“We’re Irish!” claim Brits as .eu shrinks yet again

British companies are moving their .eu domain names to their Irish branches in an effort to keep them after Brexit, according to the speculations of EURid.
.eu regs in Ireland grew 18% to 47,781 in the second quarter, according to the registry’s Q2 roundup. EURid said:

The high increase in Ireland could be related to the notice about UK withdrawal from the EU and its subsequence to UK .eu domain name holders. Some of the UK domain name holders may have had the chance to transfer the domain names to their branches in other countries of the EU and EEA, e.g. the neighboring Ireland.

Regs in the UK dropped by 13.9% compared to Q1 and by almost half — 46.7% — year over year. There are now 162,287 UK-based .eu domains.
Overall, .eu is still shrinking, partly as a result of this Brexit impact, which has been felt ever since the 2016 referendum.
There were 3,602,573 registered domains at the end of June, down from 3,661,899 at the end of March.
UK-based registrants have been told that they cannot continue to own .eu domains after Brexit, currently slated for October 31. It’s still a possibility that the date could change, or that Brexit may not happen at all.
Confusing matters, EU citizens living in the UK will still be eligible for .eu domains.
All this data, plus a whole lot more, can be read in the EURid Q2 report (pdf).

2 Comments Tagged: .eu, brexit, eurid

Mystery .vu registry revealed

Neustar has been selected as the back-end domain registry operator for the nation of Vanuatu.
The company, and the Telecommunications Radiocommunications and Broadcasting Regulator, announced the appointment, which came after a competitive tender process between nine competing back-end providers, last night.
The ccTLD is .vu.
It’s unrestricted, with no local presence requirements, and currently costs $50 per year if you buy directly from the registry, Telecom Vanuatu Ltd (TVL).
Unusually, if you show up at TVL’s office in Vanuatu capital Port Vila, you can buy a domain for cash. I’ve never heard of that kind of “retail” domain name option before.
A handful of international registrars also sell the domains marked up, generally to over the $80 mark.
TVL was originally the sponsor of the ccTLD, but ICANN redelegated it to TRBR in March after Vanuatu’s government passed a law in 2016 calling for redelegation.
Under the deal, Neustar will take over the registry function from TVL after its 24 years in charge, bringing the .vu option to hundreds of other registrars.
Most registrars are already plugged in to Neustar, due to its operation of .us, .biz and .co. It also recently took over India’s .in.
There’s no public data on the number of domains under management, but Vanuatu is likely to have a much smaller footprint that Neustar’s main ccTLD clients.
It’s quite a young country, gaining independence from France and the UK in 1980, a Pacific archipelago of roughly 272,000 people.
Neustar expects the transition to its back-end to be completed September 30.

2 Comments Tagged: .vu, back-end, iana, ICANN, migration, neustar, redelegation, telecom vanuatu, transition, TRBR, vanuatu

Berkens says new gTLDs mostly suck but geos suck hardest

Ever since he cashed out his massive portfolio of domain names in a bulk sale to GoDaddy three and a half years ago, domain investor Mike Berkens has been dabbling in new gTLDs, and so far he’s not impressed.
In a recent conference speech and blog post, he revealed some of his experiences parking and trying to sell his new g names, and he has come down particularly harshly on geographic TLDs.
City TLDs such as .london, .nyc and .miami are “death” to a domain investor, he said at a domainer meetup in Asheville, North Carolina last week.
His portfolio of 29 .miami names has had just 532 type-in visits in the last year, and have not received a single offer, he wrote on TheDomains.com.
On the flip-side, Berkens told his audience that domain combinations that naturally fit together, such as online.dating, atlantic.city, moving.company and bank.loans are profitable from type-in traffic and can get thousands of visitors a year.
They can be profitable even when the registry charges a premium renewal fee, he said. The domain obama.care makes him $500 a year parked and has a $150 annual renewal, he said.
But when asked directly whether he would recommend new gTLDs to domain investors, Berkens said he would not, citing among other things the added risk of unregulated price increases in the new gTLD space.
Berkens made eight figures selling his portfolio of 70,000 names to GoDaddy in 2015, but the deal apparently did not include the new gTLD names he’d picked up along the way.
You can watch his 24-minute talk here.

6 Comments Tagged: domainers, geographic, godaddy, miami, new gTLDs

.gay gets rooted

The new gTLD .gay, which was often used as an example of a controversial TLD that could be blocked from the DNS, has finally made it to the DNS.
While no .gay domains are currently resolving, the TLD itself was added to the root zone over the weekend.
Its registry is Top Level Design, which currently also runs .design, .ink and .wiki.
The company won the string in February, after an auction with three other applicants.
While Top Level Design had planned to launch .gay this October on National Coming Out Day in the US, but had to postpone the release so as not to rush things.
It’s now eyeing a second-quarter 2020 launch, possibly timed to coincide with a major Pride event.
The registry is currently hiring marketing staff to assist in the launch.
It’s the first new TLD to hit the internet since February, when South Sudan acquired .ss.
But it’s been over a year since the last 2012-round new gTLD appeared, when .inc was delegated in July 2018.
There are currently 1,528 TLDs in the root. That’s actually down a bit compared to a year ago, due to the removal of several delegated dot-brands.
.gay was, prior to 2012, often used as an example of a string that could have been blocked by governments or others on “morality and public order” grounds.
But that never transpired. The protracted time it’s taken to get .gay into the root has been more a result of seemingly endless procedural reviews of ICANN decision-making.

Comment Tagged: .gay, delegation, iana, ICANN, root, top level design

Neustar takes control of two new gTLDs

Neustar has started taking over former dot-brand new gTLDs belonging to its former clients.
It recently took control of .compare and .select, which previously belonged to Australian insurance company iSelect.
Neustar had been the back-end registry provider for both TLDs.
As previously blogged, iSelect abandoned its primary dot-brand, .iselect, in June.
That was despite that fact that it was actually in use, with domains such as home.iselect, news.iselect and careers.iselect all resolving to web sites.
Now, the generic dot-brands .compare and .select have been assigned to the blandly named Registry Services LLC, a new Neustar subsidiary.
They’re not the first examples of dictionary words functioning as dot-brands being repurposed as generics.
Notably, XYZ.com took over .monster from Monster.com and ShortDot bought .bond from Bond University.
Neustar has not yet announced its plans for its two new acquisitions.

4 Comments Tagged: .compare, .select, acquisition, assignment, ICANN, iselect, neustar, new gTLDs

Epik will sponsor 8chan’s domain, but will not host its site

Controversial free-speech registrar Epik has said it will take 8chan’s domain name business, but will not provide content delivery services for the site.
In a post entitled “Epik draws line on Acceptable Use”, CEO Rob Monster wrote:

Upon careful consideration of the recent operating history of 8Chan, and in the wake of tragic news in El Paso and Dayton over the weekend, Epik has elected to not provide content delivery services to 8Chan. This is largely due to the concern of inadequate enforcement and the elevated possibility of violent radicalization on the platform.

He wrote that a “principal” of 8chan approached the company about transferring its domain to Epik on Monday.
The domain was in fact transferred, as DI reported shortly after it happened. Monster told DI that he had not actively solicited the site’s business.
While there’s no evidence its previous registrar, Tucows, had any intention of suspending the domain, its denial-of-service protection provider, CloudFlare, has publicly ditched 8chan and accused it of being responsible for the hate that lead to the El Paso shooting on Saturday.
8chan is a wild-west message board largely frequented by people with far-right views on race. It came in for extra scrutiny when it was reported that the El Paso terrorist posted a racist, anti-immigrant manifesto to the site shortly before the attack.
The site’s current owner, Jim Watkins, posted a surreal video to Twitter yesterday claiming, among other things, that the manifesto had in fact been posted by a third party.
Monster wrote that Epik was “reticent” about allowing 8chan to use its BitMitigate service to replace CloudFlare.
Its decision was moot anyway, as during the course of Monday speculation that 8chan would move to BitMitigate caused Epik’s service provider, Voxility, to sever ties with the company.
This caused BitMitigate to “temporarily” stop working for all of its customers, though regular domain registrants were not affected, Epik said.
Monster wrote that Epik will continue to provide services to all customers that publish legal content, but that it reserves the right to deny service in cases where the site’s owner has shown itself incapable of properly moderating user-generated content.
At time of writing, 8ch.net is not resolving at all for me.

2 Comments Tagged: 8chan, bitmitigate, el paso, epik, racism, terrorist

EFF becomes second to appeal new .org contract

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has appealed ICANN’s decision to add stronger trademark protection rules to .org.
The civil liberties organization has filed a Request for Reconsideration with ICANN, saying that the new .org contract should not oblige Public Interest Registry to implement the Uniform Rapid Suspension policy.
URS is a swifter, cheaper version of the anti-cybersquatting UDRP policy. It can lead to clear-cut cases of trademark-infringing domains being relatively quickly suspended, but not transferred.
But the EFF is worried that it could be abused to curtail free speech.
It said URS is “particularly dangerous for the many .org registrants who are engaged in an array of noncommercial work, including criticism of governments and corporations”.
URS was created via ICANN’s bottom-up, community-led policy-making process to apply to new gTLDs applied for in 2012, not legacy gTLDs such as .org, EFF argues,
Adding more rights protection to a legacy gTLD “should be initiated, if at all, through the multistakeholder policy development process, not in bilateral negotiations between a registry operator and ICANN staff”, the RfR states.
The EFF is also concerned that the new contract allows PIR to unilaterally create its own additional rights protection mechanisms.
I don’t think this is a new power, however. Remember when PIR proposed a “Copyright UDRP” a couple of years ago, evidently as a way to turf out The Pirate Bay? That plan was swiftly killed off after protests from, among others, the EFF.
The EFF’s reconsideration request (pdf) does not address the issue of price increase caps, which were removed in the new contract.
That more-controversial provision is already the subject of an RfR, filed by NameCheap last month.
Both RfRs will be dealt with by ICANN’s Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee before being passed to the full board.

Comment Tagged: .org, cybersquatting, eff, ICANN, pir, reconsideration, rfr, udrp, urs

CentralNic to pay $3.4 million for iwantmyname

CentralNic has made yet another registrar acquisition, picking up New Zealand-based Ideegeo Group for the equivalent of $3.4 million.
The company said it will pay NZD 5.2 million, of which 10% is being deferred until May 2021.
Ideegeo runs the registrar iwantmyname.com. It’s not ICANN-accredited in its own right, rather it’s a reseller of Hexonet, which CentralNic has also acquired.
With 180,000 names under management, Ideegeo accounted for a little under 5% of Hexonet’s business in terms of domain names.
Ideegeo had revenue last year of NZD 6.2 million ($4.2 million) and EBITDA of NZD 0.9 million ($600,000), CentralNic said.
CentralNic indicated that the acquisition has enabled it to lock in that revenue, preventing iwantmyname switching to a different reseller network.
But it’s not just the DUM CentralNic is interested in. It also said it wants its user-friendly interface, which it intends to roll out across its other retail registrar web sites.
There are also up-sell opportunities, as iwantmyname currently sells only domain names and none of the usually associated accoutrements.
It’s CentralNic’s fifth acquisition in the last 12 months.
It still has plenty of money left over from a recent €50 million ($56 million) bond issue, so don’t expect it to be the last.

Comment Tagged: acquisition, centralnic, hexonet, ideegeo, iwantmyname

Google has big, innovative plans for .new

Google is set to launch .new next year with a innovative value proposition that changes how domain names are used.
The company plans to slowly release .new domains to a carefully controlled customer base, starting in the first quarter 2020.
In a Registry Service Evaluation Process request filed with ICANN last week, the company said:

Google Registry plans to launch the .new TLD with a usage-based restriction in its domain registration policy that requires that all domain names be used for action generation or online content creation

The phrase “action generation or online contention creation” is key here, repeated across multiple Google documents.
What it means is that registrants will have to commit to use their .new domains in much the same way as Google itself is using its own batch of proof-of-concept names.
If you type doc.new into your browser address bar today, you’ll be taken to a fresh word processing document hosted on Google Docs, assuming you’re logged in to Google.
The same goes for domains such as spreadsheet.new, slides.new and a few others.
Looking at the .new zone file, it appears Google has plans to expand the concept beyond Office-style online applications into areas such as email, bug-reporting, support-ticketing, forms, reminders, and web site creation.
These services appear to be live but currently restricted to authorized users.
When Google opens up the .new space to third-party registrants, it’s easy to imagine domains such as tweet.new taking users directly to a Twitter composition page or blog.new immediately opening up a new post on something like WordPress or Medium.
Right now, Google is declining to comment on the specifics of its launch plan, but we can infer some details from its activity in the ICANN world.
I get the impression that the company does not want to be overly prescriptive in how .new domains are used, as long as they adhere to the “action generation or online contention creation” mantra.
Stephanie Duchesneau, Google program manager, told attendees at an ICANN summit this May that .new will be a space “where anyone is able to register, but the domain name has to be used in a certain way”.
While that may eventually be the case, at first Google plans to operated a Limited Registration Period under ICANN rules, during which only hand-vetted registrants will be able to grab domains.
Its recent RSEP request (pdf) asks ICANN permission to deploy an authentication system based on RFC 8495 to handle the LRP roll-out.
To the best of my understanding, RFC 8495 is a newish extension to EPP designed to deal with domain allocation, rather than usage, so it does not appear to be the means by which Google will enforce its policies.
The RSEP says it is Google’s plan to “seed” the gTLD with a bunch of third-party .new domains that adhere to the usage concept it has laid out.
This is due to happen some time in Q1 next year, but Google has not yet filed its TLD startup information with ICANN, so the exact dates are not known.
Under ICANN rules, as far as I can tell an LRP can run more or less indefinitely, so it’s not entirely clear when .new will become available to the general registrant.

3 Comments Tagged: .new, google registry, ICANN, new gTLDs, rsep

Amazon and Google have been BEATEN by a non-profit in the fight for .kids

One of the longest-fought new gTLD contests has finally been resolved, with a not-for-profit bid beating out Google and Amazon.
Amazon last week withdrew its application for .kids, leaving Hong Kong-based DotKids Foundation the only remaining applicant.
DotKids now has a clear run at the gTLD, with only ICANN contracting and technical testing before .kids goes live in the DNS root. We could be looking at a commercial launch within a year.
It’s a surprising outcome, not only because Amazon has all the money in the world, but also because it actually has a product called the Echo Dot Kids Edition, a candy-striped, parentally-controlled version of its creepy corporate surveillance device.
The fight between the two applicants was settled privately.
While ICANN has scheduled them in for a “last resort” auction more than once, the contention set was “On Hold” due to DotKids’ repeated use of ICANN appeals processes to delay.
My understanding is that it was not an auction. I don’t know whether any money changed hands to settle the dispute. It may just be a case of DotKids beating Amazon in a war of attrition.
DotKids, much like ultimately successful .music applicant DotMusic, pulled every trick in the book to delay .kids going to auction.
It’s filed no fewer than four Requests for Reconsideration with ICANN over the last five years, challenging almost every decision the organization made about the contention set.
Last year, DotKids (which had a reduced application fee under ICANN’s applicant support program) even asked ICANN for money to help it fight Amazon and Google at auction, then filed an RfR when ICANN refused.
The company has been in a Cooperative Engagement Process — a precursor to more formal appeals — with ICANN since February.
DotKids until recently also faced competition from Google, which had applied for the singular .kid but withdrew its application last October.
DotKids Foundation is run by Edmon Chung, perhaps best-known as the founder and CEO of 2003-round gTLD .asia.
I can’t help but feel that he has grasped a poison chalice.
The two examples we have of child-friendly domains to date are .kids.us, which was introduced by point-scoring US politicians under the Bush administration and promptly discarded when (almost literally) nobody used it, and .дети, the Russian equivalent, which usually has fewer than a thousand names in its zone file.
I believe that would-be registrants are broadly wary of signing up to vague content restrictions that could prove PR disasters if inadvertently violated.
In its 2012 application, DotKids said that .kids “will have a core mandate to advocate the production and publishing of more kids friendly content online”.
But what is a “kid”? DotKids said it would adopt the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child definition as “every human under 18 years old”.
Because the parents of every five-year-old would be happy for their kid to view sites designed for 17-year-olds, right?
It’s going to be challenging to get this one right, I think.

Comment Tagged: .asia, .kids, amazon, auction, contention, dotkids, google, ICANN