M+M makes $3.2 million in five days from .vip

Minds + Machines has billed $3.2 million in .vip domain names sales after the first five days of operation, the company said this morning.
It’s already managed to pay off the cost of acquiring the domain at the September 2014 auction, which was $3.1 million.
Between 1600 UTC May 17, when .vip went to general availability, and the same time May 22, the gTLD racked up 203,720 domains, the company said.
The $3.2 million is a “billings” number, which will convert to accounting revenue over the lifetime of the domains.
For comparison, billings in the whole of 2015 was $7.9 million.
M+M now has over half a million domains under management, a 64% increase from the start of the year, the company said.
Registrations from China, where presumably owning a .vip name does not make you look like a douchebag, accounted for over 80% of the registrations. Almost half of its registrars are Chinese.
Major Chinese registrars are currently selling .vip names for CNY 25-26 (about $4) apiece.
The discrepancy between that low price and the $3.2 million (which implies an average wholesale price of about $16) is due to the effects of premiums, sunrise and multi-year registrations, CEO Toby Hall told DI.
M+M, like the vast majority of TLD registries, is not currently licensed in China, so these names will not legally be allowed to be developed into sites until the company has gone through the full governmental approval process.
Hall said in a press release:

The Chinese market for top-level domains is real and we are delighted to have accessed this key region through the .vip launch… It is a major milestone for the Company, the new management team and our business model centred on working with best-in-class partners across every aspect of our business so as to best monetize our assets while maintaining a tight control on central overheads. It demonstrates that, when properly executed, how quickly the initial investment costs for a domain can be recovered and the potential for a strong recurring revenue established. The .vip launch equally illustrates how as a b2b business we do not have to burn funds on marketing to reach end-consumers and achieve outstanding results.

He’s referring there primarily to M+M’s ongoing restructuring, which has seen the company ditch its registrar business in favor of a more heavily channel-focused approach.

Comment Tagged: .vip, Minds + Machines, new gTLDs

SpamHaus now publishing better TLD abuse data

SpamHaus has updated its “10 Most Abused Top Level Domains” list to provide a much more useful insight into abuse levels.
Rather than simply showing unexplained percentages of “badness” in each TLD, the spam-fighting organization’s daily report now exposes the hard numbers, in domain terms, underneath.
For example, on today’s list Famous Four Media’s .download is the most-abused TLD with 82% bad domains.
That percentage is based on SpamHaus categorizing 11,431 domains as abusive of the 13,945 .download domains that crossed its systems.
But the gTLD has 67,500 domains in its zone file, so the actual percentage of abusive domains could be as low as about 17%, much lower than SpamHaus’s 82%.
Whether you think the 82% metric is fair will depend on whether you think SpamHaus’s sample — about 20% of the full .download zone — is representative.
Some of the other TLDs on its list have even smaller sample sizes.
Minds + Machines’ .work is ranked #2 on the SpamHaus list with 73.3% badness, based on a SpamHaus-seen sample of 6,297 domains, something like 7% of the full .work zone.
Registries criticized SpamHaus for publishing misleading data when this list was first published in March, and I agreed with them.
Now that the group is publishing empirical data alongside its percentages, the conversation can now shift to something along the lines of:
“Is it okay that at least 17% of .download domains are abusive?”
To which the answer I believe is a clear: “Hell, no.”
The SpamHaus daily report can be found here.

13 Comments Tagged: abuse, famous four, Minds + Machines, spam, spamhaus

ICANN to publish board meeting transcripts

In a surprising move towards further transparency, the ICANN board of directors has decided to start publishing transcripts and possibly recordings of its meetings.
It passed a resolution during a meeting in Amsterdam this week stating:

the Board directs the President and CEO, or his designee(s), to work with the Board to develop a proposed plan for the publication of transcripts and/or recordings of Board deliberative sessions, with such plan to include an assessment of possible resources costs and fiscal impact, and draft processes to: (i) ensure the accuracy of the transcript; and (ii) for redaction of portions of the transcript that should be maintained as confidential or privileged.

Transcription services can be picked up dirt cheap, so I can’t see money getting in the way of this proposal becoming a reality.
A question mark of course hangs over the “confidential or privileged” carve-out, of course. ICANN is sometimes over-generous with what it considers redactable material.
Still, it’s great news for the ICANN community, which has been calling for greater board transparency for years.
When I started covering ICANN back in 1999, board sessions at the then four-times-a-year public meetings were conducted in the open; all the thinking was done aloud.
At some point in the early 2000s that stopped, however, and the board’s public sessions became a case of rubber-stamping resolutions that had already been debated behind closed doors.
Minutes, staff-prepared briefing materials and broad-stroke narrative reports have been published, but they give limited insight into the depth of the discussions.
Chair Steve Crocker has even stated in recent years that its goal was to make these public sessions “as boring as possible”.
That’s obviously no good for those of us who’d like to know how top-level decisions at ICANN actually get made.
The plan is for new CEO Goran Marby, who starts on Monday, to come up with a proposal before the Helsinki meeting next month, with a view to start publishing transcripts not long thereafter

Comment Tagged: ICANN

Krueger’s suit against M+M dropped, for now

Former Minds + Machines chair Fred Krueger has dropped his lawsuit against the company, which concerned “missing” shares.
M+M announced today that the two parties have signed a “tolling agreement”, which apparently leave the door open for Krueger to re-file the suit at a later date.
If he does re-file, the company has agreed to the date of the original suit being filed if it deploys any statute of limitations defenses.
The company said in a statement to investors:

The Tolling Agreement provides that if the plaintiffs refile their suit, that any statute of limitation defenses of the defendants will be based on the date of the filing of the dismissed suit, 23 February 2016, but will not be deemed to revive any of the plaintiffs’ causes of action, claims, rights, legal positions, or defenses, at law or in equity, that were time-barred prior to 23 February 2016.

Krueger sued claiming M+M or its accountants had misplaced five million shares he was due.
He was looking for $1.5 million in damages.

Comment Tagged: lawsuit, Minds + Machines

ICANN diverts from Puerto Rico to India to avoid Zika

ICANN has confirmed that its 57th public meeting will not be held, as originally planned, in Puerto Rico.
Instead, it is asking community members to instead head to Hyderabad, India, this November.
Those Las Vegas rumors turned out not to be true. However, on the up-side, those Las Vegas rumors turned out not to be true!
The decision was to relocate made to the a “state of emergency” being declared in Puerto Rico due to the Zika virus.
Zika is spread by mosquitoes and male sexual partners and can cause devastating birth defects in kids.
Latest figures from the US Center for Disease Control put infections in US territories at 701, three of whom were travelers.
ICANN said in a blog post this evening:

This decision was based on available research and information and the fact that Puerto Rico has declared a state of emergency due to the ongoing Zika virus outbreak. We believe that the Zika virus poses a significant enough threat that we need to postpone going to Puerto Rico for the health and safety of our community and our ICANN team, just as we had to postpone ICANN52 and relocate from Marrakech to Singapore due to the Ebola virus outbreak in 2014.

It’s the second of this year’s meetings to be relocated due to Zika. June’s Panama meeting has been moved to Helsinki.
ICANN said that the new venue for ICANN 57, which takes place from November 3 to 9 this year, is the Hyderabad International Convention Centre.
It’s said that ICANN will take a seven-figure hit to its bank balance in order to cancel the PR meeting.

3 Comments Tagged: hyderabad, ICANN, icann 57, india, puerto rico, zika

ICANN pimps new sexual harassment rules

ICANN has proposed new anti-harassment guidelines for its community that would ban “unwelcome hostile or intimidating behavior”.
It wants your comments on the changes to its longstanding “Expected Standards of Behavior” document, which applies to both its in-person meetings and online discussions and mailing lists.
The proposed addition to the document reads like this:

Respect all members of the ICANN community equally and behave according to professional standards and demonstrate appropriate behavior. ICANN strives to create and maintain an environment in which people of many different backgrounds and cultures are treated with dignity, decency, and respect. Specifically, participants in the ICANN process must not engage in any type of harassment. Generally, harassment is considered unwelcome hostile or intimidating behavior — in particular, speech or behavior that is sexually aggressive or intimidates based on attributes such as race, gender, ethnicity, religion, age, color, national origin, ancestry, disability or medical condition, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

The definition of harassment has been borrowed almost directly from the Internet Engineering Task Force’s policy on harassment, which was signed off in 2013.
ICANN has added the words “ethnicity” and “medical condition” to the IETF’s list of protected characteristics, but has not included the IETF’s list of examples:

the use of offensive language or sexual imagery in public presentations and displays, degrading verbal comments, deliberate intimidation, stalking, harassing photography or recording, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.

The changes were prompted by a recent allegation of sexual harassment at an ICANN meeting which divided the community on whether the alleged incident amounted to sexual harassment or not.
ICANN’s Ombudsman, Chris LaHatte, concluded that whatever took place “cannot be considered serious”, but he did not make a formal finding.
LaHatte has already endorsed the proposed change to the expected standards document.
It does not seem unreasonable to me, at first glance, either.
What do you think? ICANN has opened a public comment period that closes June 25, to find out.

1 Comment Tagged: ICANN, Ombudsman, sexual harassment

New .sucks logo actually kinda sucks

Vox Populi has revealed a new logo for its .sucks gTLD.
Here it is. What do you think?

In going for a retro, 8-bit vibe, has Vox deliberately gone for a look that actually kinda sucks? Is that the joke? Or do you like it?
The company said on its blog:

The program is designed to portray the tight link between the ubiquity of digital technology and the individual’s long-standing right of free expression. Moving from a softer blue image to a sharper black-and-white logo that evokes a computer’s font better honors the role the internet plays as a modern day soapbox

Previously, the .sucks logo was the brand inside a speech bubble.
The logo comes with a relaunched web site at get.sucks and a billboard advertising campaign that has included a stint in New York’s Times Square, as seen in this registry-supplied photo.

The gTLD has been in general availability since June 2015 and has about 7,500 names in its zone file today, growing at roughly three to four domains per day over the last few months.

3 Comments Tagged: sucks, vox populi

XYZ settles Verisign’s back-end switcheroo lawsuit

XYZ.com has settled a lawsuit filed against it against Verisign stemming from XYZ’s acquisition of .theatre, .security and .protection.
Verisign sued the new gTLD registry operator for “interfering” with its back-end contracts with the previous owners last August, as part of its campaign to compete against new gTLDs in the courtroom.
XYZ had acquired the .security and .protection ICANN contracts from security Symantec, and .theatre from a company called KBE Holdings.
As part of the transitions, all three applications were modified with ICANN to name CentralNic as the back-end registry services provider, replacing Verisign.
Verisign sued on the basis of tortious interference and business conspiracy. It was thrown out of court in November then amended and re-filed.
But the case appears to have now been settled.
Negari issued a grovelling not-quite-apology statement on his blog:

I am pleased to report that the recent case filed by Verisign against CentralNic, Ltd., XYZ and myself has been settled. After looking at the claims in dispute, we regret that as a result of our acquisition of the .theatre, .security and .protection extensions and our arrangement for CentralNic to serve as the backend service provider for these extensions, that Verisign was prevented from the opportunity to pursue monetization of those relationships. As ICANN’s new gTLD program continues to evolve, we would caution others who find themselves in similar situations to be mindful of the existing contracts extension owners may have with third parties.

Registries changing their minds about their back-end provider is not unheard of.
In this case, large portions of Verisign’s final amended complaint were redacted, suggesting some peculiarities to this particular switch.
If there was a monetary component to the settlement, it was not disclosed. The original Verisign complaint had demanded damages of over $2 million.

Comment Tagged: .protection, .theatre, back-end, centralnic, kbe holdings, lawsuit, security, symantec, verisign, xyz.com

Donuts quietly buys .shopping from Uniregistry (and .jetzt)

Just a few months after Uniregistry bought out Donuts to win .shopping, Donuts has bought the pre-launch gTLD back.
Donuts has also bought live gTLD .jetzt from a Swedish company.
The .shopping deal is a weird one.
Uniregistry and Donuts were the only two applicants for .shopping, until Uniregistry paid Donuts to withdraw its application back in January.
Uniregistry went on to sign its ICANN Registry Agreement in March, but less than a month later, April 27, transferred the contract to Donuts.
.shopping had been entangled in the .shop contention set, which was eventually resolved when GMO Registry paid $41.5 million at ICANN auction.
Despite the unusual circumstances, Uniregistry CEO Frank Schilling said today it was just the simple sale of a string. Donuts declined to comment. Neither revealed a price.
The second Donuts acquisition, closed April 26, was of .jetzt, which was applied for, delegated to and managed by New TLD Company AB of Sweden.
That gTLD, which is German for “.now”, has been in general availability for almost two years but has only 5,600 names in its zone file.
Donuts declined to comment, but it seems to me we’re looking at a failing gTLD looking for a white knight in this instance.

1 Comment Tagged: .jetzt, .shopping, acquisition, donuts, ICANN, m&a, new gTLDs, new tld company, uniregistry

Nominet to run .blog’s back-end

Nominet is to run the back-end registry systems for .blog, the company announced this evening.
We reported earlier today that .blog has a surprise new owner — Knock Knock, Whois There, which belongs to Automattic, owner of WordPress.com — and it seems the change of ownership comes with a change of back-end.
Primer Nivel, the company that applied for .blog and just transferred the ICANN contract to Automattic, had named Malaysian also-ran Qinetics as its original back-end.
“Nominet will provide the registry services, as well as technical support to the registrar channel,” Nominet said tonight. The deal includes EPP and DNS.
Nominet’s press release confirms that registrants will not need a WordPress.com account to buy a .blog domain name.
It’s the second big back-end deal for Nominet in recent weeks. The company recently revealed it will be taking over technical services for all 28 of Minds + Machines new gTLDs.
Automattic/KKWT is predicting 250,000 .blog registrations in 2016, and general availability is not expected until the fourth quarter.

Comment Tagged: .blog, kkwt, knock knock whois there, new gTLDs, nominet, primer nivel, qinetics