to “double-charge” registries for this one piece of the program.

Eight months later, ICANN seems to have reluctantly agreed.
It appears that the refunds — which given over 1,200 TLDs would come to over $6 million in total — will be paid from the roughly $80 million in leftover application fees, rather than ICANN’s tightening operational budget.
While $5,000 isn’t life-changing money, it adds up to a substantial chunk of change for large portfolio registries such as Donuts, which stands to receive roughly $1.5 million.

Cute abruptly quits PIR

Brian Cute unexpectedly resigned as CEO of Public Interest Registry late last week. No reason was given for his departure.
In a May 10 press release, the .org registry said that he’d left May 7.
He’s been replaced temporarily by board member Jay Daley until a permanent replacement can be found.
I asked a PIR spokesperson the reasons for the resignation and was told yesterday: “Brian has chosen to move on to pursue new challenges.”
Hmm.
Cute, a Verisign and Afilias alum, had been with PIR for seven years.

Have your say on single-character .com domains

ICANN wants your opinion on its plan to allow Verisign to auction off o.com, with a potential impact on the future release of other single-character .com domain names.
The organization has published a proposed amendment to the .com registry contract and opened it for public comment.
The changes would enable Verisign to sell o.com, while keeping all other currently unallocated single-character names on its reserved list.
The company would not be able to benefit financially from the auction beyond its standard $7.85 reg fee — all funds would be held by an independent third-party entity and distributed to undisclosed non-profit causes.
The arrangement would also see the buyer pay a premium renewal fee of 5% of the initial outlay, doubling the purchase price over the course of 25 years.
They would not be able to resell the domain without selling the registrant company itself.
It’s a pretty convoluted system being proposed, given that there may well end up only being one bidder.
Overstock.com, the online retailer, has been pressuring ICANN and Verisign to release o.com for well over a decade, and the proposed auction seems to be a way to finally shut it up.
The company has a US trademark on O.com, so any other bidder for the name would probably be buying themselves a lawsuit.
The proposed auction system does not address trademark issues — there’s no sunrise period of trademark claims period.
One party already known to be upset about lack of rights protection is First Place Internet, a search engine company that has a US trademark on the number 1.
It told ICANN (pdf) back in January that the o.com deal would “set a dangerous precedent” for future single-character name releases.
The ICANN public comment period, which comes after ICANN received the all-clear from US competition regulators, closes June 20.
As a matter of disclosure, several years ago I briefly acted as a consultant to a third party in support of the Verisign and Overstock positions, but I have no current interest in the situation one way or the other.

CentralNic now managing failing .fan and .fans

CentralNic appears to be acting as a caretaker for the failing new gTLDs .fan and .fans.
IANA records show that a company lawyer took over as administrative contact for the pair late last week.
Asiamix Digital, the original registry, is still listed as the sponsor for both, and its ICANN registry agreement does not appear to have been reassigned.
It does not appear to be an acquisition. I hear Asiamix is basically using CentralNic’s TLD management service, as it struggles to remain alive.
CentralNic already acts as the back-end registry for both TLDs.
ICANN hit Asiamix with a breach notice for tens of thousands of dollars of unpaid fees a month ago, terminating its affiliated registrar for the same reasons around the same time.
The registry had attempted to auction off the strings a couple of years ago, unsuccessfully.
While technically based in Hong Kong, ICANN has been sending Asiamix’s compliance notices to an address in Milan, Italy.
All of Asiamix’s official web sites still appear to be non-functional. I bought the .net address listed in its IANA records to make a silly point a month ago and the equivalent .com has since expired too.
.fans has about 1,400 names in its zone file right now, while .fan never actually launched.