Westerdal offloads two more gTLDs to Donuts

Donuts has bulked out its gTLD portfolio yet again, acquiring two more strings from Fegistry and Top Level Spectrum.

ICANN records show that it recently took over the contracts for .observer and .realty.

They’re both launched, active TLDs. Both selling registries are backed by investor Jay Westerdal.

.observer was bought dormant by TLS from the British newspaper of the same name in 2016 and launched the following year with .com-competitive prices.

TLS has been marketing it as a place for news organizations, though it’s unrestricted. Registrations plateaued at about 1,000 a couple of years ago and haven’t seen much movement since.

.realty is a different story.

Fegistry paid ICANN $5,588,888 at a public auction — beating Donuts, in fact — in 2014, and launched it in 2017 with a roughly $300-a-year retail price.

It’s been cruising along with about 2,200 names under management for the last couple of years, until this September and early October, when its zone file shot up to almost 18,000 domains.

This seems to have been the result of a $0.99 promotion at Epik, which has since ended.

One would have to assume that the vast majority of those new domains will be speculative and are unlikely to renew at the full $300 reg fee a year from now.

While the contracts changed hands in late October, it’s inconceivable that Donuts was not aware of the quality of the recent registrations.

It’s not the first time Westerdal’s businesses have sold to Donuts, which took .contact off Top Level Spectrum’s hands in April 2019. That gTLD entered general availability this week.

It’s also handed off responsibility for .forum to MMX, which plans to launch it with a puzzling $1,000 price tag next March, although TLS is still listed as the ICANN contractor.

TLS still runs the controversial gripe site TLD .feedback, along with the unlaunched head-scratcher .pid.

Fegistry is still fighting for .hotel, along with rival applicants, in ICANN’s quasi-judicial Independent Review Process.

Comment Tagged: .realty, acquisitions, donuts, epik, Fegistry, ICANN, new gTLDs, observer, top level spectrum

Whois privacy group finds its new chair

Verisign’s top policy veep is set to become the third chair of the ICANN working group looking at Whois policy in the post-GDPR world.

Keith Drazek has been recommended to head the long-running group, known as the EPDP, and the GNSO Council is due to vote on his appointment next week. He’s likely to be a shoo-in.

He’s VP of policy and government relations at the .com registry, and a long-standing member of the ICANN policy-making community.

I recently opined that ICANN was looking for a “masochistic mug” to chair the group. Drazek was until October the chair of the GNSO Council, and is therefore perfectly qualified for the role.

The third phase of the EPDP process, which in typical ICANNese is denominated “phase 2a”, is likely to be slightly less controversial than the first two.

The EPDP has already decided that ICANN should probably create a Standardized System for Access and Disclosure — SSAD — that may enable law enforcement and intellectual property owners to get their hands on unredacted Whois records.

But governments, IP interests and others have already dismissed the plan as useless, and there’s still a big question mark over whether SSAD is too complex and expensive to be worth implementing.

In the third phase, EPDP members will be discussing rules on distinguishing between legal and natural persons when record-holders decide what info to make public, and whether there should be a standardized system of unique, anonymized email forwarders to contact domain registrants.

They’re both less divisive topics than have been previously addressed, but not without the potential for fireworks.

The email issue, for example, could theoretically enable people to harvest a registrant’s entire portfolio of domains, something very useful for law enforcement and IP lawyers but abhorrent to privacy advocates.

The previous two phases were chaired by Kurt Pritz and Janis Karklins, with Rafik Dammak acting as vice-chair.

1 Comment Tagged: epdp, gdpr, ICANN, privacy, ssad, whois

Three more new gTLDs blink out of existence

Another new gTLD registry operator, representing three dot-brands, has told ICANN that they want their contracts scrapped.

The registry is CNH Industrial, and the gTLDs are .case, .caseih and .newholland.

To be honest, if you’d asked me yesterday whether these TLDs existed or not, I would have guessed not.

But CNH is a pretty big deal — a New York-listed multinational maker of construction and agricultural equipment and vehicles with over $28 billion in revenue last year. Case and New Holland are two of its brands.

The brands do not appear to have been discontinued, so this seems to be a typical case of company simply deciding against using its TLDs, which it probably shouldn’t have applied for in the first place.

None of them has any domains beyond the mandatory nic.example site.

Interestingly, it has a fourth dot-brand, .iveco, representing a vehicle brand, that so far it does not seem to have terminated, judging by ICANN records. But that’s not in use either.

The terminations bring the total dead dot-brands to 85, 16 of which died this year.

3 Comments Tagged: .case, .caseih, .iveco, .newholland, cnh, dot-brands, ICANN, new gTLDs, termination

NamesCon Europe founder Dietmar Stefitz reportedly dies

I’m very sorry to report that Dietmar Stefitz, founder of the domainer conference that would become NamesCon Europe, has died, according to social media posts.

His Facebook profile this morning filled with tributes, variously describing him as “passionate”, “kind” and “genuine”, after his niece announced his death.

Stefitz was best known in the domain industry for founding the Domaining Europe conference in 2008, which he hosted annually, typically in his home town of Valencia, Spain, for a decade.

The event was eventually merged with GoDaddy’s NamesCon to become NamesCon Europe in 2018, and Stefitz took a backseat role in its management.

I did not know Dietmar well, but I spent a enjoyable evening at his table during the inaugural NamesCon Europe and found him warm and engaging.

Eerily, Stefitz’s Twitter profile was updated this afternoon, encouraging readers to “take advantage of the little moments”, over 15 hours after his death was announced. I don’t know whether it was a time-delayed post or was posted by a relative.

While the tweeted video prominently features the character of the Grim Reaper, and it’s a Christmas advertisement for meat products, it does carry the message “Disfruta en vida”, which I believe translates as “Enjoy Life”.

Disfruta en vida y la alegría de la Navidad, aprovecha esos pequeños momentos. https://t.co/Qi6JW1YN4b #DisfruteEnVida

— Dietmar Stefitz (@bemarnet) December 4, 2020

It’s a message that, by all accounts, Stefitz lived by.

4 Comments Tagged: domaining europe, namescon, obituary

Credit union gTLD changes hands to perhaps surprising buyer

Yet another new gTLD is moving to a new registry, but this time it’s not a case of a large gTLD holder bulking up its portfolio.

This time it’s .creditunion, and the new registry is 18-year-old .coop registry DotCooperation, according to ICANN records.

.creditunion was delegated to the Credit Union Nation Association, the trade group for US credit unions, in 2015 and launched in 2017.

Like .coop, it’s a tightly restricted TLD, with eligibility only for those with a “meaningful nexus to the credit union sector”.

It had 580 domains at the last count, having peaked at 640 a couple years ago. The domains are being used as primary domains by at least a couple dozen credit unions.

But volume was never the plan for .creditunion, with CUNA specifically citing .coop as its role model in its 2012 new gTLD application.

“The success of the gTLD will not be measured by the number of domain names registered. Instead, it will be measured by the level of consumer recognition and trust,” CUNA said back then.

CUNA actually announced the DotCooperation deal in a press release on its web site at the end of September, but I don’t think anyone in the domain industry noticed.

.coop, which is reserved for co-operative associations, was one of the original 2000-round new gTLDs. It’s been chugging along at relatively low volume for the last two decades, peaking at 15,000 in February 2013.

For the last few years, it’s been growing by maybe a dozen or so domains a month, and currently stands at about 8,300 names.

DotCooperation is jointly owned by the National Cooperative Business Association and the International Cooperative Alliance.

Comment Tagged: .coop, .creditunion, acquisition, cuna, dotcooperation, ICANN, new gTLDs

After 20 years, DomainTools takes its first VC dough

DomainTools has taken a “significant” investment from a venture capital firm, the first outside funding its received in its 20-year history.

The amount of the investment is undisclosed, but DomainTools said its investor is Battery Ventures.

Battery already owns stakes in numerous software and technology companies, but this appears to be its first foray into the domain name space.

Its principal, Jordan Welu, and partner Dave Tabors will join DomainTools’ board of directors and Andy Rothery, a Battery “executive-in-residence”, will become its executive chairman.

DomainTools said in a press release:

This investment will drive more rapid innovation in DomainTools’ platform capabilities for machine learning-based threat analytics and predictive risk scoring, along with enhanced product development around automating threat intelligence and incident response workflows.

The company is all about the “threat intelligence” nowadays, no doubt partly due to the fact that its original mission of aggregating the world’s Whois data will become decreasingly useful in light of privacy laws such as GDPR.

As a private company its financial position is unknown, but I’ll note that it did take a big chunk of change out of the US taxpayers’ pocket earlier this year under a government coronavirus-related corporate-relief program.

Comment Tagged: battery ventures, DomainTools, gdpr, investment, privacy, vc, whois

Gay charities get first taste of domain cash

Top Level Design, which runs .gay, said today it has released its first tranche of cash to LGBTQ charities.

Since its September launch, it’s handed $124,400 to non-profits CenterLink and GLAAD, the company said.

Top Level Design has long promised to give 20% of its top line to these charities. At $25 a pop, that’s a $5 donation per domain.

This initial handout seems to be high, given the current level of domains under management, presumably due to higher sunrise fees and premium domains pricing.

The gTLD currently has 6,345 domains in its zone file.

Comment Tagged: .gay, centerlink, glaad, top level design

CIRA hits major .ca milestone on 20th anniversary

Canadian ccTLD registry CIRA has registered its three millionth domain, having grown .ca by over 160,000 names this year.

By happy coincidence, the milestone was hit November 30, exactly 20 years after CIRA officially took over the registry from its predecessor.

CIRA said that regs are up 34% this year, the boosted growth largely due to more small businesses coming online due to the coronavirus pandemic.

This all means that .ca is the 12th-largest ccTLD in the world, according to the registry.

Comment Tagged: .ca, cira, coronavirus, covid-19, pandemic

.org made $97 million last year

Public Interest Registry has published its 2019 tax returns, revealing a top line of $97.1 million.

That’s a tad under the $101.1 million it reported for 2018, presumably due to the declining number of .org domains under management.

It lost roughly 200,000 names in 2019, bottoming out at 10.4 million, though it has since recovered in 2020.

The returns also reveal that back-end provider Afilias was paid $18.3 million for its trouble, and ICANN was paid $2.6 million in fees.

The Internet Society, which owns PIR and uses it for most of its funding, was paid $67.5 million, up from the $48.7 million given in 2018.

The form also list the salary and bonuses for 20-odd staffers and directors, for the salary voyeurs among you.

Comment Tagged: .org, earnings, financials, isoc, pir

XYZ launches its beauty-themed gTLDs with slashed prices

XYZ.com is readying the launch of its four recently acquired beauty-themed gTLDs, along with one other.

.skin, .hair .makeup and .beauty entered their sunrise periods today, where they will stay until February 10.

All four were acquired from L’Oreal earlier this year, but .makeup was the only one that had launched and gone through its mandatory sunrise.

Despite this, XYZ is putting .makeup through what it calls a “trademark owner landrush”, where domains will cost IP owners about a grand.

That’s actually a lot cheaper than the price L’Oreal had the domains at during general availability — deterrent pricing of around $5,500 wholesale per year.

It looks like all four domains in this mini-portfolio will be priced around the $20 mark at registrars during general availability, which is due to begin March 2.

There’s also going to be an Early Access Period for seven days from February 10.

All of the above also applies to .quest, which XYZ acquired from a Hong Kong multilevel marketing firm a year ago. XYZ is marketing it as a TLD for “gurus, knowledgeable experts, and authorities in any field”.

Comment Tagged: .beauty, .hair, .makeup, .skin, l'oreal, launch, sunrise, xyz.com