Island demands return of its “naked” ccTLD

The Pacific island nation of Niue is loudly demanding that ICANN hand over control of its ccTLD, .nu, after two decades of bitter argument.

The government has taken the highly unusual move of filing a redelegation request with ICANN’s IANA unit publicly, forwarding it to other governments and the media.

The request is backed by UNR, the former Uniregistry, which is being put forward as the proposed back-end provider.

Niue claims, as it has since at least 2000, that the string was misappropriated by an American entrepreneur in the 1990s and has been used to generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue, with almost no benefit to the country.

The word “nu” is Swedish for “now”. It’s also the masculine form of “naked” in French, which enables lazy reporters to write click-baity headlines.

The Swedish meaning was first spotted by Massachusetts-based Bill Semich in 1997. Together with Niue-based Kiwi ex-pat Stafford Guest, he obtained the delegation for .nu from pre-ICANN root zone supremo Jon Postel.

They used the name Internet Users Society Niue (IUSN) and started selling .nu names to Swedes as a meaningful alternative to .se and .com.

As of today, there are about 264,000 registered .nu names, retailing for about $30 a year. Pre-2018 data is not available, but a couple of years ago, it had over 500,000 names under management.

That kind of money would be incredibly useful to Niue, which has a population of under 2,000 and few other natural resources to speak of. The country relies on hand-outs from New Zealand and, historically, dubious offshore banking schemes and the sale of postage stamps to collectors.

The government has said in the past that .nu cash would enable it to boost its internet infrastructure, thereby boosting its attractiveness as a tourist destination.

IUSN and Niue signed a memorandum of understanding in 1999, but a year later the government passed a law decreeing “.nu is a National resource for which the prime
authority is the Government of Niue”.

It’s been trying to get control of .nu ever since, but IUSN has consistently refused to recognize this law, Niue has always claimed, and has always refused to cooperate in a redelegation.

The company made headlines back in 2003 for claiming that it was rolling out free nationwide Wi-Fi in Niue, but there are serious questions about whether that ever actually happened.

Now, Niue claims:

The Wi-Fi has been continuously unstable and exceedingly limited. As of today, the ccTLD.NU administration and local presence of the IUSN in Niue consists of a motel with a PO Box and the Wi-Fi is covering a [n]egligible are[a] surrounding the motel. There is no operational management of the ccTLD.NU by the IUSN present in Niue.

I believe the motel in question is Coral Gardens, north of capital Alofi, which is or was run by Guest.

While IUSN is still the official ccTLD manager for .nu, according to IANA records, the business operations and technical back-end were transferred to Swedish ccTLD manager IIS in 2013.

IIS agreed to pay IUSN a minimum of $14.7 million over 15 years for the license to .nu, but the domain remains delegated to IUSN.

Niue, represented by its Swedish special envoy Pär Brumark (who until recently was also vice-chair of ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee, representing Niue) sued IIS in late 2018 in an attempt to gain control of the ccTLD.

The government argues that under Swedish control, profits from .nu can only be earmarked for the development of the Swedish internet, at the expense of Niue.

Brumark tells us the case is currently being delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The problem Niue has now is pretty much the same as it always has been — IANA rules state that the losing party in a redelegation has to consent to the change of control, and IUSN really has no incentive to do so.

Niue’s best chance appears to be either the Swedish lawsuit or the possibility that it can get the GAC on board to support its request.

In-progress redelegation requests are also exempt by convention from ICANN’s transparency rules, so we’re not going to hear anything other than what Niue releases or the GAC can publicly squeeze out of ICANN leadership.

You can read the redelegation request (pdf) here.

Comment Tagged: .nu, .se, cctlds, gac, iis, iusn, niue, redelegation

Donuts punter welcomes our new alien overlords in December premium sale

When humanity finally confirms the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life, what’s the new gTLD domain name you’d want to have in your portfolio?

Why, first.contact, of course. The domain name was registered with premium pricing from Donuts in December, according to registry data published this week, and is currently listed for resale with a $1 million price tag.

If domaining is often likened to gambling, first.contact has to be one of the biggest lottery tickets of them all — you’re betting on the biggest news story in human history breaking during your lifetime.

The chances of a final solution to the Fermi paradox may be unknowable, but a million bucks might not be an unreasonable ask if the gamble pays off.

I like the name, anyway, even if it’s more likely to be a drain on the registrant’s resources for the rest of his life.

It’s one of three .contact domains Donuts counted among its top 20 premium-priced sales for December, the others being my.contact and business.contact.

The company took over .contact from Top Level Spectrum in 2019 and took it to general availability last month.

.contact does not rank in the top 10 of Donuts’ portfolio of gTLDs for the month.

While Donuts does not publish sale prices for its premiums, the top name for December appears to have been category-killer office.furniture.

Comment Tagged: .contact, donuts, new gTLDs, premiums

Net 4 India gets unwelcome Christmas gift from ICANN

Struggling Indian registrar Net 4 India has been hit by its third notice of contract breach by ICANN, in a letter delivered Christmas Eve.

Net4 is on ICANN’s naughty list this time due to its alleged violations of ICANN’s transfer and expired domains policies. The breach notice is very similar to that delivered just two weeks earlier, concerning different domains.

ICANN reckons Net4, once India’s largest independent registrar, has in some cases been transferring domains to a partner registrar, OpenProvider, without the consent or knowledge of the registrant.

It’s been asking the company for records proving compliance, which Net4 has apparently not been providing. Therein lies the alleged breach.

Net4 has been persona non grata among many of its customers for several months, with complaints about billing and renewal failures, expirations, and a general lack of customer service availability compounded by the coronavirus pandemic.

The company has also been fighting an insolvency proceeding over millions of dollars in allegedly unpaid debts for years, which has been the subject of an ICANN breach notice for about 18 months.

The Christmas Eve breach notice gives Net4 until January 14 to turn over the relevant records or possibly face termination.

But that might prove moot — the December 10 notice had a deadline of December 31, so the wheels may already be in motion.

Comment Tagged: breach, compliance, ICANN, insolvency, net 4 india, net4, openprovider

Fuji Xerox kills off gTLD after rebrand

Fuji Xerox has become the latest multi-billion-dollar company to ditch its dot-brand gTLD.

The Japanese-American company, a joint venture of Xerox and Fuji, has told ICANN it wants to terminate its registry contract for .fujixerox, and ICANN has indicated its intention to let the string die.

The gTLD was not in use, beyond the mandatory nic.fujixerox placeholder site.

That said, the termination appears to be primarily due to a rebranding as the joint venture fizzles out.

Fuji Xerox is, according to Wikipedia, the world’s oldest Japanese-American joint-venture company, at 59 years old. It’s in the document processing space and had $11 billion in annual revenue.

But the companies said last year they would end the relationship, with Xerox no longer providing its tech, leading to rebranding the company Fujifilm Business Innovation. The dot-brand is clearly no longer needed.

Xerox also owns .xerox, and it’s not using that either. There is no .fuji or .fujifilm.

.fujixerox the first dot-brand to jump off the cliff this year, and the 86th in total.

1 Comment Tagged: dot-brands, fuji, fuji xerox, ICANN, new gTLDs, termination, xerox

EURid suspends 80,000 domains as Brexit transition ends

EURid suspended about 80,00 domain names on Friday, as the UK’s 11 months of Brexit transition came to an end.

All the names were registered to UK-based, non-EU citizens and organizations, which are no longer eligible under registry policy.

“On 1 January 2021 we suspended around 80 000 domain names and send out just over 48 000 notifications to the registrants,” a registry spokesperson told DI today.

From Friday, the domains have not been resolvable, meaning email, web sites and other services using those names are no longer functional.

Affected registrants have a few months to get their records in order, if they wish to to keep them, by transferring them to a EU-based registrant or informing their registrar they’re an EU citizen living in the UK.

They’ll have until a minute before midnight CET March 31 to make the change. A minute later, the domains will move from “suspended” status to “withdrawn” status, at which point they will become unrecoverable.

Withdrawn domains will become available for registration again in 2022.

.eu had 130,114 UK-registered names at the end of September, suggesting about 50,000 domains were relocated at the eleventh hour, despite the eligibility policy being publicized for at least a couple of years.

Losing 80,000 names from its register would mean about a 2.2% decline in overall .eu regs compared to the end of the third quarter.

The UK officially left the EU at the end of January, but operated provisionally under the same trade rules during the transition period.

Comment Tagged: .eu, brexit, eurid

GoDaddy’s female geeks make a bit more than men

Women working at GoDaddy in technology roles on average make a penny more on the dollar than their male counterparts, but their bosses don’t fare nearly as well, according to the company’s latest published diversity data.

The market-leading registrar said last week that on average across the company globally, women make the same amount as men in like roles, but the female techies make $1.01 for every $1.00 the men make.

But women in leadership roles make $0.95 for every dollar made by than their male counterparts, the company said.

Comparable data for 2019 was not available.

However, in its native US, GoDaddy is paying women a penny more on average across all roles, up one cent on the 2019 data.

The reverse trend was true of female employees in leadership roles in the US, where they made $0.95 on the dollar in 2020, compared to $1.02 in the previous year.

In tech, the ratio approached parity, with women getting $1.01 on the dollar, compared to $1.03 in 2019.

Women make up 30% of GoDaddy employees, 33% of leadership, but only 19% of techies, the report says. Those are all slight improvements on 2019.

Comment Tagged: godaddy

Donuts acquisition of Afilias closes, integration work begins

Donuts’ acquisition of Afilias closed without incident on December 29, the companies announced last week.

The registries said that registrants and registrar partners should not see any immediate disruption, but added that it’s now working on an integration plan that should see some changes over the longer term.

“Our combined teams can now begin developing an integration plan, with a goal of minimizing disruption to those we serve,” Akram Atallah, Donuts’ CEO, said in a press release. “We expect no changes in the short term, and ample notice on any changes that are decided.”

Atallah has previously told DI that it’s likely that Afilias’ owned and operated TLDs will likely be transferred to Donuts’ registry back-end, which is hosted on the Amazon cloud.

He also said that services such as the Domain Protected Marks List, currently available in 240+ Donuts gTLDs, should soon become available in Afilias’ 20-odd.

The deal, for an undisclosed sum, was subject to scrutiny by ICANN, which could have blocked it, but its board of directors considered the merger last month with no resolution passed.

Comment Tagged: acquisition, afilias, donuts, ICANN

GoDaddy pranks employees with “insensitive” phishing test

GoDaddy has apologized to its staff after teasing them with a $650 Christmas bonus that turned out to be nothing but a test of whether they could be duped into handing over their sensitive personal info.

Employees worldwide reportedly received emails promising the bonus December 14 from an official-looking but presumably spoofed address.

Those who clicked through and filled out a form with their personal data received a second email a few days later informing them they’d actually just failed a “phishing test” and would “need to retake the Security Awareness Social Engineering training.”

Around 500 staff reportedly failed the test.

But many were pissed off that the company would dangle a bonus, only to snatch it away, just a week before Christmas and at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has caused many to fear for their livelihoods.

While GoDaddy rode out the pandemic just fine, it laid off hundreds, regardless.

After the prank last week attracted media attention, the company apologized to its employees, saying in a statement sent to the AFP:

GoDaddy takes the security of our platform extremely seriously. We understand some employees were upset by the phishing attempt and felt it was insensitive, for which we have apologised. While the test mimicked real attempts in play today, we need to do better and be more sensitive to our employees.

I sincerely hope nobody spent their illusory $650 in the days before the test was revealed.

Comment Tagged: coronavirus, godaddy, pandemic, phishing

US sneaks public Whois demands into pandemic relief bill

Outgoing US president Donald Trump has signed into law a coronavirus relief bill and spending package that contains a surprise instruction for the government to pursue open access to Whois records.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 is focused on federal spending for fiscal 2021, with billions set aside for pandemic-related economic stimulus. It’s the bill you may recall Trump refused to sign for several days on the purported basis that it only provided Americans with a piddling $600 check.

An accompanying document contains encouragement for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to “to require registrars and registries based in the United States to collect and make public accurate domain name registration information”.

It also asks the NTIA to continue to work within ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee to help create “a global access model that provides law enforcement, intellectual property rights holders, and third parties with timely access to accurate domain name registration information”.

The text can be found in a joint explanatory statement (pdf) accompanying the act. It’s not on the statute books as such, but it does tell NTIA how to spend the money it’s been allocated.

The full text relevant to the domain name industry reads:

NTIA is directed, through its position within the Governmental Advisory Committee o work with I CANN to expedite the establishment of a global access model that provides law enforcement, intellectual property rights holders, and third parties with timely access to accurate domain name registration information for legitimate purposes. NTIA is encouraged, as appropriate, to require registrars and registries based in the United States to collect and make public accurate domain name registration information.

As ICANN notes in its analysis, the first sentence is not telling NTIA to do anything it hasn’t been doing since the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation came into effect two and a half years ago.

The NTIA and GAC have been involved in efforts to create a privacy workaround for rights holders and law enforcement, which in September came up with the widely panned SSAD proposals. ICANN is currently pleading with the EU for clarity on whether it would even be legal.

The second sentence is perhaps a bit more worrying, dangling as it does the possibility of American registries and registrars having to either break EU law or implement a much more complex Whois infrastructure.

But, as ICANN notes, the words “encouraged, as appropriate” are doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, saying “encouragement is aspirational; it is not a mandate”.

However, ICANN appears to be treating it as a warning shot, with head of compliance Jamie Hedlund writing:

It appears to hint that if NTIA and the ICANN community can’t develop a robust access model, Congress could entertain more forceful measures that would impose requirements on U.S.-based registries and registrars to collect and publish domain name registration information.

It seems the NTIA has the wink to cause mischief, should ICANN not deliver what intellectual property lobbyists want.

Comment Tagged: coronavirus, covid-19, gdpr, ICANN, ntia, pandemic, privacy, whois

Verisign drops half a mill on pandemic relief

Verisign has donated over half a million dollars to pandemic-related causes, the company announced last week.

The donations are aimed at relieving economic side-effects of the pandemic such as food poverty and unemployment.

The .com registry operator said in a blog post it has given $275,000 to food banks in Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware where most of its US operations are based, and in Fribourg, Switzerland, its European HQ.

It’s also given $250,000 to Virginia Cares, an initiative dedicated to retraining unemployed Virginians for in-demand jobs in the tech sector.

Verisign was of course an inadvertent beneficiary of the pandemic, as lockdown regimes worldwide led to a boost in domain registrations as businesses such as bars and cafes moved online.

Comment Tagged: .com, coronavirus, covid-19, pandemic, verisign