GoDaddy service to let you block domains in over 650 TLDs

GlobalBlock, a domain blocking service introduced to little fanfare by GoDaddy Registry and Identity Digital in June, is planning to launch next month with support from over 650 gTLDs and ccTLDs.

Built on the successes of GoDaddy’s AdultBlock and Identity Digital’s DPML, the new service was supposed to launch last week under the banner of the Brand Safety Alliance, but was delayed until January.

GlobalBlock enables trademark owners to pay one fee to block their marks across all participating TLDs, saving money on defensive registrations. Company names and celebrity names are also covered. A premium version, GlobalBlock+ also covers typos and IDN homographs.

It’s not just gTLD registries that have signed up. Nominet is participating, as is CoCCA. BSA is promising some pretty obscure ccTLDs will be part of the service.

In what appears to be a game-changing innovation, a feature of the service called Priority Autocatch seems set to stop cybersquatters and phishers from drop-catching domains that match strings protected by the block list.

Say you’re Facebook and you see some scumbag has registered facébook.ninja, if you’re subscribed to GlobalBlock+, the AutoCatch feature will see the domain removed from the available pool when it expires, rather than dropping so a second ne’er-do-well can register it.

GlobalBlock appears to be the reason no fewer than 35 registries covering over 300 gTLDs have recently asked ICANN for permission to launch a “Label Blocking Service” via the Registry Service Evaluation Process.

There’s money in blocking services. GoDaddy is making millions from AdultBlock. Some research I’ve been doing recently suggests some registries might be making more from blocks and defensive registrations than they are from regular domain sales.

For registries with small TLD portfolios, blocking services generally offer a poor value proposition. Services like DPML, which covers hundreds of TLDs, or AdultBlock, which covers all the porny ones, have been successful.

The BSA is offering brand owners a lot of carrots to get them to sign up early.

First, if you already have an AdultBlock or DPML subscription, your marks are already pre-validated. GoDaddy is also offering a 50% discount on AdultBlock until January 30; AdultBlock and DPML subscribers get 10% off GlobalBlock until April 30.

BSA says that pricing for GlobalBlock and the initial list of TLDs will be released in early January. Wholesale pricing will go up probably every six months as new TLDs are added, but customers will only pay the increased price upon renewal while benefiting from the added blocks.

General availability pricing begins February 15.

Blockchain domain firm raises $2.5 million

Switzerland-based startup Freename said it has secured $2.5 million in seed funding to pursue its ambitions in blockchain-based domain names.

The round was led by Sparkle Ventures with participation from Abalone Asset Management, Golden Record Ventures, Blockchain Founders Fund, and Sheikh Mayed Al Qasimi, a member of a UAE royal family.

Freename, which can be found at freename.io, says it enables pretty much anybody to register a TLD on a blockchain and then earn 50% of the reg fee whenever somebody registers a second-level domain in that TLD.

The “free” appears to mean as in speech, rather than as in beer. If I want to register .murphy, it will apparently set me back $4,099, meaning I’d have to sell over 1,600 2LDs at $5 a pop to make my money back. A gibberish string of characters will cost $79. Freename says it does not charge renewal fees.

It also seems to be reserving strings when they match a “brand, organization, or notable person”, weakening the case that blockchain offers
a liberating alternative to the centralized control inherent to the ICANN root.

Terms associated with some crimes also appear to be blocked, as are strings that match existing generic TLDs in the authoritative DNS.

The company says it has issued 5,000 TLDs on multiple blockchains since it launched last year, but of course users need to install a custom browser plug-in for any of them to actually resolve.

Freename says it hopes to help make these “Web3” domains compatible with traditional “Web2” DNS over time.

AcornDomains bought by conference organizer

The UK-focused domainer forum AcornDomains has been bought by the company that runs the fledgling London Domain Summit.

Domainer Helmuts Meskonis said he’s bought the site via his companies, Helmuts Limited and No Stress Limited, which also runs hosting company HostMaria.

Meskonis said he’s bringing on two more moderators — current community members — to “help ensure that the forum continues to be a friendly and safe place for everyone.”

He also hinted that prices for advertising and the optional premium membership fee may be going up.

Since he announced the deal on the forum on Saturday, feedback from users has been generally positive.

Meskonis is founder of the London Domain Summit, which held its inaugural event — a low-key affair at a restaurant — last year. He’s planning to run a second event this August.

Unstoppable offering free .nft names to Twitter users

Unstoppable Domains is enabling Twitter users to claim free “domains” in its alt-root blockchain-based TLD .nft.

The site offers users a domain that matches their Twitter handle. You only need to authorize its app to log in using Twitter credentials, much like other Twitter-connected apps.

Actually using the name seems to require you to have a cryptocurrency wallet. And of course you won’t be able to use the name to address a web site unless all your visitors use a specialist plug-in or certain browsers.

Unstoppable usually sells .nft names for $29, with no renewal fees. It says it currently has 3.1 million names across its portfolio of crypto-themed alt-root TLDs.

Fun name-spinner uses AI to suggest domains

The founder of a recently launched name-spinner web site says the AI-based tool has already been used a million times in a month, and I can see why.

The site, SmartyNames.com, is reportedly based on the same GPT-3 natural language processing software as the incredibly popular ChatGPT chatbot.

Users simply type in a description of their project or business and the tool spits out a list of available domains that might fit the bill.

It’s a bit hit-and-miss, but fun to play with.

“It’s a service that employs ex-convicts to detach the heads from rubber ducks” resulted in suggestions such as duckdetach.com, antiduck.com and, hilarious proving that it’s not just working with keywords, quackless.com.

Right now, the site seems to be monetized with affiliate links to some of the major registrars, but founder Kirill Zubovsky said in a blog post that a premium subscription version with extra services for domain buyers is in the works.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the future of name-spinning.

CentralNic buys a bunch of web sites for $5.2 million

CentralNic said yesterday has splashed out $5.2 million on what it calls “a portfolio of revenue generating niche websites”.

The announcement doesn’t specify any of the “multiple” sellers or the nature of the sites, other that to say it will add $1.2 million to the top line and $1.4 million of EBITDA in 2023.

The company was already responsible for monetizing some of the sites it has bought.

CentralNic hinted that it might be slowing down its long-running acquisition spree following the departure of 13-year veteran CEO Ben Crawford last week.

The company said “it is intended that in the future, the emphasis of cashflow generated will be a more balanced approach of returns to shareholders, deleverage and complementary bolt-on acquisitions.”

The newly announced deal was presumably in the advanced stages of closure at the time of Crawford’s departure.

Stop me if you’ve heard this…

The collective noun for wildebeest is “an implausibility”.

In the incredibly unlikely event that you’re ever confronted by a large group of these majestic bovine quadrupeds, that’s how you should describe what you see.

An implausibility of wildebeest.

I tell you this not because it’s relevant to anything else that appears in this article, but because a series of unfortunate and unavoidable circumstances have kept me offline for the last few weeks, and you may find this round-up piece tells you lots of things you already know.

If that’s the case for you, I can only apologize, with the caveat that you probably didn’t know about the wildebeest thing, so at least this post has provided some value.

Let’s start with ICANN, shall we?

My ICANN announcements feed contains 20 unread articles this morning, and as far as I can tell from a cursory glance over the headlines, the Org has done almost nothing of consequence recently.

It’s mostly outreach-this, engagement-that, review-the-other. If official announcements were any guide, ICANN would look like an entity far more concerned with promoting and promulgating its own increasingly debatable legitimacy, rather than doing the stuff it was originally set up to do.

Like new gTLDs, for example…

While ICANN continues to fart around with its working groups and consultations and Dantean layers of bureaucracy, the blockchain/crypto/web3 crowd are continuing to bolster their efforts to eat the Org’s breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Most notably, blockchain-based alt-root naming services including Unstoppable have launched the Web3 Domain Alliance, which, even if it misses its goals, promises to make the next new gTLD round an even bigger litigation clusterfunge than the last.

The alliance intends to among other things “advocate for the policy position that NFT domain registry owner-operators create trademark rights in their web3 TLDs through first commercial use with market penetration.”

In other words, if some well-financed crypto bro creates .example on some obscure blockchain root and gets a little bit of traction, ICANN shouldn’t be allowed to create .example on the authoritative consensus root.

This has the potential to make Jarndyce and Jarndyce look like a parking ticket hearing and I take some comfort from the fact that I’ll most likely be long dead before the lawsuits from the next new gTLD round have all played out.

The Web3 Domain Alliance is promising imminent pledges of support from “web2” companies, and it will be interesting to see if any company in the conventional domain name industry is ready to break ranks with ICANN and sign up.

In actual gTLDs…

Another thing that will likely post-date my death is the launch of the last gTLD from the 2012 application round. Many still lie dormant, but they do still continue to trickle out of the gates.

While I’ve been offline, we’ve witnessed the general availability launch of Google’s .boo and .rsvp — the former criminally missing the increasingly lengthy and bewildering Halloween season and the latter probably a little late for the Christmas party season — while non-profit .kids went GA a couple of days ago.

In the world of ccTLDs…

GoDaddy is formally relaunching .tv, the rights to operate it won in a bidding process earlier this year after incumbent registry Verisign declined to compete.

It’s talking about a “a complete rebrand and marketing makeover”, with a new, very colorful, destination site at TurnOn.tv.

Many years ago, a senior Verisign exec described .tv to me as “better than .com”, and in a world where any shouty teenage pillock can essentially launch their own TV show for the price of an iPhone and broadband connection, that’s probably never been truer.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian ccTLD registry Hostmaster isn’t going to let the little matter of an ongoing Russian invasion interfere with its 30th birthday celebrations and the 12th annual UADOM conference.

It’s being held remotely for obvious reasons. It starts tomorrow, runs for two days, and more details can be found here and here.

In other conference news, NamesCon has also announced dates for its 2023 NamesCon Global conference. According to Domain Name Journal, it will return to Austin, Texas, from May 31 to June 3 next year.

DomainPulse, the conference serving the Germanophone region of Europe (albeit in English), has set its 2023 event for February 6 and 7 in Winterthur, Switzerland.

Scoop of the month…

By far the most interesting article I’ve read from the last month came from NameBio’s Michael Sumner, a reverse-exposé of the successful .xyz domain investor who goes by the name “Swetha”.

This area of the industry is not something I spend a lot of time tracking, but I’ll admit whenever I’ve read about this mononymed India-based domainer’s extensive, expensive .xyz sales, I’ve had a degree of skepticism.

It turns out that skepticism was shared by some fellow industry dinosaurs, so Sumner did the legwork, amazingly and ballsily obtaining Swetha’s Afternic login credentials (with her consent) and hand-verifying years of sales data.

He concluded that the sales she’s been reporting on Twitter are legit, and that she’s a pretty damn good domainer, but understandably could not fully disprove the hypothesis that some of her buyers are .xyz registry shills.

Elliot Silver later got a comment from the registry in which it denied any kind of collusion and implied skepticism was the result of sexism and/or racism, rather than the sketchiness sometimes displayed by anonymous Twitter accounts and the registry itself.

Earnings, M&A, IPOs…

• The otherwise-consolidating industry is getting its first IPO in some time, with United-Internet pitching a public markets spin-off of its IONOS group, which includes brands such as Sedo and InternetX, to potential investors. DNW pulled out some of the more interesting facts from its presentation.
• Industry consolidator CentralNic reported a strong Q3, though its growth is no longer dependent on its domain name business.
• Tucows reported modest growth (pdf) for Q3, hindered by flat-to-down results in its domain name business.
• GoDaddy, which no longer breaks out numbers for its domains business, reported a billion-dollar quarter.
• Smaller, faster-growing registrar NameSilo reported turning a loss into a profit in the quarter.
• In M&A, Namespace, owner of EuroDNS, announced it has acquired fellow German registrar Moving Internet.

And finally…

The DNS turned 35. So that’s nice.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have 600 unread emails to deal with…

DNSAI to name most-abused registries, registrars

The DNS Abuse Institute is to start publishing monthly reports that name the registries and TLDs with the highest level of abuse.

The organization’s Intelligence service is expected to land in September, a little later than was previously expected, according to a blog post from director of policy and programs Rowena Schoo.

DNSAI has partnered with Kor Labs, a project out of the Grenoble Institute of Technology, to supply the data, which will cover phishing and malware domains and differentiate between malicious registrations and compromised sites.

The Institute doesn’t consider spam DNS abuse unless it is used as a delivery mechanism for other types of abuse, in line with ICANN’s definition.

The decision to actually name (and in some cases, we should assume, shame) registries and registrars is an unusual one. Other, similar efforts tend to keep the data anonymous.

“We want to understand abuse persistence and whether it has been appropriately mitigated by registrars,” Schoo wrote.

DNSAI is a project primarily backed by .org manager Public Interest Registry.

Porn names to feature at NamesCon Global

NamesCon, the domaining conference, has revealed that “adult” domain names will be the focus of one its sessions at its next event, hosted by a former dominatrix.

The conference has recruited Monte Cahn of RightOfTheDot (not the former dominatrix) and investor Krista Gable of Domain Domme to run a session on “Adult Domain Names”.

Organizers couldn’t resist a bit of cheeky innuendo in a mailshot this week, promising to help attendees “explore the ins and outs of buying, selling, developing, and monetizing in this unique and valuable namespace.”

Gable told DomainGang in an interview a few years ago that she’s particularly interested in domains at the intersection of sex and technology, and her portfolio today seems to be largely porn-adjacent rather than downright filthy.

Not much else is known about NamesCon’s agenda yet. We do know there’s going to be a literal sausage fest at the end of the week at a local beer garden, an auction, and a “Women In Domaining” session at the end of the third day.

The conference runs in Austin, Texas from August 31 and tickets currently start at $499 before increasing next week.

TMCH turning off some brand-blocking services

The Trademark Clearinghouse is closing down two of its brand protection services after apparently failing to attract and retain registry partners.

The company announced recently that TREx, its Trademark Registry Exchange, will shut down after its customers’ existing subscriptions expire, saying:

The communication that we receive from our agents, resellers, clients and other registries that we have reached out to around improving the product shows that there is currently little appetite for such a service.

TMCH said it may revive the service after the new round of new gTLDs happens.

TREx was a service similar to Donuts’ Domain Protected Marks List and others, whereby trademark owners can block their brands across a multitude of TLDs for a substantial discount on the cost of defensive registrations.

But the TMCH offering was not restricted to one registry’s portfolio. Rather, it consolidated TLDs from multiple smaller operators, including at least one ccTLD — .de — into one service.

It seems to have peaked at 43 TLDs, but lost three when XYZ.com pulled out a couple years ago.

Its biggest partner was MMX, which sold its 22 gTLDs to GoDaddy Registry last year. I’d be very surprised if this consolidation was not a big factor in the decision to wind down TREx.

I’d also be surprised if we don’t see a DPML-like service from GoDaddy before long. It already operates AdultBlock on its four porn-themed gTLDs.

The news follows the announcement late last year that TMCH will also close down its BrandPulse service, which notified clients when domains similar to their brands were registered in any TLD, when its existing subscriptions expire.

Both services leveraged TMCH’s contractual relationship with ICANN, under which it provides functions supporting mandatory rights protection mechanisms under the new gTLD program rules, but neither are ICANN-mandated services.