woke.com among domains in NamesCon auction

Right Of The Dot has published the list of domains it hopes to help auction off during the forthcoming NamesCon 2023 conference in Texas, and my highlight has to be woke.com.

ROTD said in a press release that the headline lots of the auction, which seems to have 451 listed domains, are:

qd.com, oi.com, gorilla.com, holiday.com, programming.com, successful.com, estates.com, woke.com, fighting.com, dancing.com, cryptopunks.com, gpt.info, whois.io, software.ai, robots.ai, god.eth, nftx.com, shiba.com, we.co.uk, hi.co.uk, house.net, rap.hipHop, electricmotorcycles.com, and blackberries.com.

While woke.com is certainly not the domain with the best monetization/development potential, it catches the eye due to the fantastically divisive nature of the word itself, which is coming to dominate culture-wars political bullshit in the English-speaking world.

While “woke” ideology is arguably simply a modern restatement of the Golden Rule, it can mean very different things to different people — at one extreme it means welcoming the reintroduction of racial segregation and getting people fired for wearing a hat, and at the other it means buying a closet full of AR-15s because drag queens are coming to cut off your son’s penis.

The algorithm at the parking page it currently points to thinks it relates to beds.

It’s going to be fascinating to see who, if anyone, buys it, and what they do with it. It’s listed with a starting bid north of $250,000.

qd.com and estates.com both have starting bids above $1.5 million, while oi.com starts at over $1 million.

The auction runs online at rotd.com and live at NamesCon for the next three weeks.

Comment Tagged: namescon, rotd, woke.com

Domainer asks court to block Epik sell-off

The customer suing Epik and its management over a fumbled $327,000 domain deal has asked a US court to prevent the company from selling off its assets and “absconding”.

Matthew Adkisson has amended his fraud complaint, first filed in March, to demand an injunction:

enjoining Defendants from transferring, liquidating, converting, encumbering, pledging, loaning, selling, concealing, dissipating, disbursing, assigning, withdrawing, granting a lien or security interest or other interest in, or otherwise disposing of Adkisson’s Escrow Funds and any other amounts owed to Adkisson, including but not limited to by transferring, liquidating, converting, encumbering, pledging, loaning, selling, concealing, dissipating, disbursing, assigning, withdrawing, granting a lien or security interest or other interest in, or otherwise disposing of any of Defendants’ assets or companies that Adkisson’s Escrow Funds were used in connection with

The amendment follows tweets from current Epik CEO Brian Royce which strongly suggested the company is in the process of selling off its assets. The complaint quotes former CEO and majority shareholder Rob Monster as confirming a sale was being “finalized”.

“If Royce, Monster, and Epik are allowed to sell Epik or its assets, consumers like Adkisson are highly unlikely to be repaid for the funds that Royce, Monster, and Epik and misappropriated,” the complaint says.

Adkisson attempted to buy the domain nourish.com via Epik and its “escrow” service last year, but after the sale fell through the company did not return his money. He now claims Epik was illegally mingling its escrow funds with its general operations fund.

The amended complaint now includes several citations from TrustPilot — other customers who says they bought domains only to see Epik take their cash and not hand over the domain.

While Epik has admitted that it owes Adkisson money, it has otherwise denied any wrongdoing. After the amendment, Royce withdrew his motion to dismiss the case.

Comment Tagged: epik, fraud, lawsuit, nourish.com

.web delay likely after Verisign rival files ICANN appeal

The .web gTLD appears unlikely to see the light of day any time soon, after the Afilias spin-off that came second to Verisign in the $135 million auction in 2016 kicked off another appeals process.

Altanovo, which is made up of bits of Afilias left over when Identity Digital acquired the company, has asked ICANN to enter a Cooperative Engagement Process, according to ICANN’s records.

The CEP is a form of mediation companies can force ICANN into when they have beef. It’s designed to avoid the relative expense of a full-on Independent Review Process. They usually result in an IRP anyway.

Altanovo made its request the same day ICANN announced that its board of directors had decided to take .web off hold and resume registry contract negotiations with Verisign, following Altanovo’s original, unsuccessful IRP.

Verisign yesterday said the move amounted to an “abuse of process” and “baseless procedural maneuvering”, likely to lead to “delay for delay’s sake”.

IRPs typically last years and cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars in panel fees, not counting each party’s lawyer fees.

Altanovo believes that Verisign broke ICANN’s new gTLD program rules when it bid for .web via a secret intermediary. Verisign has countered that its rival, then Afilias, broke the rules by trying to negotiate a private deal during the auction’s “black out” period.

Comment Tagged: .web, altanovo, cep, ICANN, irp, verisign

CentralNic starts returning cash to shareholders as revenue grows

CentralNic has started paying a dividend and has announced another share buyback as it focuses less on aggressive M&A and more on organic growth.

The company, which makes about a quarter of its revenue from domains, said it will spend £4 million of its cash reserves buying back shares between now and August and will pay a £0.01 dividend a month from now.

The news came as CentralNic confirmed its top line grew by 24% in the first quarter, to $194.9 million, driven largely by its traffic arbitrage business, which it calls Online Marketing.

Its revenue from Online Presence — domains and such — was up 14% at $45.2 million, and its number of domain-years processed was up 2% at 12.4 million. The company sells both as registry, registrar and back-end.

Overall, adjusted EBITDA was up 15% at $21.3 million.

Comment Tagged: centralnic, earnings

Newly launched .zip already looks dodgy

A trawl through the latest zone file for Google’s newly launched .zip gTLD reveals that it is likely to be used in malware and phishing attacks.

.zip is of course also a filename extension used by the ZIP archive format, often used to compress and email multiple files at once, and many domains registered in the .zip gTLD in the last few days seem ready to capitalize on that potential for confusion.

I counted 3,286 domains in the May 14 zone file, and a great many of them appear to relate to email attachments, financial documents, software updates and employment information.

I found 133 instances of the word “update”, with sub-strings such as “attach”, “statement”, “download” and “install” also quite common.

Some domains are named after US tax and SEC forms, and some appear to be targeting employees at their first day of work.

I don’t know the intent of any of these registrants, of course. It’s perfectly possible some of their domains could be put to benign use or have been registered defensively by those with security concerns. But my gut says at least some of these names are dodgy.

Google went into general availability with eight new TLDs last Wednesday, and as of yesterday .zip was the only one to rack up more than a thousand names in its zone file.

The others were .dad (913 domains), .prof (264), .phd (605), .mov (463), .esq (979), .foo (665) and .nexus (330).

Comment Tagged: .zip, google, malware, new gTLDs, phishing, security

Progress made on next new gTLD round rules

Pace towards finalizing the details of the next new gTLD application round is picking up, with a group of policy-makers close to overcoming some of the ICANN board’s concerns about the program.

A so-called “small team” of GNSO members, aided by a couple of ICANN directors, have drafted a set of recommendations aimed at helping the board approve the 38 community recommendations it has not yet adopted.

The board approved 98 new gTLD “Subsequent Procedures” policy recommendations in March, but was hesitant on issues such as the proposed registry back-end evaluation program, round-based applications, and content policing.

The board had raised the specter of a first-come, first-served model for new gTLD applications, something the community roundly rejected during the Policy Development Process for the next rounds.

Directors in the small group have since clarified that they’re really looking for a “steady state” application process, that may or may not involve FCFS, in order to make planning, hiring and software development more predictable.

There seems to be no question of the next application opportunity being anything other than a round-based process.

Nevertheless, it’s now possible that the GNSO may throw the board a bone by suggesting a PDP that would look into how the new gTLD program could operate in a “steady state” over the long term.

Content policing is another issue that has caused the board pause.

SubPro and the GNSO have recommended that registries be able to add Registry Voluntary Commitments — promises to ban certain types of content from their zone, for example — to their ICANN contracts.

But the board is worried that this may break its 2016 bylaws, which demand ICANN not get involved in content policing, even though the similar Public Interest Commitments from the 2012 round are enforceable.

The GNSO and board currently seem to be leaning towards a bylaws amendment to address RVCs, but it will be a bit of a tightrope, language-wise, to keep ICANN on its ostensibly technical mandate.

The small group has met nine times since late March to try and resolve these and other board concerns ahead of the mid-year ICANN 77 meeting in Washington DC, which starts June 12.

There’s a pretty aggressive schedule of meetings between now and then, with a bilateral between GNSO and board May 22. The board should have the GNSO’s response to its roadblocks by DC, which should allow it to start chipping away at some of the 38 unadopted recommendations.

Comment Tagged: fcfs, ICANN, icann 77, new gTLDs, pics, rvcs, subpro

Brands ask for cheaper ICANN fees

The group representing dot-brand gTLD registries has asked ICANN to relieve its members of millions of dollars of annual fees.

The Brand Registry Group has written to ICANN to complain that the current $25,000 a year fixed registry fee is too high, given that most dot-brands have next to no domains in their zones and pretty much no abuse.

A dot-brand is a gTLD matching a trademark in which only the brand holder may register domains. Most are unused, and those that are used don’t face many of the contractual compliance-related issues as regular gTLDs.

The BRG wants its members’ fees reduced to $5,000 a year, when the registry has fewer than 5,000 names and basically no abuse.
The group notes that 20-year-old gTLDs such as .museum, .coop, and .aero have a base fixed fee of just $500.

Given that there are about 400 contracted dot-brands, it’s basically asking ICANN to throw away about $8 million of annual revenue, paid for by some of the largest and wealthiest multinationals out there.

Comment Tagged: brg, ICANN, new gTLDs

ICANN salary porn: 2022 edition

ICANN has published its fiscal 2022 US tax returns, revealing as usual the big bucks its top brass and contractors are paid for boldly keeping the internet stable and secure.

It was a good year for former CEO Göran Marby, who held the top job until the end of calendar 2022 and saw his total compensation top a million dollars for a second time, having dipped in fiscal 2021.

Marby’s total package was $1,050,755 in salary, bonus and benefits for the year ended June 30, up from $977,540 in the previous year. The performance-related portion was $218,315, up from $202,038. His base salary was $734,579, up from $673,462.

The tax filing lists 17 highly compensated employees, down by two from 2021, who are making $390,000 and up. Seven made over half a million dollars a year, up from five in the previous year.

One of the missing employees this year was CTO David Conrad, who left the Org at the end of 2021. The filing reveals he was paid $115,874 in severance, despite ICANN characterizing his departure as a decision he made himself.

Current interim CEO Sally Costerton’s compensation is not revealed. It’s paid to her consulting company and the sum, whatever it is, presumably does not meet the threshold for disclosure as a top contractor.

(I hope this number is disclosed in future, because I’ve just come up with a funny nickname for her if it’s a very large amount.)

Top contractors are as usual law firm Jones Day ($5,164,603, down from $8,769,608) and software developers Architech, Zensar and OSTechnical, which received $2,857,500, $1,488,077 and $1,169,210 respectively.

ICANN’s total revenue was $167,893,854, up from $163,942,482. Its surplus after expenses was $22,755,179, down from $32,564,762. It had net assets of $539,863,742 at the end of June, down from $555,804,201.

The filing reveals that non-accreditation fees from registries and registrars topped $100 million.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, salaries, tax

Tucows and GoDaddy see weakness in big-ticket aftermarket sales

Two of the industry’s largest registrars saw weakness in their first-quarter revenues which they attributed largely to a lack of high-priced secondary market sales.

This lumpier and less-predictable side of the market saw Tucows overall domains revenue down 4% in the period, while GoDaddy saw its “core platform” revenue down a million bucks or 0.2%.

GoDaddy said a 5% increase in domains revenue was “offset by tough compares for our aftermarket business as well as the continued uneven flow of large transactions.”

Tucows said it has “experienced a weaker aftermarket for domain sales, most notably at the higher end of the price range”.

GoDaddy’s core services revenue was down to $698 million from $699.6 million a year ago. Overall revenue was $1.036 billion, up 3.3%. Its net income was down 30% at $47.4 million.

Tucows’ overall revenue was down 0.8% at $80.4 million, with a net loss of $19.1 million compared to a loss of $3 million a year ago.

Comment Tagged: aftermarket, earnings, financials, godaddy, tucows

Another registrar seemingly vanishes

An accredited registrar appears to have gone bust after its parent company failed.

ICANN has sent a breach notice to Nimzo 98, which while registered as an LLC in the US appears to be Indian-operated, saying the company has not paid its fees and the Compliance folk haven’t been able to reach management since December.

The notice also complains that the company isn’t providing a Whois service as required, which may be a polite way of saying that the entire web site is down — it’s not resolving properly for me.

Digging into the data a little, it seems Nimzo was the in-house registrar of a company called Houm that, according to its press releases, was operating some kind of privacy-oriented social network slash cloud storage service.

Part of Houm’s offering was a personal domain name, which came bundled as part of the monthly service fee.

When Houm seriously started promoting its service last year, it appears to have led to a spike in registrations via Nimzo. Most of its domains were concentrated in new gTLDs such as .live, .xyz, .earth, .world and .space.

Having consistently registered no more than a couple hundred gTLD names per month for years, there was a sudden spike to over 5,000 in July and 12,000 in August, peaking Nimzo’s total domains at 21,000 that month.

But then, in October, the registrar deleted almost all of its names. It went from 21,000 domains under management in August to 190 at the end of October. These were not grace-period deletes, so fees would have been applicable.

Houm’s web site at houm.me also appears inoperable today, showing a server error when I access it, and its Twitter account has been silent since last August.

ICANN has given Nimzo until May 22 to pay up or lose its accrediation.

Comment Tagged: breach, compliance, houm, ICANN, nimzo 98