.au regs slide on 2LD anniversary

Australia’s ccTLD has taken a rare turn for the worse recently in terms of domains under management, around the anniversary of a major name release.

.au had 4,227,033 domains today according to the registry’s web site. That’s down about 36,000 from the 4,263,106 names it was reporting on September 21.

September 21 was the one-year anniversary of registry auDA releasing millions of previously reserved second-level domains into the available pool, the last stage of its liberalization of the registration rules.

The registry took over 100,000 registrations in just a couple of days upon that release.

The released names were all those that had been held back as “priority” reservations for six months to give the owners of the matching third-level .com.au or .org.au domains first refusal.

While auDA does not daily break down its 2LD versus 3LD numbers, it seems likely the recent declines can be attributable to the predictable first-anniversary junk drop.

Before the 2LD service became available in March 2022, .au had 3.4 million domains under management, so the program has still boosted numbers overall.

Comment Tagged: .au, 2lds, auda

ICANN accused of power grab over $271 million auction fund

ICANN has acted outside of its powers by ignoring community policy recommendations and leaving its $271 million gTLD auction windfall open to being frittered away on lawyers, according to community members.

The Intellectual Property Constituency of the GNSO has filed a formal Request for Reconsideration over a board resolution passed at ICANN 78 last month in Hamburg, and other constituencies may add their names to it shortly.

The row concerns the huge cash pile ICANN was left sitting on following the auction of 17 new gTLD contracts between 2014 and 2016, which raised $240 million (as of July, around $271 million after investment returns and ICANN helping itself to a portion to fund its operations reserve).

It was decided that the money should be used to fund a grant program for worthy causes, with organizations able to apply for up to $500,000 during discrete rounds, the first of which is due to open next year with a $10 million pot. Around $220 million is believed to be earmarked for the grant program over its lifetime.

But the Cross Community Working Group for Auction Proceeds (CCWG-AP) that came up with the rules of the program was concerned that unsuccessful applicants, or others chagrined by ICANN’s grant allocations, might challenge decisions using ICANN’s accountability mechanisms.

This would cause money earmarked for worthy causes to be spaffed away on lawyers, which the CCWG-AP wanted to avoid, so it recommended that ICANN modify its fundamental bylaws to exclude the grant program from mechanisms such as the Independent Review Process, which usually incurs high six-figure or seven-figure legal fees.

ICANN seemed to accept this recommendation — formally approving it in June last year — until ICANN 78, when the board approved a surprise U-turn on this so-called Recommendation 7.

The board said it was changing its mind because it had found “alternative ways” to achieve the same objective, “including ways that do not require modification to ICANN’s core Bylaws on accountability”. The resolution stated:

As a result, the Board is updating its action on Recommendation 7 to reflect that ICANN org should implement this Recommendation 7 directly through the use of applicant terms and conditions rather than through a change to ICANN’s Fundamental Bylaws.

This left some community members — and at least one ICANN director — scratching their heads. Sure, you might be able to ban grant applicants from using the IRP in the program’s terms and conditions, but that wouldn’t stop third parties such as an applicant’s competitors from filing an IRP and causing legal spaffery.

The board was well aware of these concerns when it passed the resolution last month. Directors pointed out in Hamburg that ICANN is still pursuing the bylaws amendment route, but has removed it as a dependency for the first grant round going ahead.

This left some community members nonplussed — it wasn’t clear whether ICANN planned to go ahead with the program ignoring community recommendations, or not. The reassuring words of directors didn’t seem to tally with the language of the resolution.

So the IPC took the initiative and unironically invoked an accountability mechanism — the RfR — to get ICANN to change its mind again. I gather the request was filed as a precaution within the 30-day filing window due to the lack of clarity on ICANN’s direction.

The RfR states:

the impetus behind the Bylaws change was to prevent anyone from challenging grant decisions, including challenges from parties not in contractual privity with ICANN. The Board’s hasty solution would only prevent contracting grant applicants from challenging decisions; it would not in any way affect challenges by anyone else – including anyone who wished to challenge the award of a grant. The grant program could be tied in knots by disgruntled parties, competitive organizations or anyone else who wished to delay or prevent ICANN from carrying out any decision to grant funds. This is exactly what the CCWG-AP sought to prevent

The IPC says that by bypassing the bylaws amendment process, which involves community consent, the ICANN board is basically giving itself the unilateral right to turn off its bylaws-mandated accountability mechanisms when it sees fit. A power grab.

It wants the Hamburg resolution reversed.

Discussing the RfR a few days before it was filed, other members of the GNSO Council suggested that their constituencies might sign on as fellow complainants if and when it is amended.

RfRs are handled by ICANN’s Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee, which does not currently have a publicly scheduled upcoming meeting.

2 Comments Tagged: auctions, ccwg-ap, gnso, grant program, ICANN, ipc, new gTLDs, rfr

A registrar is getting blamed for an Israeli war propaganda site

Israel-based registrar Wix is being blamed for a gory anti-Hamas web site being promoted by Israeli government officials.

A number of recent media reports — notably including this one by usually reliable news wire UPI — have said that Wix is behind the incredibly NSFW web site at hamas.com.

The site is a dark parody of a Hamas fund-raising page, containing disturbing footage of the group’s October 7 atrocities — dead bodies, terrorists taking hostages, shooting dogs and burning homes.

So I imagine Wix would be disturbed to learn it is being credited as the creator of the site, apparently purely because the domain was registered via its registrar and hosted on its hosting service.

“The Israeli software company Wix has created a website to spread anti-Hamas propaganda amid the war in Gaza,” UPI reported, sourcing a GoDaddy Whois lookup that lists Wix as the registrar but shows no registrant information.

A Whois lookup on Wix itself, which should contain information beyond the registry record supplied by GoDaddy, does not reveal any additional information — not even redacted fields — about the registrant.

Hamas usually uses hamas.ps for its web site, but it’s currently down reportedly due to cyber-attacks by pro-Israel hacktivists.

hamas.com has been parked for years by what UPI uncharitably refers to as “cybersquatters”.

Comment Tagged: gaza, hamas, israel, wix

Two more dot-brands bite the dust

Comcast has told ICANN it no longer wishes to operate two of its dot-brand gTLDs, which it hasn’t been using.

The US cable company said it wants to terminate its Registry Agreements for .comcast and .xfinity but didn’t say why.

My records show no registered names in either TLD, apart from the obligatory nic. domains. Comcast has no other dot-brands.

Assuming the terminations go through, it will reduce the number of contracted dot-brands to 376 from an initial total of 494.

Comment Tagged: .xfinity, comcast, dot-brands, terminations

Google sells five-figure AI domain and six-figure .ing hack

A single-letter domain, an AI-related name, and a category-killer domain hack appear to have been sold by Google Registry during the latest week of its ongoing Early Access Period for the new .ing gTLD.

Judging by the .ing zone file, at least three domains have been registered in .ing since I last posted about the apparent seven-figure sale of host.ing a couple weeks ago.

The new names are w.ing, shipp.ing and tur.ing. I assume tur.ing refers to war hero Alan Turing, one of the fathers of computing and namesake of the Turing Test, used to judge AI intelligence.

w.ing was registered first, on November 13, when it would have incurred a six-figure price tag, according to published registrar retail prices. The registrant is listed as Google via the registrar Markmonitor.

Unlike w.ing and host.ing, the other two were registered via GoDaddy (albeit with redacted registrant names) so we can be more confident they are actually sales to third-party registrants.

Both shipp.ing and tur.ing were registered shortly after Google’s EAP rolled over into week three pricing ($35,000 at 101Domain‘s low-end prices, as a guide) on November 21 at 1600 UTC.

If Whois can be relied upon, the shipp.ing registrant is based in Texas and the tur.ing registrant in Arizona.

tur.ing is the only one trying to resolve currently, from where I’m sitting, but it fails due to a cert error.

Google’s EAP enters week four tomorrow at 1600 UTC, at which point prices fall daily until they settle at general availability pricing on December 5.

Comment Tagged: .ing, domain hacks, eap, google, new gTLDs

.blackfriday is still a bit rubbish

It’s Cyber Monday, so this post is 100% OFF the usual price!

A decade ago, Black Friday — the day after Thanks Giving, on which retailers in the US deeply discount products to drum up sales — wasn’t really a thing here in the UK, but now it’s everywhere.

Largely as a result of pressure from US-based online retailers, the concept of Black Friday has been gradually seeping into the public consciousness here, and elsewhere in the world, since the early 2010s, and as such, you might expect sales of .blackfriday domains to have grown in tandem.

But they haven’t. In fact, the .blackfriday gTLD, which has been available since mid-2014, still languishes unloved and untended.

The latest registry transaction report shows just 1,084 .blackfriday domains under management at the end of July, down from 1,127 a year earlier and 1,580 five years ago.

The TLD peaked in 2016 at 12,000 names at a time when the original registry, Uniregistry, held approximately 10,000 domains for itself that it subsequently dropped.

The most-recent zone files show under 1,000 .blackfriday domains with name servers.

Being owned by GoDaddy Registry since March 2022, after Uniregistry shuttered and sold off all its gTLD contracts, hasn’t helped matters.

Remarkably, you still can’t buy .blackfriday domains via GoDaddy — the retail registrar arm of the company has precisely zero .blackfriday domains under management and godaddy.blackfriday redirects to a godaddy.com storefront where .blackfriday domains are not available.

If Google juice is any indication of popularity, some of the highest-profile companies actually using .blackfriday domains appear to be losing their enthusiasm.

Just clicking on the first few dozen .blackfriday domains in a Google results page reveals several web sites that have not been updated for this year’s Black Friday, some not for years. One of them, holidays.blackfriday, is listed as a flagship tenant on GoDaddy’s registry web site, yet is still flogging deals for the European summer 2023 season.

Comment Tagged: .blackfriday, godaddy, new gTLDs

Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs

Internet Naming Co has acquired five unused dot-brand gTLDs and will relaunch them as unrestricted generics in the coming months.

The company, the Caymans-based successor to UNR, has acquired .diy, .food, .lifestyle, .living, and .vana from Lifestyle Domain Holdings, CEO Shayan Rostam told me today.

They were all dot-brands that were not used, but ICANN has already removed the dot-brand restrictions in their contracts, allowing them to be sold to a general audience.

The gTLDs moved to Tucows from Verisign’s winding-down back-end registry services platform this week, and INC is now waiting for ICANN to formally approve the registry agreement assignments, Rostam said.

“I’m launching these TLDs [as] unrestricted generics this winter, as our registrar partners are already aware,” he said in an email. “Startup launch plans will be finalized shortly after assignment.”

The acquisitions increase the size of INC’s portfolio from 11 to 16. The company launched with nine UNR TLDs — .click, .country, .help, .forum, .hiv, .love, .property, .sexy, and .trust — last year. It also runs .realty and .rest, according to its web site.

The five new acquisitions were originally owned by Lifestyle Domain Holdings, a subsidiary of a cable TV company that is now part of Warner Bros Discovery, which appears to be unloading its entire portfolio.

LDH earlier this year asked ICANN to terminate its contracts for .foodnetwork, .travelchannel, .hgtv and .cookingnetwork, and later for .cityeats and .frontdoor.

Comment Tagged: .diy, .food, .living, .vana, acquistion, assignment, internet naming co, lifestyle, lifestyle domain holdings

Domain universe grows despite .com drag

The number of registered domain names in the world grew by 2.7 million in the third quarter, despite market-leading .com shrinking, according to Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief.

There were 359.3 million domains across all TLDs at the end of September, according to the DNIB. up from 356.6 million at the end of June.

Over the same period, .com shrunk by half a million names as Verisign faces challenges from exposure to erratic demand from China.

New gTLD volumes were up by 2.1 million names to end the quarter at 30.2 million. Judging by zone files, at least half of these new names seem to be cheap, low-quality regs in the likes of .top and .cfd.

Total ccTLD names were 138.1 million at the end of the quarter, up by a million. All of the top 10 ccTLDs grew or were flat, except .uk, which lost about a hundred thousand names.

3 Comments Tagged: .com, .uk, dnib, verisign

Did somebody spend a million bucks on a Google domain hack?

There’s evidence that Google Registry may have sold a .ing domain name for seven figures during its pre-launch period.

Google is well into its Early Access Period for the new gTLD, which runs for five weeks with premium prices decreasing every week or day until December 5, when they go to general availability pricing.

The EAP was notable for just how premium the first-week prices were — if you really wanted a quality domain hack for your business, it would cost you well north of $1 million.

But as far as I can tell from zone files, just one domain was added during that first week — host.ing, which has a Whois creation date of November 6, well within the cut-off for the seven-figure price tag.

The domain does not resolve and Whois currently shows Google itself as the registrant and Google’s go-to registrar, Markmonitor, as the registrar.

So it may be a self-reg, but waiting until EAP to grab a name in-house when Google has had literally years to do so does seem unusual.

Comment Tagged: .ing, google

ICANN cans Freenom

Controversial free-domains company Freenom has lost its ICANN accreditation, signalling the end of its life as a gTLD registrar.

Org said that as of November 25, Freenom (aka OpenTLD) will no longer be able to sell or renew any domains.

The termination follows the company’s failure to resolve or respond to three separate breach notices, covering dozens of infractions, that Compliance sent between September and October.

Real damage to registrants was caused — many could not rescue their expired domains or transfer names to another registrar.

The company has 16,521 gTLD domains under management at the end of July, according to the most-recent registry transaction reports. They will now be moved to a more-reliable registrar under ICANN’s De-Accredited Registrar Transition Procedure.

Freenom may have been a small fish in the gTLD space, but it gave away tens of millions of free domains in five ccTLDs it controlled, mostly to spammers and other ne’er-do-wells.

It was recently reported that it has lost or is losing its deals with these ccTLDs, notably .tk, after their governments became aghast at how badly they were being abused.

Comment Tagged: compliance, freenom, ICANN, opentld, termination