Sixteen-year-old emoji .com sells for €3,400

An emoji domain name believed to be in the first three such domains ever registered has been sold.
The domain ☮.com (xn--v4h.com) seems to to have been sold to an end-user buyer, via Sedo, for €3,400 ($3,816). The sale appears to have been a quick flip by an Austrian investor.
☮ is of course better known as a symbol representing peace, most associated with campaigns for nuclear disarmament.
The name now redirects to Sonshi.com, an “educational resource for Sun Tzu’s The Art of War”. The owner explains:

As students of Sun Tzu, we understand the objective of understanding warfare is peace. Even when we are forced to do battle, we want to end it quickly. If possible, it is best to prevent fighting altogether. There are few symbols that represent peace and are as recognizable as ☮.

According to research carried out by domain investor Michael Cyger, ☮.com is one of the three oldest emoji domains, after a “hot spring” symbol in .com and .net, all having been registered April 19, 2001.
It’s not a knock-your-socks-off price, given the scarcity of emoji domains and the age of the registration, but it seems to show there are buyers out there.
Emoji domains were recently discouraged by ICANN’s security committee due to the potential for security risks, and are currently effectively banned in new gTLDs.

13 Comments Tagged: aftermarket, emoji, sedo, sonshi.com

$5 billion e-commerce site to dump .com for dot-brand

The online ticketing arm of the French national railway operator SNCF has revealed plans to migrate away from .com to its dot-brand gTLD, .sncf.
The web site voyages-sncf.com will become oui.sncf in November, the company has confirmed following press reports at the weekend.
The existing site, despite the cumbersome domain, processed €4.3 billion ($4.8 billion) of ticket and other sales in 2015.
That number was reportedly down slightly last year due to the impact of the various terrorist attacks on the continent.
Still, it’s one of France’s most visible online brands, and has been around since 2000. The site is also available in other European languages and via mobile apps.
The new domain, oui.sncf, is already online. It currently redirects to an FAQ about the rebrand, at the .com site
Parent company SNCF is France’s government-owned rail operator, with overall revenue of €32.3 billion ($36 billion).
While ICANN’s new gTLD program produced hundreds of dot-brands, only a handful to date have moved substantially away from their original domains.

11 Comments Tagged: dot-brands, new gTLDs, sncf

Three-million-domain .au deal up for grabs

auDA has formally launched the process that will could see it replace .au back-end provider Neustar with an in-house registry by the end of June 2018.
The Australian ccTLD operator has opened a “Request for Expressions of Interest” as the first stage of a procurement process for software and/or services to support its recently announced Registry Transformation Project.
It’s looking for companies that can provide all the major pieces of a domain name registry — EPP registry, Whois, DNS, etc — and my reading of the REOI reveals a preference towards a system owned and operated by auDA.

Respondents can respond with products, technology and / or services for all or part of the elements of the Registry Transformation Project, and are free to partner with other respondents to put together combined proposals.
auDA intends to establish a dedicated .au registry, and have all arrangements in place to support this, by 30 June 2018.

The organization even talks about eventually becoming one of ICANN’s approved Emergency Back-End Registry Operators.
.au has grown to over 3 million domains over the 15 years it was being managed by AusRegistry, which was acquired by US-based Neustar in 2015. This deal is due to expire next year.
So it’s a big contract, and one that is likely to attract a lot of interest from players big and small.
That said, registry solutions are typically offered very much on a service basis. The market for licensed registry software is not exactly bustling, and auDA also requires source code access as a condition of any deal.
auDA said the deadline for responses to the REOI is June 26. It will decide upon its next steps, which could be a formal request for proposals, in the last week of July.
Further details can be found here.

Comment Tagged: .au, auda, ausregistry, back-end, neustar, rfp

Emoji domains get a 👎 from security panel

The use of emojis in domain names has been discouraged by ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee.
In a paper late last week, SSAC told ICANN that emojis — aka emoticons or smileys — lack standardization, are barred by the relevant domain name technical standards, and could cause user confusion.
Emoji domains, while technically possible, are not particularly prevalent on the internet right now.
They’re implicitly banned in gTLDs due to the contractual requirement to adhere to the IDNA2008 standard, which restricts internationalized domain names to actual spoken human languages, and the only ccTLD I’m aware of actively marketing the names is Samoa’s .ws.
There was a notable example of Coca Cola registering 😀.ws (xn--h28h.ws) for a billboard marketing campaign in Puerto Rico a couple of years ago, but that name has since expired and been registered by an Australian photographer.
The SSAC said that emoji use should be banned in TLDs and discouraged at the second level for several reasons.
Mainly, the problem is that while emojis are described in the Unicode standards, there’s no standardization across devices and applications as to how they are displayed.
A certain degree of creative flair is permitted, meaning a smiling face in one app may look unlike the technically same emoji in another app. On smaller screens and with smaller fonts, technically different emojis may look alike.
This could lead to confusion, which could lead to security problems, SSAC warns:

It is generally difficult for people to figure out how to specify exactly what happy face they are trying to produce, and different systems represent the same emoji with different code points. The shape and color of emoji can change while a user is viewing them, and the user has no way of knowing whether what they are seeing is what the sender intended. As a result, the user is less likely to reach the intended resource and may instead be tricked by a phishing site or other intentional misrepresentation.

SSAC added that it:

strongly discourages the registration of any domain name that includes emoji in any of its labels. The SSAC also advises registrants of domain names with emoji that such domains may not function consistently or may not be universally accessible as expected

The brief paper can be read here (pdf).

Comment Tagged: emoji, emojis, ICANN, idns, ssac

Web.com in takeover talks – report

Web.com is in talks to be acquired by private equity firms, according to a report.
Reuters reported last night that the registrar said the talks were “early stage” and that there was no guarantee of a deal.
Web.com is of course home to Network Solutions, Register.com and is involved in secondary market plays SnapNames and NameJet.
The company had 2016 revenue of $710 million and a market capitalization prior to the report of $1.1 billion. Its shares surged on the news.

Comment Tagged: acquisition, web.com

After price hike, now Tucows drops support for Uniregistry TLDs

Tucows is to drop OpenSRS support for nine Uniregistry gTLDs after the registry announced severe price increases.
The registrar told OpenSRS resellers that it will no longer support .audio, .juegos, .diet, .hiphop, .flowers, .guitars, .hosting, .property and .blackfriday from September 8, the date the increases kick in.
It’s the second major registrar, after GoDaddy, to drop support for Uniregistry TLDs in the wake of the pricing news.
“The decision to discontinue support for these select TLDs was made to protect you and your customers from unknowingly overpaying in a price range well beyond $100 per year,” OpenSRS told its resellers.
It will continue to support seven other Uniregistry gTLDs, including .click and .link, which are seeing more modest price increases and will remain at $50 and under.
While Tucows is a top 10 registrar in most affected TLDs, its domains under management across the nine appears to be under 3,000.
These domains will expire at their scheduled expiry date and OpenSRS will not allow their renewal after the September 8 cut-off. Customers will be able to renew at current prices for one to 10 years, however.
Tucows encouraged its roughly 40,000 resellers to offer to migrate their customers to other TLDs.
Uniregistry revealed its price increases in March, saying moving to a premium-pricing model was necessary to make the gTLDs profitable given the lack of volume.
Pricing for .juegos and .hosting is to go up from under $20 retail to $300. The other seven affected gTLDs will increase from the $10 to $25 range to $100 per year.
After GoDaddy pulled support for Uniregistry TLDs, the registry modified its plan to enable all existing registrations to renew at current prices.
That clearly was not enough for Tucows, which has sent a pretty clear message that it’s not prepared to be the public face of such significant price hikes.

4 Comments Tagged: .audio, .blackfriday, .diet, .flowers, .guitars, .hiphop, .juegos, .property, hosting, new gTLDs, opensrs, tucows, uniregistry

Country names to finally be released in new gTLDs

It looks like hundreds of domain names matching the names of countries are to finally get released from ICANN limbo.
The ICANN board last week passed a resolution calling for the organization to clear a backlog of over 60 registry requests to start selling or using country and territory names in their gTLDs.
Some of the requests date back to 2014. They’ve all been stuck in red tape while ICANN tried to make sure members of the Governmental Advisory Committee was cool with the names being released.
The result of these three years of pondering is scrappy, but will actually allow some names to hit the market this year.
The new resolution calls for ICANN to “take all steps necessary to grant ICANN approvals for the release of country and territory names at the second-level”, but only “to the extent the relevant government has indicated its approval”.
And that’s the catch.
Some governments, such as the US and UK, don’t care who registers matching names. Dozens of others want to vet each registry request on a case-by-case basis.
The wishes of each government are record in a GAC database.
The only territories to so far give a blanket waiver over their names are: Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the UK, the USA, Guernsey and Pitcairn.
Almost 70 other countries have said they need to be told when a registry wants to sell a domain matching their name. Ten others give carte blanche to closed dot-brands, but require notification in the case of open gTLDs.
The majority of countries in the world have yet to officially express a preference one way or the other.
Of the roughly 60 new gTLD registries to request country name releases over the last few years, the vast majority are dot-brands. The number of open gTLDs with such requests appears to be in the single figures, and the only ones with mass-market appeal appear to be .xyz and .global.

2 Comments Tagged: country names, gac, ICANN, new gTLDs, rsep

Want to be one of the internet’s SEVEN SECRET KEY-HOLDERS? Apply now!

ICANN has put out a call for volunteers, looking for people to become what are sometimes referred to as “the internet’s seven secret key holders”.
Specifically, it needs Trusted Community Representatives, people of standing in the internet community who don’t mind carrying around a small key and getting a free trip to Los Angeles or Virginia once or twice a year.
The TCRs are used in the paranoia-inducing cryptographic key-signing ceremonies that provide DNSSEC at the root of the domain name system.
The ceremonies take place at ICANN data centers four times a year. The ceremonies themselves take hours, involve multiple layers of physical and data security, and the volunteers are expected to hang around for a day or two before and after each.
There’s no compensation involved, but the TCRs are allowed to apply to ICANN for travel reimbursements.
ICANN expects TCRs to stick around for about five years, but the large majority of the 28 people who act as TCRs (yeah, it’s not seven, it’s 28) have been in the role since 2010 and ICANN is probably planning a cull.
Other than knowing what the DNS is and how it works, the primary requirements are “integrity, objectivity, and intelligence, with reputations for sound judgment and open minds”.
If you think you tick those boxes, head here to apply.

Comment Tagged: DNSSEC, iana, ICANN, ksk

Richemont kills off two more dot-brands

Luxury goods maker Richemont has decided to ditch two more of its dot-brand gTLDs.
The company has asked ICANN to terminate its registry contracts for .chloe and .montblanc, according to documents published by ICANN late last week.
Chloe is a fashion brand; Mont Blanc sells pens, jewelery and such.
No reason was given for either termination. Registries are allowed to self-terminate their Registry Agreements for any reason, given 180 days notice.
In both cases, ICANN has already agreed not to transfer the gTLD to a new operator. That’s a special privilege dot-brands get in their RAs.
Neither gTLD ever progressed beyond a single nic.brand placeholder page
Four additional Richemont dot-brands — .piaget, .iwc, .cartier, .panerai — have also been live for two years or more but are in identical states of disuse.
Richemont also runs .watches, .手表 and .珠宝 (Chinese for “watches” and “jewelry” respectively) which have been in the DNS for over 18 months but do not yet have any published launch plans.
The company was a somewhat enthusiastic early adopter of the new gTLD concept, providing speakers to industry events well before the application window opened back in 2012.
It applied for 14 strings in total, 10 of which eventually went live. It dumped two of its dot-brands before contract-signing and lost two auctions for generic strings.
Both .chloe and .montblanc are expected to be removed from the DNS in October.
There are now 22 new gTLDs that have voluntarily terminated their RAs.

1 Comment Tagged: .chloe, .montblanc, .watches, dot-brands, ICANN, new gTLDs, richemont

Iran reported to Ombudsman after new gTLD conspiracy theory

ICANN’s Ombudsman has stepped in to resolve a complaint from the Iranian government that it was being “excluded” from discussions about the next phase of the new gTLD program.
Kavouss Arasteh, Iran’s Governmental Advisory Committee representative, earlier this month accused the leadership of the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Working Group of deliberately scheduling teleconferences to make them difficult for him to attend.
He said the 0300 UTC timing of a meeting made it “painful” for European volunteers to participate (though it’s 0730 in Tehran).
When WG co-chair Avri Doria said that the time had been selected to avoid clashes with other working groups and declined his request, Arasteh said in an email: “If you insist, I interpret that this is an effort to EXCLUDE GAC TO ATTEND THE PDP.”
In other words, he was accusing the WG leaders of trying to exclude governments from helping to develop the rules of the new gTLD program.
Doria responded that she took the tone of the remarks as “abusive”, adding:

since my motives have been attacked and since I have been accused of trying to prevent GAC participation, I have no choice other than to turn this issue over to the Ombudsman.
The only other alternative I can think of is to accept the fact that I am incapable of co-chairing this group and step down.

Fellow co-chair Jeff Neuman chipped in with a detailed explanation of how, in the global ICANN community, there usually isn’t a time of day that is not inconvenient to at least some volunteers.
(It’s sometimes possible to hear snoring on these calls, but that’s not always due to the time of day.)
Today, Ombudsman Herb Weye responded to Doria’s complaint, saying that it has been “resolved” between the two parties. He wrote:

Without going into detail I am pleased to advise the working group that this complaint has been resolved and that I can bear witness to a unanimous demonstration of support for the leadership of the working group.
I would like to highlight the professional, “human” approach taken by all involved and their willingness to communicate in a clear, respectful and objective manner. This cooperative atmosphere allowed for a timely discussion and quick resolution.

Aratesh has for some time been one of the most vocal and combative GAC reps, noticeably unafraid to raise his voice when he needs to make his point.
He recently publicly threatened to take his concerns about ICANN’s policy on two-character domains to the International Telecommunications Union if his demands were not met.

1 Comment Tagged: gac, ICANN, iran, new gTLDs, subsequent procedures