URS comes to .mobi as ICANN offers Afilias lower fees

Afilias’ .mobi is to become the latest of the pre-2012 gTLDs to agree to adopt the Uniform Rapid Suspension policy in exchange for lower ICANN fees.
Its Registry Agreement is up for renewal, and Afilias and ICANN have come to similar terms to .jobs, .travel, .cat, .pro and .xxx.
Afilias has agreed to take on many of the provisions of the standard new gTLD RA that originally did not apply to gTLDs approved in the 2000 and 2003 rounds, including the URS.
In exchange, its fixed registry fees will go down from $50,000 a year to $25,000 a year and the original price-linked variable fee of $0.15 to $0.75 per transaction will be replaced with the industry standard $0.25.
It’s peanuts really, given that .mobi still has about 690,000 domains, but Afilias is getting other concessions too.
Notably, the ludicrous mirage that .mobi was a “Sponsored” gTLD serving a specific restricted community (users of mobile telephones, really) rather than an obvious gaming of the 2003-round application rules, looks like it’s set to evaporate.
Appendix S to the current RA is not being carried over, ICANN said, so .mobi will not become a “Community” gTLD, with all the attendant restrictions that would have entailed.
Instead, Afilias has simply agreed to the absolute basic set of Public Interest Commitments that apply to all 2012 new gTLDs. Text that would have committed the registry to abide by the promises made in its gTLD application have been removed.
But the change likely to get the most hackles up is the inclusion of URS in the proposed new contract.
URS is an anti-cybserquatting measure that enables trademark owners to shut down infringing domains, without taking ownership, more quickly and cheaply than the UDRP.
It’s obligatory for all 2012-round gTLDs, and five of the pre-2012 registries have also agreed to adopt it during their contract renewal talks with ICANN.
Most recently, ICM Registry agreed to URS in exchange for much deeper cuts in its ICANN fees in .xxx.
In recent days, ICANN published its report into the public comments on the .xxx renewal, summarizing some predictably irate feedback.
Domainer group the Internet Commerce Association, which is concerned that URS will one day be forced upon .com and .net, had a .xxx comment that seems particularly pertinent to the .mobi news:

Given the history of flimsy and self-serving justifications by [Global Domains Division] staff and the ICANN Board for similar actions taken in 2015, we are under no illusion that this comment letter will likely be successful in effecting removal of the URS and other new gTLD RA provisions from the revised .XXX RA. Nonetheless, we strenuously object to this GDD action that intrudes upon and debases ICANN’s legitimate policymaking process, and urge the GDD and Board to reconsider their positions, and to ensure that GDD staff ceases and desists from taking similar action in the context of future RA renewals and revisions until the RPM Review WG renders the community’s judgment as to whether the URS and other new gTLD RPMs should become Consensus Policy and such recommendation is reviewed by GNSO Council and the ICANN Board.

The Intellectual Property Constituency of the GNSO, conversely, broadly welcomed the addition of more rights protection mechanisms to .xxx.
The Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group, meanwhile, expressed concern that whenever ICANN negotiates a non-consensus policy into a contract it negates and discourages all the work done by the volunteer community.
You can read the summary of the .xxx comments, along with ICANN staff’s reasons for ignoring them, here (pdf).
The .mobi proposed amendments are also now open for public comment.
Any lawyers wishing to rack up a few billable hours railing against a fait accompli can do so here.

Mitsubishi pulls plug on dot-brand gTLD

Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi has told ICANN it no longer wishes to operate one of its dot-brand gTLDs.
The company has filed a termination notice covering its .mtpc domain, which stands for Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation.
The gTLD was delegated in February 2015, but Mitsubishi has never put it to use.
Registry reports show only two names ever appeared in the .mtpc space.
It’s the 19th gTLD from the 2012 round to voluntarily self-terminate — or to allow ICANN to terminate it — after signing a Registry Agreement.
All terminated gTLDs so far have been dot-brands.
Mitsubishi also owns .mitsubishi. That dot-brand appeared earlier this year but also has not yet been put to use.

Neustar agrees to go private in $2.9 billion deal

Struggling infrastructure services firm and domain registry Neustar is set to go private in a $2.9 billion deal.
The company, best known for .biz, .co and .us, has agreed to be bought out by a group led by Golden Gate Capital.
The $33.50-per-share offer, announced on Wednesday and which Neustar’s board has approved, is a 45% premium over the closing price the day before Golden Gate first disclosed it had a stake.
That’s still hell and gone from the roughly $45 the shares were trading for a few years ago, before the company first raised concerns that its lucrative number portability deal with the US government was on the ropes.
Since it became apparent that the numbering contract, which accounts for about half of Neustar’s revenue, was at risk, the company has attempted to focus its efforts on marketing services, security and domains.
That effort included the $87 million acquisition of registry rival Bombora (owner of ARI and AusRegistry) last year.
Earlier this year, the company announced its intention to split into two, basically spinning off all of its businesses not exposed to the US government contract.
It’s not entirely clear whether that plan will be followed through, but Neustar can no doubt be expected to go through some significant restructuring under new ownership. Golden Gate et al are not altruists, after all.
Neustar has 30 days to consider better offers from other white knights, under the terms of the deal.
If ultimately given the final rubber stamp, the deal may still not close until the third quarter of 2017, Neustar said.

Donuts acquires stagnant .irish TLD

Donuts has acquired the new gTLD .irish, which is struggling to gain volume after about 18 months on the market.
The gTLD was applied for and operated by Dot-Irish LLC, a US company founded by Irish and Northern Irish entrepreneurs.
Since going to general availability in June last year, it managed to grow its zone file to a peak of about 2,300 names in the first year.
That’s since dropped off to about 2,000 names.
Even self-consciously Irish registrar Blacknight has only managed to shift fewer than 500 names.
These numbers are disappointing any way you look at them, with the original gTLD application talking about an addressable market of 6 million Irish citizens and 80 million more in the Irish diaspora.
Registrar support does not seem to have been the issue. Registrars with reach, including Tucows, Name.com, Host Europe Group and Go Daddy all sell the names.
Pricing may be a factor. While Blacknight promotes .irish prominently for about $10 a year, elsewhere prices can range from $40 to $50.
The terms of the acquisition, which Donuts said closed last month, have not been disclosed.
Donuts said it will migrate .irish to its own infrastructure March 1, 2017. All policies and protection mechanisms that apply to the rest of the 198-strong Donuts stables will be applied to .irish, the company said.

Trump trends in .com, while stoners hit .net

The US elections last month seem to be responsible for almost all of Verisign’s “top trending keywords” for November.
Donald Trump topped the company’s monthly list of fastest-growing strings in both .com and .net registries.
The four words of his idiotic campaign slogan “Make America great again” also appear individually in the .com top ten.
The votes to legalize medical and recreational marijuana use in several US states also seems to have inspired speculation in “pot”, “weed” and “cannabis” names, though more noticeably in .net.
In fact, the only string in the .com list not related to the US polls appears to be “near” (at least, I cannot find a connection).
The Verisign report includes words that achieve a certain level of growth month-to-month, factoring out strings that are commonly registered every month.
Here are the November lists.
[table id=47 /]

Three millionth .it name registered

Italian ccTLD .it has topped three million domains for the first time, according to registry Registro.it.
The milestone name was abbigliamentoludica.it, seemingly a clothes shop. It appears to have been registered November 25.
The registry announced the news in English last week.
It appears that growth is slowing somewhat over the long term. The ccTLD hit one million in 2005 and two million in 2010, but it’s taken six years to get to the next big landmark.
.it seems to have started the year with 2,869,010 domains under management, according to its stats page.
It currently has 3,002,135 domains under management, according to the web site.

Buy a $10k .club, get a free T-shirt

.CLUB Domains will today release 9,200 previously reserved .club names into the channel at premium prices.
The registry is also offering free T-shirts to the first 500 people to purchase a premium name for $59.99 and more, personalized with said name.
While the names will become available at 1500 UTC today, the full list is not expected to be published until midnight UTC at landrush.club
CMO Jeff Sass gave the following list of examples of names to be released: watches.club, vino.club, ocean.club, elite.club, driving.club, comicbook.club, Chinese.club and gambling.club.
A thousand of the names are three-character strings.
The first-year prices are suggest at between $100 and $10,000 at the retail level, Sass said.
All premium names renew at standard-name pricing, he said.
The T-shirt offer requires the user to tweet using promotional hashtags and expires December 31.

Spot all the Easter eggs in this Radix mannequin viral [NSFW]

Domain registry Radix has shamelessly jumped on the “mannequin challenge” meme bandwagon, with the release of video plugging its forthcoming .fun gTLD.
It’s quite slickly produced, on the face of it shot in a single unbroken take (though I suspect there are a few edits hidden in the motion blur), but the real fun for me, as someone who’s obviously been working alone from his mother’s basement for the last decade, is having a nosey around the office of a modern tech company.
Radix, it seems, names its meeting rooms after Harry Potter characters and festoons its walls with inspirational quotes from self-help books.

There are a few visual gags too. One employee has hit the bottom of a bottle of Jack Daniels, presumably celebrating the wish-fulfilling sales figures we see on another’s monitor.
Another seems to be trying to offload a stack of banned Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes on a colleague. Topical satire, kids!
Did you spot anything else amusing?
NB: If you’re wondering why a respectable company would produce a video backed with profane, sexist and sexually explicit lyrics, a young person I know assures me that using Rae Sremmurd’s chart-topper “Black Beatles” as the soundtrack is a standard component of the mannequin challenge meme.
UPDATE: Seems Key-Systems has done one too.

.xyz, .club and .vip get the nod to sell in China

The Chinese government has granted licenses to operate in the country to its first tranche of new gTLDs — .vip, .club and .xyz.
The agreements mean that Chinese registrars will be able to give their Chinese customers the ability to actually use their domains for web sites.
It also means the companies will be obliged to censor domains the government does not like, but only those domains registered via Chinese registrars.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the licenses, given to the Chinese subsidiaries of Minds + Machines, .CLUB Domains and XYZ.com respectively, today.
M+M CEO Toby Hall told DI that it’s “a great moment of support for Chinese registrars”, giving them a “very clear signal about which TLDs they can focus on”.
XYZ.com said in a blog post that some of its Chinese registrars (its biggest channel) are planning on offering discounts to celebrate the approval.
It’s always been possible for Chinese people to register new gTLD domains via Chinese registrars — it’s estimated that 42% of the 27 million new gTLD domains in existence today are Chinese-owned.
However, Chinese citizens need a government license if they want to launch a web site, and the government only issues licenses for domains in approved TLDs.
In addition to .cn and China-based gTLDs, which were the first to be given the nod, Verisign was approved earlier this year for .com.
Hall said that while .vip has been popular with Chinese domainers, the MIIT license means it can start to tap the small business market there too.
Obtaining the license means that the three registries, which are all based in the US or Europe, will have to comply with Chinese regulations when it comes to Chinese customers.
That basically means the Chinese government gets to censor pretty much anything it doesn’t like, up to and including sites that “spread rumors”.
Hall said that there’s no chance of this censorship bleeding out to affect non-Chinese customers.
M+M, along with XYZ and .CLUB, are using Chinese registry gateway ZDNS to act as a proxy between their own back-ends (Nominet for .vip, Neustar for .club and CentralNic for .xyz) and Chinese registrars.
“All of our Chinese web sites go through ZDNS, so only web sites going through ZDNS would be affected,” Hall said, referring to the censorship rules.
Hall added that he was “not aware” of there being a blocklist of politically sensitive strings that Chinese customers are not allowed to register.

Donuts loses $22.5m .web lawsuit as judge rules gTLD applicants cannot sue

The promise not to sue ICANN that all new gTLD applicants made when they applied is legally enforceable, a California judge has ruled.
Judge Percy Anderson on Monday threw out Donuts’ lawsuit against ICANN over the controversial $135 million .web auction, saying the “covenant not to sue bars Plaintiff’s entire action”.
He wrote that he “does not find persuasive” an earlier and contrary ruling in the case of DotConnectAfrica v ICANN, a case that is still ongoing.
Donuts sued ICANN at first to prevent the .web auction going ahead.
The registry, and other .web applicants, were concerned that ultimately successful bidder Nu Dot Co was being covertly bankrolled by Verisign, which turned out to be completely correct.
Donuts argued that ICANN failed to adequately vet NDC to uncover its secret sugar daddy. It wanted $22.5 million from ICANN — roughly what it would have received if the auction had been privately managed, rather than run by ICANN.
But the judge ruled that Donuts’ covenant not to sue is enforceable. Because of that, he made no judgement on the merits of Donuts’ arguments.
Under the relevant law, Donuts had to show that the applicant contract was “unconscionable” both “procedurally” and “substantively”.
Basically, the question for the judge was: was the contract unfairly one-sided?
The judge ruled (pdf) that it was not substantively unconscionable and “only minimally procedurally unconscionable”. In other words: a bit crap, but not illegal.
He put a lot of weight on the fact that the new gTLD program was designed largely by the ICANN community and on Donuts’ business “sophistication”. He wrote:

Without the covenant not to sue, any frustrated applicant could, through the filing of a lawsuit, derail the entire system developed by ICANN to process applications for gTLDs. ICANN and frustrated applicants do not bear this potential harm equally. This alone establishes the reasonableness of the covenant not to sue.

Donuts VP Jon Nevett said in a statement yesterday that the fight over .web is not over:

Donuts disagrees with the Court’s decision that ICANN’s required covenant not to sue, while being unconscionable, was not sufficiently unconscionable to be struck down as a matter of law. It is unfortunate that the auction process for .WEB was mired in a lack of transparency and anti-competitive behavior. ICANN, in its haste to proceed to auction, performed only a slapdash investigation and deprived the applicants of the right to fairly compete for .WEB in accordance with the very procedures ICANN demanded of applicants. Donuts will continue to utilize the tools at its disposal to address this procedural failure.

It looks rather like we could be looking at an Independent Review Process filing, possibly the first to be filed under ICANN’s new post-transition rules.
Donuts and ICANN are already in the Cooperative Engagement Process — the mediation phase that usually precedes an IRP — with regards .web.
Second-placed bidder Afilias is also putting pressure on ICANN to overturn the results of the auction, resulting in a bit of a public bunfight with Verisign.
TL;DR — don’t expect to be able to buy .web domains for quite a while to come.