Kinderis calls on industry to cut the bullshit

Domain Name Association chair Adrian Kinderis has called for the industry to “grow up”.
The former ARI CEO, now Neustar veep, said Monday it’s time for the industry to kick out the handful of bad actors that ruin its reputation, and to quit the “bullshit bickering” about which TLDs are best.
“For far too long this industry has turned a blind eye to the less than scrupulous activities,” he said, “and these activities have plagued this industry. Bad actors have tarnished the perception of this industry.”
“This may have been acceptable when it was a few insiders first grasping at a fledgling product in the early nineties but… we are now front and center of the internet,” he said.
“These practices of a few bad actors have led to the frustration of consumers. We have not served the best interests of our consumers at all times,” he said. “This has to change.”
He was speaking to an audience of registries, registrars and investors at the opening session of the NamesCon conference in Las Vegas on Monday.
It was a fairly standard DNA sales pitch, the kind Kinderis has given before, but few could deny the truth of his remarks.
He called upon the industry to more effectively self-regulate, working with ICANN, to keep the boogeymen of government legislators and law enforcement agencies at bay.
“It’s time to grow up and show that we can regulates ourselves and build a strong sustainable industry with integrity,” he said.
He also called for unity among industry participants, pointing out that the threats to their businesses are external to the domain industry.
“The domain name war must be over,” he said. “The infighting and bullshit bickering has to stop. The .coms, the not-.coms, the IDNs, the g’s versus the cc’s… this must stop.”
“As an industry we have been very lucky. We’ve stumbled through 20 years without a collective strategy nor cohesion,” he said. “Outside forces have not had a massive impact on us, yet. QR codes have tried. Apps are trying.”
He pointed to the recent positive “bump” that many domain companies have experienced as a result of investment from China, but attributed to “dumb luck” rather than the result of any smart marketing or outreach.
The 10-minute speech can be viewed below or on the NamePros YouTube channel.

15 Comments Tagged: ICANN, namescon, neustar

GoDaddy launches mobile app for investors

GoDaddy has launched a new mobile device app specifically for domain investors.
GoDaddy Investor, as it is called, will enable domainers to monitor watch-lists of expiring domains, as well as bid in and track auctions, the company said.
Authentication is handled via a special PIN system or, on iOS, Apple’s TouchID.
“We worked closely with our domain investors to bring the same great investing experience to mobile that they’ve enjoyed on desktop for years,” Paul Nicks, GoDaddy’s senior director of aftermarket, said in a press release.
The app is available for Android and iOS operating systems and is available via their respective app stores.

Comment Tagged: .app, auction, godaddy

M+M acquires .boston from Boston Globe

Minds + Machines has added .boston to its stable of geo-gTLDs, buying the contract from the publisher of the Boston Globe newspaper.
The company said today that it has acquired 99% of Boston TLD Management, a new company into which the Globe plans to sign over its .boston ICANN contract.
The deal is contingent on ICANN approving the contract reassignment.
The ink is still moist on the .boston Registry Agreement, which was signed December 10.
The gTLD is officially in pre-delegation testing right now.
But the acquisition also means M+M will take over back-end duties for .boston. Originally, the Globe had intended to use OpenRegistry.
The gTLD was officially a “geographic” string under ICANN rules, and needed support from the local government in Boston.
.boston would become M+M’s fifth geographic gTLD — sixth if you include .london.
The company said it plans to launch the TLD later this year.

1 Comment Tagged: .boston, boston globe, ICANN, m+m, Minds + Machines, new gTLDs

.sucks “gagging” registrar critics?

.sucks may be all about freedom of speech, but some registrars reckon the registry is trying to ban them from criticizing the new gTLD in public.
Vox Populi is proposing a change to its standard registrar contract that some say is an attempt to gag them.
A version of the Registry-Registrar Agreement dated December 18, seen by DI, contains the new section 2.1:

The purpose of this Agreement is to permit and promote the registration of domain names in the Vox Populi TLDs and to allow Registrar to offer the registration of the Vox Populi TLDs in partnership with Vox Populi. Neither party shall take action to frustrate or impair the purpose of this Agreement.

It’s broad and somewhat vague, but some registrars are reading it like a gagging order.
While many retail registrars are no doubt happy to sell .sucks domains as part of their catalogs, there is of course a subset of the registrar market that focuses on brand protection.
Brand protection registrars have been quite vocal in their criticism of .sucks.
MarkMonitor, for example, last year wrote about how it would refuse to make a profit on .sucks names, and was not keen on promoting the TLD to its clients.
Asked about the new RRA language, Vox Pop CEO John Berard told DI that it was merely an attempt to clarify the agreement but provided no additional detail.
Registrars are also angry about a second substantial change to the contract, which would allow the registry to unilaterally make binding changes to the deal at will.
The new text in section 8.4 reads:

Vox Populi shall have the right, at any time and from time to time, to amend any or all terms and conditions of this Agreement. Any such amendment shall be binding and effective 15 days after Vox Populi gives notice of such amendment to the Registrar by email.

That’s the kind of thing that ICANN sometimes gets away with, but some registrars are saying that such a change would let Vox Pop do whatever the hell it likes and would therefore be legally unenforceable.

14 Comments Tagged: new gTLDs, rra, sucks, vox populi

Top 2015 new gTLD sale looks like cybersquatting

One of the top secondary market domain sales of 2015, as reported by Sedo, appears to be a case of somebody selling a domain matching a trademark to the trademark’s owner.
According to a press release yesterday, the domain basic-fit.fitness was the third-priciest reportable new gTLD domain sale handled by Sedo last year.
It went for €7,949 ($8,634).
Given that it’s not intrinsically an attractive-looking domain, I tried to figure out why it sold.
Judging by Whois records, the buyer is the corporate owner of Basic-Fit, a chain of over 300 gyms in four European countries.
It has at least one trademark on “Basic-Fit”.
The original registrant, according to records cached by DomainTools, was a Belgian web designer.
The domain seems to have changed hands around May last year. In April, it spent a couple of weeks under Whois privacy.
The domain was registered August 27, 2014, the day .fitness exited its Early Access Period and domains were available at regular prices.
It seems the same Belgian web designer owns several more new gTLD domain names matching brands that are parked with Sedo and available to buy instantly.
Many are .immo (“.realestate”) domains matching the brands of Belgian real estate firms. There are also a few .beer domains under his name matching the brands of breweries and beers in the UK, US and Czech Republic.
It’s not unheard of for web developers to register domains on behalf of clients. It’s rather less common for them to then list them for sale, with buy-now prices, on domain marketplaces.
Looks dodgy to me.

1 Comment Tagged: .fitness, basic-fit, cybersquatting, sedo, trademarks

Uniregistry offers app for iOS

Uniregistry today launched an app for customers of its registrar.
The Uniregistry App became available on Apple’s App Store today, for iOS-based devices.
A company spokesperson said that an Android version is in the works and will become available later this year.
According to the company, the app allows users to manage or buy domains as usual.
“Update it all, nameservers, DNS records, forwarding, auto-renewals, AUTH codes, even your domain lock,” the app’s description says.
For those worried about carrying the keys to the kingdom around in their pockets, authentication is handled by Touch ID (Apple’s fingerprint technology) and/or Google Authenticator, a one-time password app.

3 Comments Tagged: uniregistry

Priced to sell: $46m of two-letter .xxx names

ICM Registry has added over 1,200 two-character .xxx names to its catalog of priced premiums.
With prices ranging from $100,000 to $37,500, the newly offered domains carry a total ticket price of over $46 million.
The only six-figure name on the list is vr.xxx. ICM said in a press release today it has already sold vr.porn and vr.sex for $100,000 apiece.
There are seven names with adult connotations (such as 69.xxx and bj.xxx) priced at $75,000, eight more at $50,000 and two at $40,000.
The rest of the list of 1,227 names are being offered at $37,500, which is roughly 10 times the prices on the equivalent .porn, .sex and .adult domains.
While ICM noted the interest in domain investing from China recently, it does not appear to have valued its numeric-only domains (such as 88.xxx) any more highly than less attractive-looking combinations (such as 0o.xxx).
Judging by the list published on ICM’s web site, it has already sold well over 300 two-character domains in its newest three gTLDs.
Had those sold at the buy-now prices it would have raised over $1.1 million in revenue.
But ICM since September has been offering an option to register premium names for premium annual fees that are lower than the one-off price. A $37,500 domain costs $3,000 a year to register, under this model.
The total value of ICM’s premium list, including all the longer domains, is roughly $115 million.

2 Comments Tagged: .adult, .sex, icm registry, new gTLDs, porn, premiums, xxx

Baidu, China’s Google, gets its dot-brand gTLD

Chinese web giant Baidu had its dot-brand gTLD, .baidu, go live in the DNS root zone today.
With the extraordinary amount of focus on China in the domain industry currently, this could be one of the dot-brands to watch in 2016.
There are no active domain names in .baidu just yet, but we will likely see nic.baidu put to some use or another over the coming days.
Unusually for a dot-brand gTLD, Baidu’s contract with ICANN does not contain specifications 9 or 13, which allow dot-brands to operate differently to regular gTLDs.
This suggests an open registration policy under which any registrar can sell .baidu domains to any registrant.
However, Baidu’s original gTLD application spells out quite a different plan, focused primarily on trademark protection. It says:

All available second-level strings of .BAIDU (e.g. example .BAIDU) will be initially allocated only to limited number of eligible registrants and for internal corporate business purposes. BAIDU plans to adopt this approach and expects to maintain it for 3 years from the launch of the “.BAIDU” registry service. Such approach will be regularly evaluated and adjusted if appropriate and necessary. Depending a various internal and external factors, including market demand and user expectation, BAIDU may consider a phased roll-out approach for a broader commercial marketplace but will do so after the conclusion of the initial 3-year period.

I wouldn’t expect .baidu to launch properly any time soon.
Not only is the company probably going to want to get its dot-brand contractual protections in place, it’s also showed no huge enthusiasm for making its way through the new gTLD delegation process so far.
It signed its ICANN contract January 8 last year, meaning this week was pretty much the latest date it could permissibly go into the root.
Like most dot-brands, it’s been dragging its feet, in other words.
Baidu is the leading web property in China, dwarfing even Google in terms of search market share locally.

2 Comments Tagged: baidu, delegation, dot-brands, ICANN, new gTLDs

Rightside to auction “xyz” domains at NamesCon

.xyz made a bit of a splash with domain investors in 2015, but is the meaningless string “xyz” inherently attractive? Even at the second level?
Rightside seems to think so.
The registry, which does not operate .xyz, is planning to auction at least four “xyz” domains during next Monday’s live auction at the NamesCon conference in Las Vegas.
Rightside today disclosed that xyz.sale, xyz.market, xyz.news and xyz.live will be among about a dozen registry-reserved short domain names– such as q.sale and z.pub — it will attempt to sell.
The only meaningful domain on its list is the absolutely fantastic, category-killing viral.video.
It’s difficult to see the “xyz” names as anything other than attempt to cash in on the popularity of .xyz domains among the investors, many of them Chinese, currently pumping money into the domain market.
XYZ.com’s .xyz gTLD has over 1.7 million domains in its zone file today, making it the largest-volume new gTLD by a considerable margin.
I’m not sure there’s any causal connection here, but it should probably be noted that Daniel Negari and Michael Ambrose, XYZ.com’s CEO and COO respectively, recently acquired a substantial chunk of Rightside.
The two men disclosed November 30 that they had paid over $8.5 million to buy almost 10 million shares — or roughly 5.2% of the company — on the open market.
The NamesCon auction kicks off at 1400 Pacific (2200 UTC) on Monday at the Tropicana in Vegas. It’s being managed by RightOfTheDot and Namejet.

2 Comments Tagged: .xyz, auction, namescon, rightside, rotd, xyz.com

Afilias seeks to freeze Architelos patent after $10m lawsuit win

Afilias seems bent on burying domain security software maker Architelos, after winning a $10 million lawsuit against it.
The registry on Friday filed a court motion to freeze the patent at the heart of the lawsuit, which Afilias says — and a jury agreed — was based on trade secrets misappropriated by former Afilias employees.
Afilias said it wants to make sure Architelos does not attempt to sell the so-called ‘801 patent, which covers domain abuse-monitoring software.
Its motion asks for a court order “prohibiting Architelos from taking any action that would dilute… or diminish Architelos’ rights or ownership interests” in the patent.
It notes that Architelos has stated that it does not have the means to pay the $10 million damages awarded by a jury in August, which might give it a reason to try to sell the patent.
Afilias said Architelos had “raised the prospect of bankruptcy” during post-trial negotiations.
The motion seems to have been filed now because the judge in the case is taking an unusually long time to render her final judgment.
Despite the case being heard on a so-called “rocket docket” in Virginia, the two companies haven’t heard a peep out of the court since late October.
According to Afilias’ motion, the judge has indicated that Afilias will wind up at least partially owning the ‘801 patent, but that the jury’s $10 million verdict may be “tweaked”.
Judging by a transcript of the August jury trial, the judge herself was not particularly impressed with Afilias’ case and did not expect the jury to crucify Architelos so badly.
Out of the jury’s earshot, she encouraged Afilias to attempt to settle the case and said “if the jury verdict comes in against what I think is the clear weight of the evidence, I will most likely adjust it.”
She also said: “I would have trouble believing that any reasonable jury would find even if they were to award damages to the plaintiff that there’s any significant amount here.”
She clearly misread the jury, which a few days later handed Afilias every penny of the $10 million it had asked for.
That’s much more money than Architelos is believed to have made in revenue since it launched four years ago.
Afilias’ latest motion is set to be heard in court in early January.

1 Comment Tagged: afilias, architelos, lawsuit, patents, security, trade secrets