Let’s Learn IDNs — .中文网 (Chinese Website)

Today, the belated first in an irregular series of articles devoted to making new IDN gTLDs more recognizable to the majority of DI readers who use the Latin alphabet in their native tongue.
Let’s Learn IDNs, as I said in my introduction to the series, won’t teach you Greek, but it will hopefully make it easier to instinctively know what a Greek IDN means when you see it.
I’m hoping this will prove very useful for everyone with an interest in the new gTLD program, bringing meaning to what otherwise would be an incomprehensible string of gibberish.
For the first lesson, we’re looking at TLD Registry‘s .中文网, which I guarantee after today you’ll never forget.
U-Label
.中文网
A-Label
.xn--fiq228c5hs
Translation
“.chinesewebsite”
Script
Chinese (Simplified)
Language(s)
Chinese. According to the registry, this includes “Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka and over 250 other Chinese dialects.”
Transliteration
Zhōng Wén Wǎng
Pronunciation
Jong (rhymes with long)
When (as in “when are you arriving”)
Wong (rhymes with long)
How to Learn this IDN
In Chinese, each character generally represents a syllable and will often also have meaning as a word in its own right, which is the case with the three characters of .中文网.
Helpfully, these characters are also pictograms that pretty much explain themselves.
中 (Zhōng) is a line going through the middle of a box. It means “middle”. It’s also the first character of the Chinese word for “China” — 中国, which literally means “Middle Kingdom”.
文 (Wén) looks like a little writing desk with a quill on top. It means “language”. Combine it with 中 to get 中文, which means “Chinese Language”.
网 (Wǎng) looks like a net (or maybe a cobweb). It’s the Simplified Chinese word for “net”, which the Chinese also use to refer to the internet or web.
“Altogether, 中文网 as a gTLD string, is two words that make one common Chinese language expression: Chinese-language (中文) website (网),” said TLD Registry’s head of comms Simon Cousins.
Dead easy, right?
Certainly, since Cousins first explained this to me a few months ago, I’ve never failed to recognize .中文网 whenever I’ve seen it.

Phishing domains double in 2013

The number of domain names registered for phishing attacks doubled in the first half of the year, according to the latest data from the Anti-Phishing Working Group.
The APWG identified 53,685 phishing domains, of which 12,173 are believed to have been registered by phishers. The remainder belonged to compromised web servers.
This 12,173 number — up from 5,835 in the year-ago period — is the important one for the domain name industry, as it is there that registries and registrars have the ability to make a difference.
“The increase is due to a sudden uptick in domain registrations by Chinese phishers,” the APWG said in its Domain Name Use and Trends 1H2013 report (pdf). Chinese targets accounted for 8,240 (68%) of the registered domains.
This works out to about 66 maliciously registered domains per day on average, or less than half a percent of the total number of domains registered across all TLDs daily.
According to the APWG, the number of phishing domains that actually contain a brand or a variation of a brand is smaller still, at 1,244. That’s flat on the second half of 2012.
It works out to about seven new trademark-infringing phishing domain names per day that a brand owner somewhere in the world (though probably China) has to deal with.
APWG reiterated what it has said in previous reports:

most maliciously registered domain names offered nothing to confuse a potential victim. Placing brand names or variations thereof in the domain name itself is not a favored tactic, since brand owners are proactively scanning Internet zone files for their brand names. As we have observed in the past, the domain name itself usually does not matter to phishers, and a domain name of any meaning, or no meaning at all, in any TLD, will usually do. Instead, phishers often place brand names in subdomains or subdirectories.

Register.com hit by breach notice over 62,232 domains

Register.com, a Web.com business that is one of the top ten registrars by domains under management, has been hit by an ICANN compliance notice covering 62,232 domain names.
It’s a weird one.
ICANN says that the company has failed to provide records documenting the ownership trail of the domains in question, which all currently belong to Register.com itself.
The notice names 000123.net, 0011pp.com, 00h4.com, 010fang.net, 01rabota.com, 02071988.com and 020tong.com, but it seems that these are merely the first in a alphabetical list that is much, much longer.
Judging by DomainTools’ Whois history, these domains all appear to have been originally registered at various times by individuals in China and India, then allowed to expire, then registered by Register.com to itself.
The only common link appears to be that they were kept by Register.com after they expired, for whatever reasons registrars usually hoard their customers’ expired domains.
According to the compliance notice, ICANN wants the registrar to:

Provide a detailed explanation to ICANN how 62,232 domains in which Register.com itself is the registrant are used for the purposes of Registrar Services, as defined by Section 1.11 of the RAA;

The Registrar Accreditation Agreement says registrars have to keep registrant agreement records, except for a limited class of cases where the domain is owned by the registrar itself and used for registrar-related stuff.
Register.com, one of the original five oldest competitive registrars, has been given until October 2 to come up with the requested information for face losing its accreditation.
The registrar has almost three million gTLD domains under management. Combined with its Web.com sister registrars, which include Network Solutions, the number is closer to 10 million.

Angry Birds backing two Chinese-language gTLDs

The Finnish/Irish new gTLD applicant TLD Registry Ltd has signed two ICANN Registry Agreements, covering the Chinese strings .在线 (.online) and .中文网 (a phrase meaning “Chinese language website”).
The deals were signed yesterday, but the news is set to be formally announced in Beijing on Tuesday by the Finnish prime minister, Jyrki Katainen, who’s on a state visit to the country.
He’ll be joined by Peter Vesterbacka, chief marketing officer of Angry Birds maker Rovio Entertainment, which is supporting TLD Registry as the first announced member of its “founders program”.
The two new agreements mean ICANN has now contractual powers over more new gTLDs (19) than legacy ones (18).
TLD Registry CEO Arto Isokoski told DI this morning that 在线 and 中文网 are already extremely well-known and widely-used phrases on the Chinese internet.
“在线” is the direct translation of “online” and “中文网” is what Chinese web users instinctively type when they’re searching for the Chinese-language version of a foreign brand’s web site, he said.
“It surprises me as well that these were not contested,” Isokoski said. “These are the strings that Chinese users type in when they’re looking for web sites online.”
Both TLDs will be open to registrants anywhere in the world, though .中文网 seems to be particularly suited for brands from the ASCII parts of the world, looking to improve SEO in the country.
Isokoski said that the company hopes to take .在线 and .中文网 to market early next year. If the strings are delegated in early November, then general availability could start in mid-January, he said.
Depending on ICANN delays, the launch schedule may have to be moved back to February or March in order to avoid the “dead period” around Chinese New Year, which starts in late January, he said.
The most directly competitive gTLD would be .网址, an arguably superior string meaning roughly “website”, which is now out of contention and likely to sign its own contract soon.
Two other Chinese gTLDs, both owned by Donuts, have ICANN contracts already — .游戏 (games) and .企业 (business).
Isokoski said that TLD Registry hopes to have about 20 members of its founders program (included Rovio, which is Finnish but makes games wildly popular in China) and about 20 launch registrars.
Like other IDN gTLD registries, the company is hoping that its first-to-market advantage will give its marketing a lift due to the extra media interest.
TLD Registry is based in Ireland, near its back-end provider Afilias, but was founded by Finns. Afilias alum Pinky Brand is managing registrar relationships for the company.

.taipei not blocked after all

Taipei City Government’s application for the .taipei new gTLD is still live, despite indications to the contrary from ICANN last week.
On Friday, we reported that there was some confusion about the status of the bid, which was flagged by ICANN as “Eligible for Extended Evaluation” in one place and “Ineligible for Further Review” in another.
We wondered aloud whether Taiwan’s controversial national identity was responsible for the application failing due to lack of governmental support.
But an ICANN spokesperson called last night to confirm that the “Eligible” status is the correct one. The ICANN web site has been corrected accordingly.
What this means is that .taipei is not rejected yet, but must provide more evidence of government support if it wants to pass Extended Evaluation and eventually get delegated.
The question remains, however: which government are we talking about here? If it’s the People’s Republic of China, which claims Taiwan as a province, Taipei may still face problems.

CNNIC hit by “largest ever” denial of service attack

Chinese ccTLD operator CNNIC suffered up to half a day of degraded performance and intermittent accessibility yesterday, after being hit by what it called its “largest ever” denial of service attack.
CNNIC is one of ICANN’s three Emergency Back-End Registry Operators, contracted to take over the running of any new gTLD registries that fail. It’s also the named back-end for seven new gTLD applications.
According to an announcement on its web site, as well as local reports and tips to DI, the first wave of DDoS hit it at about midnight yesterday. A second wave followed up at 4am local time and lasted up to six hours.
According to a tipster, all five of .cn’s name servers were inaccessible in China during the attack.
Local reports (translated) say that many Chinese web sites were also inaccessible to many users, but the full scale of the problem doesn’t seem to be clear yet.
China’s .cn is the fourth-largest ccTLD, with close to 10 million domains under management.

Failures mount up as ICANN releases penultimate week of IE results

Eight new gTLD applications flunked Initial Evaluation this week, according to ICANN’s just-released results.
One of them, the Taipei City Government’s bid for .taipei, has been flagged as “Ineligible for Further Review” — the only application to receive such a status to date — suggesting it is fully dead.
But the full IE report delivered by ICANN says .taipei is actually “Eligible for Extended Evaluation”. It’s not clear right now which of these statuses is the correct one.
Its IE report says “the required documentation of support or non-objection was either not provided or did not meet the criteria” for Taipei’s bid to pass the Geographic Names Review.
While the city government seems to be the applicant, city bids also require national government support, which could be problematic given that the People’s Republic of China regards Taiwan as a province and the United Nations does not officially recognize it as a nation.
Also failing to receive a passing score this week was one of three bidders for the hotly contested gTLD .eco.
Planet Dot Eco failed on both its financial and technical questions, one of the first two applicants to suffer this double whammy. The other was Metaregistrar, which has just found out its app for .frl has failed on both counts.
The clothing retailer Express, noted for its failed Legal Rights Objection against Donuts, also failed its technical evaluation.
Express had a Verisign back-end, while Planet Dot Eco is using ARI Registry Services. Metaregistrar did not specify a third-party back-end provider in its application.
.olayan became the third application from the Saudi conglomerate Olayan Investments to fail because it did not provide its financial statements as required by the Applicant Guidebook.
.place, an application by 1589757 Alberta Ltd (‘DotPlace’) also failed to provide financial statements, as did the dot-brands .shaw, .alcon and .rexroth.
These applications received passing scores this week:

.mail .tech .kpn .play .weatherchannel .crown .aeg .statoil .app .cloud .honeywell .cruises .vig .netaporter .juegos .aramco .lamborghini .soccer .ping .surf .lol .gallo .parts .flowers .gree .webs .netflix .science .school .inc .rio .bbt .mutual .auspost .best .men .symantec .med .doctor .deals .insure .citadel .care .barcelona .racing .feedback .amfam .design .save .nhk .productions .forum .finish .spot .hitachi .web .dish .vistaprint .art .maison .properties .nissay .book .tiffany .haus .skin .hockey .phone .allfinanz .finance .通用电气公司 .手表 .電訊盈科 .珠宝 .ارامكو .hisamitsu .intuit .orientexpress .gecompany .team .church .panasonic .onyourside .ski

With only 141 applications left in evaluation, there’s only one week officially left on the IE timetable, though I expect ICANN will spend some time mopping up the stragglers afterwards.
There are 23 applications eligible for extended evaluation.

China pushes .pw to over 250,000 names

Directi’s .PW Registry has taken over 250,000 domain registrations in the two and a half months since it launched, largely thanks to growth in China.
According to recent DomainTools research, Chinese registrars such as DNSPod and Xin Net lead .pw sales, and .PW business head Sandeep Ramchandani told DI today that this trend is now even more noticeable.
The frankly surprising volume seems to be due largely to its low pricing and some aggressive registrar promotion. Xin Net, for example, sells .pw names for about $6 each, compared to $9 for .com.
While Chinese-script domains are available, most registrations are for Latin strings, Ramchandani said.
The 250,000 number excludes domains that have been deleted for abuse, of which there have been quite a lot.
Ramchandani said that the registry’s abuse department is staffed around the clock.
Directi is using NameSentry from Architelos to track abusive names and has made deals with the most-abused registrars to take down names at the registry level when they pop up, he said.

ICANN hires new VP from Yahoo!

ICANN has poached a Yahoo! executive to head up its outreach efforts in Asia.
Singapore-based Kuek Yu-Chuang, who held a similar role at Yahoo, has been named vice president for global stakeholder engagement for Asia. He starts August 1.
Asia is one of the regions in which ICANN is trying to establish itself a more prominent presence.
Singapore has been named as a “hub”, ostensibly of equal importance to its LA headquarters, and it was announced in April that a satellite office will also be opened in China.
Before Yahoo, Yu-Chuang had experience working for the Singapore government.

Chinese geo gTLD bidder drops out of two-way fight

The Chinese government-controlled news agency Xinhua has dropped out of the race for the new gTLD .广东 — the local name of Guangdong, China’s most populous province.
The withdrawal clears a path for the only other applicant for the string, Guangzhou Yu Wei Information Technology, to pass more quickly through the ICANN approval process.
Guangzhou Yu Wei is affiliated with Zodiac Holdings, the Cayman Islands-based portfolio applicant founded by James Seng, but it also has backing from the Guangdong provincial government.
As a formally designated Geographic string, government backing is necessary for approval.
Xinhua had not appeared especially enthusiastic about its bid. Its prioritization number of 1772 means it didn’t bother to participate in ICANN’s lottery last December.
Zodiac, on the other hand, took advantage of the IDN bias in the process and wound up with a priority of 79. It passed Initial Evaluation in early April.
The company filed a Community application, but a Community Priority Evaluation will obviously no longer be required. It intends to restrict .广东 to registrants that can prove a local presence.
Zodiac is using .cn registry CNNIC as its back-end registry provider.