.love won by class action lawyers

It appears that the contested new gTLD .love has been won by the law firm Merchant Law Group, after an auction.
Minds + Machines, Richemont, Google and Donuts have all officially withdrawn their competing applications. I gather that withdrawals from Uniregistry and Famous Four Media are on their way.
.love would be MLG’s first successful new gTLD application.
The would-be portfolio applicant applied for eight strings, all of which were contested by others. It has withdrawn bids for .news, .club and .law after auctions.
MLG is odd as new gTLD applicants go. It’s a Canadian law firm that offers services across many areas of law but seems to specialize in class action lawsuits.
According to its application, .love will be positioned in the same space as .wed and .wedding:

.LOVE’s target markets are broad enough to maintain a financially viable TLD and distinct enough that the .LOVE TLD will not become ‘just another .info’. A .LOVE TLD will provide a unique space on the Internet for information and services related to the idea of love, engagements, marriage, and family. It will allow anyone to register a domain name and post information about products and services related to the idea of love, an engagement, a marriage, or family.

It is anticipated to be an open, unrestricted gTLD running on a CentralNic back-end.

1 Comment Tagged: .love, auctions, ICANN, merchant law group, new gTLDs, withdrawals

Private auction settles controversial plural gTLD fight

A private auction has been used to settle a new gTLD contention set containing two different strings for the first time.
Afilias has won the right to run .pet after Google withdrew its application for .pet and Donuts withdrew its bid for .pets.
The two strings, one the plural of the other, had been placed into indirect contention by ICANN after a String Confusion Objection panel controversially ruled in August 2013 that .pet and .pets were too confusingly similar to be allowed to coexist.
This means that Donuts has been forced to withdraw an uncontested application.
Notably, it was Google that filed, fought and won the SCO complaint, and it didn’t even wind up with the TLD it wanted.
The final settlement of the contention set reflects ICANN’s inconsistent policy on plurals. Several plural/singular combinations — such as .career(s) and .photo(s) — already coexist in the DNS.

2 Comments Tagged: .pet, .pets, afilias, auctions, donuts, google, ICANN, new gTLDs, plurals

CentralNic unloads $2.5m worth of premium domains

CentralNic today announced it has made $2.5 million by selling off some of its stash of premium domain names.
The sales appear to be of “non-core” names unrelated to its registry business that the company has been sitting on for a while, rather than names that it has reserved in its own subdomains and new gTLDs for which it acts as back-end.
The company did not disclose how many or which names it has sold, but the sales all seem to have happened in the last few months, since it first announced its intention to liquidate some of its premiums.
CentralNic said its portfolio comprises some 20,000 names.
The company also confirmed today that its financial results for the second half of the year will be in line with expectations.

Comment Tagged: centralnic

Donuts blames “license” problems for Chinese gTLD delays

Donuts says that problems obtaining “licenses” from the Chinese government are to blame for the fact that it is yet to launch any of its Chinese-script new gTLDs.
Currently, four of the company’s portfolio of 156 gTLDs are in Chinese. Three have been delegated to the DNS root but none of them have been launched.
The first, .游戏 (for “games”) has been in the root since October 2013, but does not yet have a firm date for Sunrise. Another, .商店 (“shop”), was delegated just last week, almost a year after Donuts signed its Registry Agreement with ICANN.
Donuts explained the .游戏 delay with the following statement:

The Chinese government division which handles this area is MIIT [Ministry of Industry and Information Technology] and in conjunction with [.cn registry] CNNIC they are still to advise of the licensing application process. We hope to make these TLDs available during the first half of 2015.

No additional details were available and it’s not clear what licenses Donuts — which is based in the United States — thinks it needs to obtain before launching.
I’ve heard rumors that China may introduce a licensing system in future, but other new gTLD registries with Chinese-script strings in their stable have managed to launch their gTLDs just fine without a Chinese government license.
TLD Registry — legally based in Dublin, Ireland, founded by Finns — launched .中文网 and .在线 earlier this year and has tens of thousands of names under management.
Thousands of those domains, which match Chinese geographic names, were allocated to Chinese government, however.
“No licenses are currently possible, because the new law is MIA,” TLD Registry chief marketing officer Simon Cousins told us.

8 Comments Tagged: china, cnnic, donuts, ICANN, miit, new gTLDs, tld registry

ICANN 53 will be in Buenos Aires

ICANN has picked Buenos Aires, Argentina, for its 53rd public meeting.
The choice of city was approved by the ICANN board late last week.
The meeting will be held June 21-25 next year, sandwiched between February’s return to Singapore and October’s first foray into Dublin.
The BA venue has not been disclosed yet, but it’s possible ICANN will return to the Sheraton hotel and convention center.
It’s the third time ICANN has held one of its public meetings in Argentina. It visited BA last year for ICANN 48 and the sleepy seaside town of Mar Del Plata in 2005.
Having attended both previous meetings, I’ve discovered that it’s possible for a vegetarian to quickly become seriously malnourished in Argentina, so it’s quite likely DI’s coverage of ICANN 53 will heavily leverage the excellent remote participation facilities.
BA’s great if you love steak, however.

2 Comments Tagged: buenos aires, ICANN, icann 53

Black Ice suspended by ICANN

A small Israeli registrar has had its registrar accreditation suspended by ICANN.
Black Ice domains, which has a few thousand .com and .net domains under management, failed to comply with an ICANN audit and was overdue on its fees by over $5,000, according to the ICANN notice (pdf).
It won’t be allowed to sell gTLD domains or accept inbound transfers from December 19 to March 18, and may be terminated if it fails to come back into compliance.
The registrar is the fourth to have its accreditation suspended by ICANN in 2014. The organization has terminated a further seven registrars, down on the 11 terminated in the whole of 2013.

Comment Tagged: audit, black ice domains, compliance, ICANN, suspensions

Eleven domains suspended under .uk anti-rape rules

Nominet has suspended and permanently blocked 11 “rape” domain names in .uk since introducing a controversial policy earlier this year.
The company today disclosed that nine pre-existing domains were suspended immediately following the introduction of the rules in May. Another two have been blocked since then.
The policy calls for Nominet to ban any domain name that seems to “promote or incite serious sexual offences”.
Examples of such domains given by Lord MacDonald, who compiled the review that led to the policy, included rapeme.co.uk, rapemyteacher.co.uk and rapeporn.co.uk.
Nominet now automatically scans all new .uk registrations for keywords that may be a cause for concern. These are then manually reviewed to weed out the false positives, which could include for example domains that contain the word “grape” or “therapist”.
The false positive level is very high. According to a Nominet report (pdf) this week, 1,029 domains have been automatically flagged since May, only two of which were then suspended.
The policy was introduced following articles in some of the UK’s right-wing tabloids and pressure from government ministers.
Nominet also disclosed this week that 948 domains have been suspended for “criminal activity” in the last six months.
Under Nominet rules, such domains are suspended merely upon notification by the law enforcement agencies that the domain in question is suspected of harboring criminal activity. Unlike elsewhere in the world, no court order is required.
“Criminal activity” means intellectual property infringement in the vast majority of cases.
Of those 948 suspended names, 839 were suspended after complaints from the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit. Another 102 were yanked following notices from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. The remaining 7 complaints came from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau.

Comment Tagged: .uk, nominet, rape, suspensions

After lawsuit, YouPorn buys into .xxx portfolio

Porn site operator Manwin Licensing, known to the domain industry for its antitrust lawsuit against ICANN and ICM Registry that was settled last year, has taken over a portfolio of .xxx domains from a staunch .xxx supporter.
Now known as MindGeek, the YouPorn operator is to manage sites for Really Useful, one of the most enthusiastic buyers of premium .xxx domain names.
Really Useful was the first company to have a live .xxx web site — casting.xxx. It has also bought premiums such as orgasms.xxx, bdsm.xxx, mature.xxx, publicsex.xxx, czech.xxx, tubes.xxx, teen.xxx and mom.xxx directly from ICM.
Its spokesperson, “JT”, has expressed his support for .xxx in a few ICM press releases.
MindGeek is also taking over a selection of .com domains as part of the deal.
As Manwin, MindGeek sued ICANN and ICM in late 2011, alleging breaches of US antitrust law. It claimed the need for defensive registrations when .xxx launched amounted to “extortion”.
The suit was settled by ICM last year, but not before a California court ruled that ICANN is not immune to antitrust law.
Now, MindGeek seems to think .xxx domains are okay. Its director of global sales, “Nick P”, reportedly said: “JT’s content and brands are among the hottest on the Internet right now and the future sites planned are phenomenal.”
In unrelated news, MindGeek came under fire this week for producing a series of porn videos that allegedly depict the simulated rape of illegal immigrants by US border patrols.

Comment Tagged: icm, manwin, mindgeek, really useful, xxx

As another group rejects proposal, is NETmundial stillborn?

The nascent NETmundial Initiative appears to be in dire straits already, just weeks into its existence, after another influential internet governance body decided against joining.
The Internet Architecture Board, which holds ultimate responsibility for the Request For Comment standards that help the internet remain interoperable, said yesterday that it will not join NetMundial, saying it is “not needed”.
The IAB’s rejection of the initiative follows that of the Internet Society, which said last month that the way NETmundial was being formed was not transparent, bottom-up or decentralized.
NETmundial is deliberately and self-consciously not related to domain names, which is why I’ve paid it scant attention recently, but I think it’s worth a mention because it is the brainchild in part of ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade and the subject of some discussion at ICANN meetings.
The idea behind the initiative is to create a policy body that can look at cross-border internet governance issues not already dealt with in fora such as ICANN or the IETF.
Chehade has been particularly enthusiastic about it as it could create a way to prevent special interests attempting to strong-arm ICANN, as the only “internet governance” entity out there with any real power, into making policies outside of its narrow remit.
The group was founded by ICANN, the government-linked Brazilian Internet Steering Committee and the World Economic Forum. Its name is borrowed from the NETmundial meeting, a policy talking shop that took place in Sao Paolo with the support of the Brazilian government this April.
But it’s come in for criticism for lacking true bottom-up organization.
The original plan was for a Coordinating Council to be created, comprising 20 people from four sectors and five geographic regions, to be selected by ICANN, the WEF and Brazil from a raft of self-nominated individuals.
There were to be another five permanent seats — three for the three organizers, one for the I* technical standards bodies and one for the Internet Governance Forum — but this was reportedly abandoned after ISOC expressed its disapproval of the plan.
Indeed, with the IGF also expressing misgivings about the Council’s make-up, there was the very real possibility of two of the five permanent seats sitting empty.
So far, just 10 days shy of the December 15 deadline, only 20 nominations have been received for the regular council. Four seats currently have no volunteers and four are contested by two people.
There hasn’t been much in the way of contributions to policy discussions either (though this is perhaps understandable for such a young initiative). So far, only two people have put forward ideas for discussion topics. On relates to brain-computer interfaces and the other to cyberbullying.

Comment Tagged: netmundial

Donuts wins five more new gTLD auctions

Donuts added five new gTLDs to its ever-growing portfolio this week, as the results of five private auctions were revealed.
The company won the following strings:
.news — went to Donuts after withdrawals from Merchant Law Group, Amazon, Radix, Uniregistry, Famous Four Media and Primer Nivel. As somebody with a vested interest in the news media, I’m glad this one went to a registry with an open registration policy.
.golf — Donuts beat Famous Four, Dot Golf and Fegistry.
.casino — Donuts won after withdrawals from Famous Four, Afilias and dotBeauty.
.school — Donuts beat Fegistry, Uniregistry and Minds + Machines.
.football — Donuts beat Famous Four.
The registry currently has 156 delegated TLDs, more than half of those it originally applied for. It has another 99 active applications in various stages of pre-delegation.

9 Comments Tagged: .casino, .football, .golf, .news, .school, auctions, donuts, new gTLDs