It’s official, .internal is blocked forever

ICANN has formally confirmed that the gTLD .internal will never be delegated.

Its board of directors resolved earlier this week that it “reserves .INTERNAL from delegation in the DNS root zone permanently to provide for its use in private-use applications.”

It went on to recommend “that efforts be undertaken to raise awareness of its reservation for this purpose through the organization’s technical outreach.”

The idea is to give organizations a gTLD that they can use behind their firewalls that they can be sure will never become a public-DNS gTLD in future, which would carry the risk of name collisions and data leakage.

The string “internal” was picked in January over .private and put out for public comment to murmurs of approval.

The move means nobody will be able to apply for .internal in future new gTLD application rounds.

Comment Tagged: .internal, ICANN, new gTLDs

Amazon to launch two new gTLDs this month

Amazon Registry is to finally launch two of the gTLDs it has been sitting on for the best part of a decade.

The company expects to take .deal and .now to sunrise later this month, with general availability following in September.

According to information provided by ICANN, sunrise for both runs for a month from August 22, followed immediately by a week-long Early Access Period and general availability at standard pricing September 30.

Both extensions have been in the root since 2016, parts of Amazon’s portfolio of 54 mostly unused gTLDs.

They’re the first English-language strings the company has launched since .bot, which came out with a controlled release in 2018 before loosening its restrictions last year. It has about 14,000 domains.

Similar TLDs to .deal and .now are already available from other registries, which may give clues to their potential.

The plural .deals is part of Identity Digital’s massive portfolio, selling at a $25 wholesale price, but it currently has fewer than 10,000 registrations, having peaked at 11,388 in May 2022.

.now might be the more attractive of the two. The disputed ccTLD for Niue, .nu, means “now” in Swedish and has about 220,000 domains under management.

Comment Tagged: .deal, .now, amazon, eap, new gTLDs, sunrise

Revealed: who’s really running Epik

Scandal-rocked registrar Epik promised to turn over a new leaf when it got acquired last year, and now the guy in charge of the domains business — a familiar face to many– has broken cover and talked to DI about the company’s recent woes and turnaround plans.

That guy is director of domains Christopher Ambler, a thirty-year veteran of the industry, who came out of stealth mode today to talk about how he wants to kill Epik’s reputation as a refuge for far-right hate and regain the trust of its customers.

Ambler is perhaps best-known as the founder and CEO of Image Online Design, the company that offered a .web gTLD in an alt-root in the 1990s. More recently, until 2021 he also spent seven years as principal software architect at GoDaddy.

Ambler says he joined Epik’s new owner, Registered Agents Inc, which specializes in company formation services, in November 2022, with a remit to scratch-build a registrar to offer the company’s clients online presence services.

“The basic story is boring as hell,” Ambler said. “Registered Agents does business formations… the company just decided it made sense to be a registrar. They brought me on a year and a half ago with the idea to just build this thing from scratch.”

About six or seven months into this project, in June 2023, Registered Agents decided it could cut a couple of years of development time by simply acquiring the assets of an existing registrar, Ambler said, and Epik’s were up for grabs.

At the time, Epik was on the ropes, rocked by a financial mismanagement scandal under then-CEO Rob Monster that had led to registries disconnecting it for non-payment and an ICANN probe that put it at risk of losing its accreditation and going out of business.

Registered Agents paid $5 million for the registrar and set about paying off the registries and getting the ICANN accreditation transferred to the new owners, from Monster’s Epik Inc to the new Epik LLC.

Due to the nature of Registered Agents’ business — it sets up companies for people, often anonymously and not always to nice people — theories abounded, notably on the Namepros discussion forum, that the new owner was just a front for Monster.

“I totally get the whole ‘We think this is Rob Monster pulling another shady deal’ thing, and I don’t know this for a fact but if I were ICANN I would have thought that was entirely a possibility,” Ambler said. “But they went over it with a fine toothed comb and a microscope.”

Quite apart from the business mismanagement, Epik came with a tonne of reputational baggage. It had long been known as a safe haven for far-right bullies, with the likes of Gab.com, The Daily Stormer, InfoWars and Kiwi Farms among its customer base.

Ambler, who describes himself as “kind of a hippy”, culturally Jewish with spiritual leanings toward Buddhism, was not comfortable with this legacy.

While the new Epik did not publicly disassociate itself from these customers until early 2024, Ambler said the decision was made much sooner.

“When the deal was signed to buy Epik we knew on that day we were no longer the ‘free speech registrar’, we were not the right-wing registrar,” he said. “That’s what the old Epik did, I personally don’t agree with that.”

He compared the gear-shift to the day he interviewed at GoDaddy over a decade ago and made it clear he wasn’t happy working for the company if it was still running the “sexist” TV ads it was famed for in the noughties, which by then it had discontinued.

“When I was told we’re looking at buying [Epik’s] assets, the first thing I said was ‘Okay, but there is some dumpster fire involved here, we’re not going to keep that, right?’ and everybody said ‘No’,” Ambler said. “Absolutely everybody was completely on-board.”

The company then set about “politely inviting” its more controversial customers to take their business elsewhere and shutting down any customers involved in outright illegality, such as unlicensed pharmacies, publishing child sexual abuse material or hate speech that crossed the line into incitement to violence.

“I wouldn’t say it was a significant portion of the business, but it was certainly non-zero,” Ambler said. Hundreds of customers were “shown the door”, he said.

“One of things that angsts me is when you look at the online talk about Epik a lot of people still to this day think Epik is the right-wing registrar, because there’s so much stuff out there from years and years ago,” he said.

“People think Epik is the refuge of the white supremacists,” he said. “I really want to combat that message.”

Ambler said he also oversaw a security review of Epik’s code, following a major breach in 2021.

“We went nuts on security for the first couple months, just making sure everything was safe,” he said.

Was it?

“It is now,” he said.

Since the takeover, Epik has lost hundreds of thousands of domains as customers, fed up with its earlier antics and/or suspicious of the new owners, transferred to other registrars.

At its peak in August 2022, the company had 808,160 gTLD domains under management. By March 2024, the most recent month for which we have records, that number had dropped to 265,845, a loss of over half a million names.

“I daresay we’ve bottomed out at this point and actually have net positives on a number of metrics, but we kind of expected that,” Ambler said.

“Keep in mind that the peak of Epik was mostly accomplished by Rob Monster selling domains at a huge loss to create more appearance of growth,” he added. “That was his goal. He wanted to show that Epik was growing by leaps and bounds, but the company was taking losses left and right.”

Looking forward, Epik is focusing less on being the “be-all and end-all” to domain investors and more on being a solid “world class” retail registrar and selling to Registered Agents’ million-plus existing customers.

Ambler’s final messages to DI readers?

“First, we’re not the right-wing registrar, so please don’t confuse us with the old Epik,” he said, “Second, I’m terribly sorry it’s more boring than a lot of people seemed to think.”

“I’d love to get out there and tell people we’re the good guys now,” he said.

5 Comments Tagged: epik, ICANN, registered agents

ICANN swaps out Asia VP

Jia-Rong Low, VP of stakeholder engagement and managing director for the Asia Pacific region, has quit ICANN and will leave next month.

An 11-year veteran of the Org, Low was the second hire in the Singapore office where he was based, ICANN interim CEO Sally Costerton said in a statement.

He will be replaced by an internal appointment, Samiran Gupta, who is currently VP for the South Asia region. Gupta has been employed off-and-on by ICANN since 2014.

July 30 update: Low is to join APNIC as its new director general in October.

Comment Tagged: ICANN

No .uk price hikes despite tumbling sales

Nominet said today that it has no plans to raise the price of .uk domains, even as registration volumes continue to sink and profits tumbled.

The registry said in its annual report that its net loss for the year ended March 31 was £6 million ($7.7 million), compared to £3.9 million ($5 million) in fiscal 2023, on revenue up £2.3 million ($3 million) to £56.4 million ($72.4 million).

The increase in revenue was due to its non-domains Cyber business, which was up by £2.7 million, offsetting a £400,000 decrease in domains revenue that was due to a 300,000 decline in domains under management.

Domains brought in £41.1 million at the top line during the period, but profit dropped from £14.8 million in 2023 to £9.8 million.

Nominet also lost a Protective DNS contract with the UK government during the year, which led to 40 layoffs and 19 employees being reassigned, but said the setbacks will not lead to price hikes.

“Even with the loss of the UK PDNS contract, and lower domain name renewals indicative of a maturing market, we see no immediate need to increase pricing, but we will continue to regularly review,” chair Andy Green and CEO Paul Fletcher said in the report.

.uk names currently cost £3.90 per year, with the last price increase happening in 2020.

Fletcher and CFO Carolyn Bedford both received hefty bonuses during the year, amounting to an extra £180,000 for Fletcher on top of his £304,500 base salary and an extra £94,557 for Bedford to add to her £190,000 base.

The company confirmed in its report that it plans to participate in the next new gTLD application round in 2026 as a back-end registry services provider, saying it expects the market to be very competitive.

Comment Tagged: .uk, earnings, financials, nominet

Domain world growth despite .com slide

In the fastest-published quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief in many years, Verisign last night reported that the world’s extant domain name registrations increased by 5.8 million in the second quarter.

The report was published to coincide with Verisign’s Q2 earnings report, and came just two weeks after the publication of the Q1 brief.

The trend of the domain universe, hampered by the ongoing decline of Verisign’s own .com and .net, which lost 1.8 million names compared to Q1, being buttressed by ccTLDs and new gTLDs, continued.

New gTLDs were up 1.3 million names sequentially and 6.5 million annually — 4.0% and 23.2% respectively — to 34.6 million, but we sadly have to assume that a great many of these new names are speculative or abusive.

Verisign estimates the “combined renewal percentage estimate” for new gTLDs was 38.0%, about half of where .com’s somewhat depressed number lies.

ccTLD domains were at 140 million at the end of June, up 400,000 (0.3%) sequentially and three million (2.2%) annually, the DNIB states.

Pre-2012 gTLD names were up 122,100 sequentially and 154,200 annually, ending the quarter at 17.2 million.

Comment Tagged: dnib, verisign

Verisign predicts more gloom as registrars shun .com growth

Verisign has yet again massively downgraded its expectations for .com growth, after it lost almost two million domains in the second quarter.

The company said it had 170.6 million .com and .net domains at the end of June, down 1.8 million compared to Q1 and a 2.2% decrease compared to a year earlier.

CEO Jim Bidzos said Verisign now expects the domain name base for the full year to be between -2% and -3%. That compares to a range of between +0.25% and -1.75% predicted in April and +1% to -1% predicted in February.

The Q2 renewal rate is expected to be 72.6% compared to 73.4% a year ago and 74.1% in Q1.

Bidzos said he does not expect the base to return to positive growth until the second half of 2025.

Bidzos, talking to analysts, acknowledged that Verisign’s wholesale .com price increases “may have had an impact” but put the blame for the growth shortfall squarely on what he called the “unregulated retail channel” in the US.

American registrars have been cranking up their prices in order to prioritize average revenue per user over volume, he said, meaning retail prices for .com have gone up “more than twice” Verisign’s own price hikes, leading to fewer sales as a result.

“Our research shows that the benefit from our capped wholesale prices is not always passed on to consumers,” he said.

He faced a barrage of questions from analysts about recent calls for the US government to sever its ties with Verisign over .com and put the TLD out for competitive rebidding, but reiterated the company’s position that if the government cuts it off, it still gets to run .com under its contract with ICANN.

Despite the volume woes, Verisign continues to be a high-margin cash-generating machine.

The company reported Q2 net income of $199 million, up from $186 million a year ago, on revenue up 4.1% at $387 million. Operating income was up to $266 million from $249 million and operating cash flow up to $160 million from $145 million.

5 Comments Tagged: .com, earnings, financials, ICANN, ntia, pricing, verisign

Republicans quiz NTIA on Verisign .com renewal

Three Republican members of the US House of Representatives have raised the specter of Verisign having to compete to renew its .com deal with the US government.

In a letter to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Congresspeople ask whether NTIA has made any efforts to renegotiate or obtain public feedback on its contract with Verisign.

They also ask whether NTIA has looked at the “effect of the recent price increases implemented by Verisign on the .com domain name marketplace” and “the impact of potential registration price increases on the .com domain name market”.

The Cooperative Agreement between NTIA and Verisign is what allows the company to raise .com wholesale fees. That power was frozen for years under the Obama administration but returned under Trump.

The letter follows missives from three campaign groups a month ago, which called Verisign, NTIA and ICANN a “cartel” that enables Verisign’s monopoly and called for the .com contract to be put out to bid.

The Congresspeople’s letter doesn’t come anywhere close to asking for the same, but it does cite previous instances where legislators and the Department of Justice have called for a competitive bidding process.

Verisign has responded to earlier letters by pointing out that even if NTIA were to cancel the agreement, the .com Registry Agreement with ICANN would still stand.

The letter (pdf) is signed by House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Subcommittee on Communications and Technology chair Bob Latta, and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations chair Morgan Griffith.

The Cooperative Agreement is set to auto-renew in November. The Congresspeople want answers from NTIA before August 8.

Comment Tagged: .com, cooperative agreement, ICANN, ntia, verisign

Smaller, more intense ICANN meetings with no free cocktails?

ICANN has floated the idea of hosting smaller, more focused meetings that eschew tedious PowerPoint presentations and do away with the free cocktail receptions.

Seeking to eliminate $10 million from its annual budget, management recently reached out to community leaders to see if they can put their heads together to make ICANN’s public meetings less expensive.

Ideas include scrapping one of the thrice-yearly in-person meetings entirely and replacing it with a virtual-only event, along the lines of the seven that were held over Zoom during the recent coronavirus pandemic.

The suggestions appear in a “How We Meet” discussion paper (pdf), presented as a jumping-off point for community discussions rather than a top-down edict.

Straight to the important stuff: ICANN is proposing to “reduce or eliminate ICANN-hosted or ICANN-sponsored social and outreach events” such as receptions, group dinners and other social networking events.

ICANN could seek third-party sponsors for these kind of events or, horror of horrors, operate a “cash bar”, the document states.

No more free booze!

If cost-conscious alcoholics have a reason to be concerned, it’s arguably worse news for community time vampires who enjoy nothing more than sucking up 45 minutes of their hour plodding through a PowerPoint explaining what their group has been up to since the last meeting.

The document suggests focusing meetings on “timely topics”, such as those with upcoming deadlines, that require “interactive dialogue in a hybrid format”, and cutting some of the extraneous nonsense.

Therefore, “extensive slide presentations, updates, and meetings (including between ICANN staff and community groups) that do not clearly require in-person or hybrid interactions will not be scheduled”, the document suggests.

Speaking as a remote participant in recent years, I’ve often chose to wait for session recordings to become available, rather than listening live, precisely so I can fast-forward through that kind of thing. That’s obviously not an option for an in-person attendee, many of whom are there on ICANN’s dime.

The document also suggests getting rid of “informational and training” events, such as the “How It Works” sessions, which it says “incur significant costs” but have “limited participation”.

ICANN is also floating the idea of reducing the number of sessions overall, and grouping constituency-specific sessions into a tighter schedule over fewer days (presumably in order to slash the hotel bill).

But the biggest shake-up of them all is arguably the idea of reducing the number of full in-person community meetings from three to two, with the cut meeting replaced with a virtual one.

Given the shared experiences from seven, consecutive Virtual Public Meetings during the pandemic and the costs of a hybrid ICANN Public Meeting, it may be timely to discuss whether there is, in fact, a current need to have three in-person/hybrid ICANN Public Meetings each year, or whether the community can work just as effectively if at least one of these meetings is conducted virtually.

It does not say which meeting could be cut, but points out that reducing the number of public meetings may increase the need for smaller, intersessional events that focus on individual constituencies or topics.

The discussion document will inform a series of calls interim CEO Sally Costerton will hold with community leaders over the next month or so. Any consensus reached could be acted up as early as September.

3 Comments Tagged: budget, ICANN, meetings

Private auctions to be banned in next new gTLD round

ICANN plans to ban private auctions in the next new gTLD application round, chair Tripti Sinha has told governments.

The board of directors plans to accept the Governmental Advisory Committee’s recent advice to “prohibit the use of private auctions in resolving contention sets in the next round of New gTLDs”, Sinha told her GAC counterpart in a letter published this week.

This is a significant departure from the 2012 round, where many contention sets were resolved privately, with tens of millions of dollars changing hands. Simply applying for a gTLD, in order to lose an auction rather than actually running a registry, will quite possibly no longer be a business model.

What replaces private auctions is yet to be determined. ICANN plans to publish a paper and hold two community webinars in August to discuss alternatives, and reach a decision at its meeting in early September.

Sinha warned that if it cannot reach a conclusion by the September meeting, it might delay the publication of the Applicant Guidebook and thus the opening of the next application window.

It’s quite an aggressive deadline, given the complexity of the problem. ICANN is essentially trying to figure out a way to prevent unscrupulous actors from attempting to game the system for financial gain.

Ideas such as allowing good-faith joint ventures to be formed between competing applicants have been floated in recent months, but have faced scrutiny as they might permit side-deals to be inked that have the same effect as private auctions.

What seems certain is that “last resort” auctions — where ICANN gets all the money for its already $200 million war chest — will still be an option in the next round, which is current penciled in for the first half of 2026.

ICANN’s board plans to pass resolutions on the matter next Monday, so we should have a little more clarity by the start of August at the latest.

2 Comments Tagged: gac, ICANN, new gTLDs, next round, private auctions