HTC dumps its dot-brand

Mobile phone manufacturer HTC has become the latest dot-brand operator to get out of the new gTLD game.
The $4.3 billion-a-year Taiwanese firm has told ICANN that it no longer wishes to run .htc as a dot-brand registry and ICANN has signaled its intent to terminate the contract.
It becomes the 27th dot-brand, from the hundreds that have entered contracts over the last few years, to change its mind about owning a vanity gTLD.
Most recently, fast food chain McDonalds and kitchen utensils company Pampered Chef both dumped their respective dot-brands.
Like the previous terminations, HTC never actually did anything with .htc; it only had the contractually mandated nic.htc in its zone file.

Comment Tagged: .htc, dot-brands, ICANN, new gTLDs, termination

Halloran made ICANN’s first chief data protection officer

ICANN lifer Dan Halloran has added the title of chief data protection officer to his business card.
The long-serving deputy general counsel was named ICANN’s first CDPO on Friday, continuing to report to his current boss, general counsel John Jeffrey.
Privacy is currently the hottest topic in the ICANN community, with considerable debate about how contracted parties might be able to reconcile their ICANN obligations with forthcoming European data protection legislation.
But Halloran’s new role only covers the protection of personal data that ICANN itself handles; it does not appear to give him powers in relation to ongoing discussions about how registries and registrars comply with data privacy regulations.
He will be tasked with overseeing privacy frameworks for data handling and conducting occasional reviews, ICANN said.
ICANN has on occasion messed up when it comes to privacy, such as when it accidentally published the home addresses of new gTLD applicants in 2012, or when it made sensitive applicant financial data openly searchable on its applicant portal.
Halloran joined ICANN over 17 years ago and before his deputy GC position served as chief registrar liaison.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, privacy

Verisign confirms first price increase under new .net contract

Verisign is to increase the wholesale price of an annual .net domain registration by 10%, the company confirmed yesterday.
It’s the first in an expected series of six annual 10% price hikes permitted under its recently renewed registry agreement with ICANN.
The annual price of a .net registration, renewal, or transfer will go up from $8.20 to $9.02, effective February 1, 2018
If all six options are exercised, the price of a .net would be $15.27 by the time the current contract expires, including the $0.75 ICANN fee. It would be $14.52 without the ICANN fee.
The increase was confirmed by CEO Jim Bidzos as Verisign reported its second-quarter earnings yesterday.
For the quarter, Verisign saw net income go up to $123 million from $113 million a year ago, on revenue that was up 0.7% at $289 million.
It now has cash of $1.8 billion, up $11 million on a year ago.
It ended the quarter with 144.3 million .com and .net names in its registry, up 0.8% on last year and 0.68 million sequentially.

Comment Tagged: .net, earnings, ICANN, pricing, verisign

EFF recommends against new gTLDs

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has recommended that domain registrants concerned about intellectual property “bullies” steer clear of new gTLDs.
The view is expressed in a new EFF report today that is particularly critical of policies in place at new gTLD portfolio registries Donuts and Radix.
The report (pdf) also expresses strong support for .onion, the pseudo-TLD available only to users of the Tor browser and routing network, which the EFF is a long-term supporter of.
The report makes TLD recommendations for “security against trademark bullies”, “security against identity theft and marketing”, “security against overseas speech regulators” and “security against copyright bullies”.
It notes that no one TLD is “best” on all counts, so presents a table explaining which TLD registries — a broad mix of the most popular gTLD and ccTLD registries — have which relevant policies.
For those afraid of trademark “bullies”, the EFF recommends against 2012-round new gTLDs on the basis that they all have the Uniform Rapid Suspension service. It singles out Donuts for special concern due to its Domain Protected Marks List, which adds an extra layer of protection for trademark owners.
On copyright, the report singles out Donuts and Radix for their respective “trusted notifier” schemes, which give the movie and music industries a hotline to report large-scale piracy web sites.
These are both well-known EFF positions that the organization has expressed in previous publications.
On the other two issues, the report recommends examining ccTLDs for those which don’t have to kowtow to local government speech regulations or publicly accessible Whois policies.
In each of the four areas of concern, the report suggests taking a look at .onion, while acknowledging that the pseudo-gTLD would be a poor choice if you actually want people to be able to easily access your web site.
While the opinions expressed in the report may not be surprising, the research that has gone into comparing the policies of 40-odd TLD registries covering hundreds of TLDs appears on the face of it to be solid and possibly the report’s biggest draw.
You can read it here (pdf).

3 Comments Tagged: copyright, donuts, eff, new gTLDs, radix, trademarks, whois

auDA chair quits days before vote to fire him

The chair of .au registry auDA has quit the job just three days before members were due to vote on a motion to fire him.
Stuart Benjamin, who took on the role in late 2015, faced a special member meeting on Monday that had just one resolution on its agenda:

That Stuart Benjamin be removed as a director of the Company with immediate effect.

Benjamin said today: “I have reached the view that there is no possible positive outcome for the organisation from the vote planned for Monday.”
That could mean he anticipated losing the vote, but it could also mean that he viewed a narrow victory as just as bad an outcome, optically, for auDA.
The confidence vote had been on the agenda due to a campaign at Grumpy.com.au organized by domainer/blogger Ned O’Meara.
Grumpy’s supporters reckon auDA has gone to the dogs over the last couple of years, with staff quitting or being fired en masse and an unwelcome culture of secrecy being imposed.
But Benjamin wrote:

As Chair I have overseen an increase in policy generation, in effective oversight, and in good governance.
We have also commissioned some of the largest member consultation projects in auDA’s history.
However, the auDA Board and members need to forge a different way of working together and I think there is a better chance for that to happen if I step away.

One bone of contention had been a new “code of conduct” that allowed auDA to revoke membership from any member who harassed or bullied staff.
Grumpy had opposed this measure because the code also included a gag order barring members from criticizing auDA in the media.
Benjamin took the opportunity to address this in his resignation announcement today, saying:

Everyone at auDA is open to robust criticism on strategy, policy and decision-making – that interaction makes us stronger. When that healthy engagement devolves into personal attacks on board members, the capacity of the organisation to attract and retain good people is affected.
I will continue to take a stand against cyber bullying and will not be deterred in standing up to anyone who thinks it is acceptable to personally attack staff and directors. I do not want my experiences to discourage others from running for election, or accepting an appointment, to this important organisation.

Another fractious issue, auDA’s decision to build a new in-house registry infrastructure, appears to have softened this week also.
The special general meeting is to proceed as planned on Monday. The only other items on the agenda are a CEO’s report and “any other business”.
Benjamin’s resignation letter to the .au community can be read here.

1 Comment Tagged: .au, auda, grumpy.com.au

Crocker: no date on next new gTLD round

ICANN will NOT set a date for the next round of new gTLD applications, despite recent pleas from registry operators.
That’s according to a letter (pdf) from ICANN chair Steve Crocker to the Registries Stakeholder Group published today.
The RySG had asked (pdf) last month for ICANN’s leadership to set a fourth-quarter 2018 deadline for the next application window.
It said that that drawing a line in the sand would allow potential applicants to plan and would prevent current policy-development processes from being abused to delay the next round.
But Crocker says in his letter that it is up to the ICANN community, not its board of directors, to determine if and when a new round should commence. He wrote:

Once the community completes its work, the Board will consider the community’s recommendations to introduce additional new gTLDs. Without the final findings and recommendations from the review and PDP, the Board won’t be able to determine what needs to be done prior to the opening of another application process…
The Registry Stakeholder Group’s letter suggests that by setting a date for the opening of another application process, the Board will provide the community with a target date to work toward. Although the Board setting a date would achieve this, doing so might contravene the multi-stakeholder process that allows for the community to have the necessary discussions to arrive at consensus, and to determine the timing of their own work

It seems this is an instance in which the board does not like the idea of setting policy in a top-down manner.
Crocker said the two remaining gating factors for a next round are the consumer choice and competition review of the first round, which is ongoing, and the GNSO’s New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process (PDP).
The PDP has now been going on for 18 months and yet discussions remain at a very early stage, with hardly any preliminary recommendations being agreed upon.
There’s not even agreement on foundational issues such as whether to carry on dividing the program into discreet application rounds or to start a first-come, first-served process.
The RySG had suggested in its letter that the next window could open after certain threshold issues had been resolved but before all policy work was complete, and that at the very least ICANN staff should get to work on a new version of the Applicant Guidebook while the PDP is still ongoing.
But Crocker again responded that the staff cannot get to work on implementation until the board has considered the community’s final recommendations.
ICANN’s most recent estimates for the opening of the next round would see applications accepted in 2020, eight years after the last round.

Comment Tagged: gnso, ICANN, new gTLDs, pdp, rysg, subsequent procedures

Donuts to complete Rightside acquisition tonight

Donuts is on the verge of closing its acquisition of coopetitor Rightside, after the vast majority of Rightside shareholders agreed to sell up.
Rightside just disclosed that owners of 92% of its shares — 17,740,054 shares — have agreed to sell at Donuts’ offer price of $10.60 per share.
That means the remaining 8% of shares that were not tendered will be converted into the right to receive $10.60 and Donuts can close the acquisition before the Nasdaq opens tomorrow morning.
After the $213 million deal closes, Rightside will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Donuts and Donuts can get on with implementing whatever efficiencies it has identified.
Rightside will cease to be publicly listed afterwards.
Together the combined company will be the registry for about 240 new gTLDs, as well as owning its own back-end registry infrastructure and the retail registrar Name.com.

Comment Tagged: acquisition, donuts, rightside

MMX says .vip renewals running at 75%

MMX has revealed that its renewal rate for first-month .vip registrations in China were over 75%.
The portfolio gTLD registry, also known as Minds + Machines, said that 317,000 domains that were registered during .vip’s first month of availability have now been renewed.
The news follows a June announcement that the renewal rate would be over 70%.
The large majority of .vip names registered are registered via Chinese registrars, where prices can be around the $3 to $4 mark.
MMX CEO Toby Hall said in a statement that the company now plans to release some of its reserved “premium” .vip names.
He added that the company is confident that its recurring revenue from renewals will soon be high enough to cover its fixed overhead costs, one of its key performance benchmarks.

Comment Tagged: .vip, china, mmx, new gTLDs

auDA now looking to outsource .au registry

Australian ccTLD overseer auDA appears to have softened its approach to overhauling the management of .au.
The organization said today that it’s now planning to look for an “outsourced registry operation” that will come online in July 2018.
In recent months, the company had been looking for suppliers to help it build a dedicated, in-house, .au infrastructure, in addition to keeping its outsourcing options open.
Today, auDA said that its recent request for expressions of interest had concluded. It said:

The [Registry Transformation Project] team have been very pleased with the strength of responses received and recommended to the auDA Board that auDA should proceed to the next stage of the project. The auDA Board subsequently resolved to undertake a formal Request for Tender (RFT) process. The RFT will be restricted to the respondents of the REOI with a scope to deliver an outsourced registry operation, based on auDA’s updated specifications, by July 2018.

It looks like any registry providers that did not get their foot in the door with the REOI are now permanently shut out of the process.
Additionally, it appears as though auDA has settled on an outsourced, rather than in-house, solution. Given the fact that the majority of the industry is based on service-based registry solutions, that had always seemed like a strong possibility.
auDA now plans to post a draft technical spec for comment August 14 and a formal request for tenders August 28, with a view to picking a winner in October/November for a July 2018 launch.
The company currently uses Neustar as its back-end due to Neustar’s 2015 acquisition of 15-year incumbent AusRegistry.
The names of the companies responding to the REOI, and their number, have not been disclosed.
auDA is currently facing a member revolt, partly but by no means exclusively over its decision to build an in-house registry. The company’s chair finds out whether members want him fired or not on Monday.

Comment Tagged: .au, auda, ausregistry, cctlds, neustar

.blog tops 100,000 names, 66,500 blogs

The new gTLD .blog has gone through the 100,000 registered domain mark, according to its registry.
Knock Knock Whois There said that the milestone was reached with the registration of kitchenmagic.blog today.
It’s a pretty good start for the gTLD, which went into general availability last November, making for an average of 12,500 names added per month.
While KKWT has offered discounts and volume incentives to registrars, its wholesale prices have not approached levels low enough to start attracting abusive use en masse. We’re talking around the $8 mark at the cheapest, I hear.
In fact, the registry said today that it reckons 66.5% of its domains — 66,500, in other words — “have a unique website associated with them”, compared with an industry average under 40%.
Both of those statistics seem to have been supplied by Pandalytics, the DomainsBot service to which KKWT subscribes, and do not appear to be publicly available.
If accurate, 66.5% usage is a much better statistic to brag about than 100,000 registrations, in my view. Usage, of course, drives the virtuous circle that leads to more sales.

3 Comments Tagged: .blog, automattic, kkwt, knock knock whois there, wordpress