Nominet shuts down “hostile” discussion forum

Nominet has angered members by unilaterally shutting down a discussion forum that has been for many years the main place for discussions about .uk policy.

The forum, which Nominet hosted on its web site, went dark abruptly during the company’s annual general meeting yesterday.

Speaking to members tuning in to the live webcast, CEO Russell Haworth said that the forum was “dominated by a handful of posters, and has increasingly become aggressive and hostile, not least towards our staff”.

And then it was gone.

Haworth said he expected criticism over the move, which was “fine”, adding that posters have plenty of other venues to air their grievances.

He also suggested periodic Zoom calls to communicate with members.

The decision to close the forum is being greeted poorly by affected members (presumably the ones who most actively used it) on social media and seen as a way for power to be further consolidated among Nominet’s biggest revenue-generators.

Nominet recently came in for criticism for its efforts to grab a slice of the drop-catching pie by charging registrars an extra £600 a year (now, members note, up to £1,000) for additional EPP tunnels.

It also recently admitted privately to members that it last year miscalculated how many votes members they should get in directorship elections, but insisted the error did not have an effect on the outcome of the most recent poll.

The move is not entirely without precedent. Those of you with as many grey hairs as me may recall the old Domain-Policy mailing list, once the central hub for community discussions, going dark back in 2001.

But Verisign, which hosted the list and its archives, explained that move as a measure to reduce redundancy, rather than straight-up admitting that it was a PR move to silence its legion of critics.

1 Comment Tagged: .uk, censorship, nominet

Donuts to launch .contact next week

Almost a year and a half after buying it, Donuts is ready to launch its newest gTLD, .contact.

According to ICANN records, the sunrise period for the domain will run from September 29 to November 28.

Registrars report that general availability will begin December 9. Retail pricing is expected to be competitive with .com.

Donuts will also run its traditional Early Access Period, from December 2, a week during which prices start very high and decline day by day.

It will be an unrestricted space, as it Donuts’ wont, and I imagine the suggested use case is something similar to the .tel model — the publication of contact information.

Donuts acquired .contact from Top Level Spectrum for an undisclosed amount in April 2019.

Comment Tagged: .contact, donuts, ICANN, launch, new gTLDs, sunrise, top level spectrum

GoDaddy denies weird front-running claim

GoDaddy has been forced to deny (again) that it engages in front-running after a social media post attracted hundreds of comments.

Front-running is the practice of a registrar monitoring customers’ availability searches then registering the name itself in order to mark it up to a premium price.

No reputable registrar does this any more, if only because it would be reputation suicide.

But a poster on HackerNews claimed to have been exploited in precisely this way,

searched a few days ago for felons.io, looked for unique names for simple game didn’t know if I wanted it or not

guess godaddy decided for me: 1 days old Created on 2020-09-16 by GoDaddy.com, LLC

just a warning if you have a special name do not use godaddy to check if its available

Domains can appear to be front-run due to the law of large numbers. Registrants may think they’re the only one with a unique domain idea, but they’re likely not.

After the HackerNews post attracted hundreds of comments (largely promoting Namecheap as a superior competitor) and a post from Eliot Silver, GoDaddy decided to issue a response.

“These accusations are 100% false. This type of behavior is predatory, unethical, and goes against everything we stand for as a company,” registrar head Paul Bindel posted over the weekend.

Bindel went on to post the results of search queries for “felons” and related terms over a couple of weeks. There weren’t a huge amount.

Complicating the story, he also says that the felons.io domain was suspended not long after registration, and will soon be deleted, after it was flagged as a fraudulent registration by a compromised account.

Interestingly, the HackerNews account used to post the original allegation appears to have been created on the same day as the post, which is literally the only thing he or she ever posted on the site.

4 Comments Tagged: frontrunning, godaddy, phishing

Is India’s largest registrar about to go titsup? And where the hell is ICANN?

India’s largest independent domain name registrar appears to be “doing an AlpNames”, with many customers complaining about domains going dark, transfer codes not being issued, and customer support being unavailable for weeks.

Net 4 India, which claims to have 400,000 customers, has been in insolvency proceeds for over two years, but it’s only in the last couple months that the complaints have started piling up by the scores from disgruntled customers.

A major complaint is that renewals are not processed even after they are paid for, that transfer authcodes never arrive, that customer support never picks up the phone or replies to emails, and (occasionally) that the Net4 web site itself is down.

As we saw with AlpNames last year and RegisterFly back in the mists of time, These are all the warning signs of a registrar in trouble.

On its web site, Net4 prominently warns customers that its call centers are operating on a skeleton staff due to India’s coronavirus lockdown measures, which may account for the lack of support.

But there are reports that customers have visited the company’s offices in person to find them closed.

There’s been radio silence from the registrar. Even its Twitter account is private.

Many local commentators are pointing to the fact that Net4 is in protracted insolvency proceedings as the true underlying issue.

There have been calls for government intervention, action by .in registry NIXI, ICANN enforcement, and even the Indian equivalent of a class action lawsuit. This local cyber law blogger is all over it.

But what is ICANN doing about it?

Net4 was taken to a quasi-judicial insolvency court in 2017 by a debt-recovery company called Edelweiss over the rupee equivalent of about $28 million of unpaid loans from the State Bank of India.

ICANN has been aware of this fact since at least April 2019, when it started calling the registrar for an explanation.

Under the standard Registrar Accreditation Agreement, being in insolvency for over 30 days is grounds for unilateral termination by ICANN.

ICANN could terminate the agreement and transfer all of Net4’s gTLD domain names to a different registrar pretty much at will — all the registrant data is in escrow. This would not protect Net4’s many thousands of .in registrants of course.

ICANN suspended Net4’s RAA in June last year, but Net4 somehow managed to talk its way out of it. ICANN later rescinded the suspension on the proviso that the registrar provide monthly updates regarding its insolvency.

Net4’s cure period has been extended three times by ICANN. The latest expired July 31 this year.

At least one ICANN staffer is on the case, however. ICANN’s head of India Samiran Gupta has recently been reaching out to customers on Twitter, offering his email address and assistance getting in contact with Net4 staff, apparently with some success.

But Net4 had 95,000 gTLD names under management at the last count (though it’s been hemorrhaging thousands per month) so this individual approach won’t go very far.

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

Webcentral rejects Web.com buyout bid for LOWER offer from Aussie telco

Pioneering registrar Webcentral has turned down Web.com’s offer to acquire it in favor of a lower offer from telecommunications company 5G Networks.

The company announced this week that 5GN will pay one share for ever 12 shares of Webcentral, which works to to between AUD 18.7 million and AUD 19.5 million ($14.24), depending on which trailing average price you use.

That’s between AUD 0.153 and AUD 0.16 per share, compared to Web.com’s recently increased bid of AUD 0.18 per share.

It’s a 138% premium based on 5GN’s September 16 closing price and Webcentral’s closing price before the Web.com deal was announced two months ago.

So why take the lower offer? Webcentral offered a few reasons, the most compelling of which was that there seems to have been a certain amount of arm-twisting going on.

The Web.com deal would have required 75% of Webcentral’s shares to be voted in favor of the acquisition and 5GN already owned over 10% and said it would vote them against. The 5GN deal only requires it to acquire 50.1% of the shares.

5GN will also pay off Webcentral’s debts and pay Web.com the AUD 500,000 penalty incurred for breaking the original July deal.

Webcentral was previously known as ARQ Group and, as one of the original five ICANN=accredited registrars, Melbourne IT. It owns the registrars Netregistry and Domainz. it became Webcentral after selling its wholesale business to CentralNic and its enterprise unit to private equity.

5GN, despite the name, is a largely wire-based telco and hosting provider. It doesn’t currently own any registrars.

Comment Tagged: 5gn, acquisition, web.com, webcentral

Portugal reports lockdown boom continued through the summer

While the coronavirus pandemic is well past its first peak in western Europe, the lingering effects of government restrictions is a gift that continues to give for at least one ccTLD.

Associação DNS.PT today reported that total registrations of .pt names in August (6,843) were 35% higher than during the same period last year, and that July’s number was 17.28% higher than the year-ago month.

The registry added that the trend seems to be continuing into September.

The company said that registrations were mostly driven by “catering and domestic service companies, gyms and social solidarity projects” getting online for the first time due to pandemic restrictions.

Oddly, the new numbers appear to have been presented today at an in-person, though socially distanced, lecture by DNS.PT and government officials.

Comment Tagged: .pt, coronavirus, dns.pt, portugal

No ICANN meetings until 2021

Community members itching to be able to suck up to (or berate) ICANN staffers in person rather than over the phone or videoconferencing will have to wait a little longer.

The Org announced today that all face-to-face meetings have been cancelled until the end of the year due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

It doesn’t affect any of the big public meetings — the AGM in October was relocated from Hamburg to Zoom a few months ago — but regular business travel and intersessional meetings are hit.

It also means ICANN staffers will continue to work from home until January at the earliest, ICANN said.

The health and safety of our community and staff are always our top concern, and we believe it is not prudent to travel or encourage gatherings until at least the end of 2020. The ongoing and long-term health impact of COVID-19 on our community and staff is a risk that we are not willing to take. In addition, the travel landscape has not yet stabilized, which makes any travel complicated and risky.

Call me a pessimist, but I’d be very surprised if this is the last time the travel ban is extended.

Comment Tagged: .travel, coronavirus, ICANN

ZADNA hikes up the price of .za domains

South African ccTLD registry ZADNA has upped the price of .za domains after a consultation.

Standard pricing will increase by ZAR 10 to ZAR 55 ($3.35), which works out at about a 22% increase, from April 1 next year.

There’s also a ZAR 10 increase on customers of its old, pre-EPP legacy system, where the base price is currently ZAR 130 ($7.58). That kicks in January 1.

ZADNA has been increasing the legacy pricing for years to encourage registrants onto its industry-standard EPP infrastructure.

The changes come despite receiving comments from the local internet community about affordability and the current economic conditions.

Comment Tagged: .za, pricing, zadna

Floodgates, open! Trademark Clearinghouse now supports .com

The Trademark Clearinghouse has added .com to the roster of TLDs supported by its infringement notification service.

The Deloitte-managed service recently announced the change to its Ongoing Notification Service, which came into effect late last month.

The update means TMCH subscribers will receive alerts whenever a .com domain is registered that contains their trademark, helping them to decide whether to pursue enforcement actions such as UDRP.

Unlike the ICANN-mandated 90-day Trademark Claims period that accompanies the launch of each new gTLD, the registrant herself does not receive an alert of possible infringement at point of registration.

The service, which is not regulated by ICANN, is still free to companies that have their marks registered in the TMCH, which charges an extra dollar for every variation of a mark the holder wishes to monitor.

Such services have been commercially available from the likes of MarkMonitor for 20 years or more. The TMCH has been offering it for new gTLDs since they started launching at the end of 2013.

With the .com-shaped gaping hole now plugged, two things could happen.

First, clients may find a steep increase in the number of alerts they receive — .com is still the biggest-selling and in volume terms the most-abused TLD.

Second, commercial providers of similar services now find themselves competing against a free rival with an ICANN-enabled captive audience.

The upgrade comes at the tail end of the current wave of the new gTLD program. With the .gay launch out of the way and other desirable open TLDs tied up in litigation, there won’t be much call for TMCH’s core services for the next few years.

It also comes just a couple months after the .com zone file started being published on ICANN’s Centralized Zone Data Service, but I expect that’s just a coincidence.

Comment Tagged: .com, cybersquatting, ICANN, markmonitor, new gTLDs, tmch, trademarks, verisign

Radix premium renewals approach $1 million

New gTLD registry Radix made almost a million bucks in the first half of the year from renewal fees on its premium domains.

That’s one data point that jumps out from Radix’s latest premium sales report, released last night.

The company said that it made $1.96 million at the top line from premiums in the period, up 19% on the second half of 2019.

It added that $996,771 of that was from renewals, up from $903,687 in H2 2019.

Radix is one of the registries that charges a premium fee every year over the lifetime of the registration, a practice controversial among domain investors.

Still, it appears there is demand (or, at least, acceptance) among end users. Radix said it saw a 41% sequential increase in the number of premium sales in H1.

.tech, .online and .store were the biggest sellers, with the vast majority of sold names clustering in the $250 to $2,500 range.

The renewal rate after the first year was 63%, growing to 72% at the second renewal and a very respectable 78% thereafter.

Radix said it saw .store premium sales grow by more than fivefold during the half, which it attributed to the coronavirus pandemic:

While premium registrations and revenue have grown steadily for five quarters since Q2 2019, the 2020 pandemic has led to significant demand in eCommerce and have urged businesses from all verticals to build a strong web presence.

This has led to a surge in the adoption of premium domain names on meaningful extensions that are most suited for these businesses such as .STORE. Premium registrations for .STORE in Q2 2020 was up by 5.5X compared to Q2 2019.

More stats can be found here.

Comment Tagged: coronavirus, new gTLDs, premiums, radix