Back in evaluation! Tata dot-brand bid falls foul of Morocco

Tata Group, the Indian conglomerate, is to see its application for .tata head back into evaluation, after the Moroccan government denied it had given its approval for the bid.
ICANN told the company this week that .tata will have to be reviewed by the Geographic Names Panel for a third time.
Tata, as well as the name of the 150-year-old, $100 billion-a-year company, is also the name of a tiny Moroccan province (pop. 121,618) that is a protected geographic term under the new gTLD program’s rules.
Tata needed to get a letter of endorsement or non-objection from the relevant Moroccan authorities in order to pass the Geographic Names Panel review.
The company apparently had secured such a letter, when last July .tata became the final new gTLD application to pass through evaluation.
However, senior officials at Morocco’s industry of trade started kicking up a fuss last September, denying any such non-objection had been given.
In exchanges of letters with ICANN over the last few weeks, Morocco has elaborated. It now claims the letter provided by Tata to the panel referred to trademark protection of the Tata brand under Moroccan law and did not specifically not object to .tata.
The original letter (pdf) was sent by the Moroccan Office for Industry and Intellectual Property (OMPIC). It’s in French, so it’s hard for me to comment with much confidence either way even with a translation, but it seems to say that no Moroccan law would forbid the .tata application.
Now, OMPIC director Adil El Maliki has told ICANN (pdf) that there was no intention to confer non-objection. Another letter from the ministry of trade says the same.
ICANN has accepted the government’s explanation and has thrown .tata back at the evaluation process, where it is basically now at the mercy of the Moroccan government.
It’s not the first time there’s been some (charitably) confusion in government agencies about endorsements for new gTLD applications. DotConnectAfrica’s bid for .africa had backing from an African Union representative at first, which was subsequently withdrawn.
Other “geographic” gTLDs have found it’s easiest to throw money at the problem. Tata Group’s best hope for .tata now might be to build Tata province a new school.

1 Comment Tagged: .tata, geographic names, ICANN, morocco, new gTLDs, tata group

.cancerresearch — a role model for dot-brands?

.cancerresearch went live today with an interesting, and possibly unique to date, take on the new gTLD concept.
It’s technically not a dot-brand under ICANN rules, but there are no firm plans to start selling registrations to third parties yet and the people running it are pointing to it as a possible model from which dot-brands could draw inspiration.
The registry, the charitable Australian Cancer Research Foundation, is working heavily with back-end provider ARI Registry Services and has recruited the ad agency M&C Saatchi for the promotion.
It’s reserved about 80 .cancerresearch domain names for its own “promotional purposes” — permissible under ICANN rules — and gone live today with a handful of web sites designed to raise awareness about and funds for cancer research.
I say it looks possibly unique because, despite the multiple domains in play, it basically looks and feels like one web site.
Start at home.cancerresearch, click a link entitled “Donate” and you’ll be taken to donate.cancerrresearch. Click a link about lung cancer, you’ll go to lung.cancerresearch. There’s another link to theone.cancerresearch, soliciting donations.
Unless you’re looking at the address bar in your browser, you’d be forgiven for assuming you’re on the same web site. The sites on the different domains are using the same style, same imagery, and are obviously part of the same campaign.
That’s not particularly innovative, of course. Redirecting users to other domains within the same web site experience happens all the time. But I don’t think I’ve seen it done before with a new gTLD. Navigation-wise, it seems to have a degree of novelty.
Tony Kirsch, head of global consulting at ARI, said that what the ACRF is doing could “help give dot-brand holders struggling with a wait-and-see approach a real example of what can be done”.
.cancerresearch isn’t a dot-brand under ICANN’s strict Specification 13 rules, however. It’s more like an unofficial ‘closed generic’ at this point.
The gTLD is launching today — with mainstream media coverage — without a confirmed Sunrise date. Right now, nobody apart from the registry can own a domain there.
And while Kirsch told DI that .cancerresearch will be available to third parties, he also said that there will be strict eligibility requirements. Those requirements are still “TBD”, however.
There are also no accredited registrars for the gTLD at this point, he confirmed.

6 Comments Tagged: .cancerresearch, ari, bombora, dot-brands, ICANN, new gTLDs, sunrise

Schwartz sells porno.com for $8.9 million

The domain name porno.com has changed hands for $8,888,888, making it the fourth highest-value domain to be sold.
The seller is domain investor Rick Schwartz, notorious for owning lots of category-killer domains but hardly ever selling them. The buyer is WGCZ, a Prague-based company.
According to DN Journal, the sale is the fourth biggest ticket domain to be sold in an all-cash deal.
Schwartz bought the domain for $42,000 in 1997 from a college student who had acquired it the previous week for $5,000, according to a press release.
He said he’s made over $10 million from the domain with pay-per-click sales or redirecting traffic to other porn sites.
The related domain porn.com sold for $9.5 million in 2007. The highest-value deal to date is sex.com, selling for $13 million in 2010. The only non-porn domain to sell for more is fund.com, which fetched $9,999,950.

2 Comments Tagged: porno.com

Toilet Paper Test not to blame as .tp faces deletion

The DNS root zone file is set to shrink, albeit only temporarily, with ICANN planning to delete the redundant ccTLD .tp in the coming weeks.
ICANN’s board of directors plans to vote on “Removal of the .TP top-level domain representing Portuguese Timor” on February 12. It’s on the consensus agenda, meaning there won’t be any detailed discussion of the motion.
The ccTLD has an interesting history.
When Jon Postel and the original DNS pioneers decided to use the UN’s ISO 3166 list as the official reference point for ccTLD codes, the country known as East Timor, at the time under Indonesian occupation, was officially only recognized as Portuguese Timor, its old colonial name.
Thus, in 1997, .tp was delegated to represent East Timor.
After an independent East Timor was formally recognized as a sovereign state by Indonesia and the international community, it was assigned the TL code by ISO 3166 in 2002.
IANA/ICANN delegated .tl to the East Timor government in 2005, and shortly thereafter the .tp registry stopped accepting new registrations, migrating existing .tp domains to the new ccTLD.
Now, it seems .tp is finally set to be removed from the root entirely.
While .tp was managed by an Irish company, the administrative contact was originally listed as Xanana Gusmao — at the time a senior resistance fighter serving a life sentence in an Indonesian jail.
Gusmao, who is still listed as .tp’s admin contact, went on to be East Timor’s first president from 2002 to 2007. Since 2007, he’s been the country’s prime minister.

Comment Tagged: .tl, .tp, east timor

.net zone back above 15 million names

Is .net bouncing back after a year of declines?
The Verisign legacy gTLD has topped 15 million names again, a bit over a month after it dipped below the notable but ultimately irrelevant threshold. Today, the .net zone has 15,000,038 names in its zone file.
It had gone below 15 million on January 1, and hit a trough of 14,980,773 on January 19, but has been gaining ground — in a wobbly fashion — ever since.
Verisign executives have previously blamed “confusion” from the sudden influx of new gTLDs into the market for .net’s 2014 decline, which saw it lose a couple hundred thousand zone file domains.
On January 22 and 26, the company’s stock outlook was downgraded by financial analysts, based on the view that new gTLDs were hurting its business.
But the company has been quite aggressively marketing .net alongside big brother .com for several months. Are those efforts paying dividends?

2 Comments Tagged: .net, new gTLDs, verisigin

Amazon staffing up for new gTLD launches

Amazon is one of the biggest portfolio applicants for new gTLDs, but to date we haven’t heard much from the e-commerce giant about how it intends to use its new assets.
That could change soon, however. The company is currently looking to bulk up its registry services staff, according to two job ads posted to DI Jobs today.
Amazon is looking for a Project Manager, Registry Services and a Sr. Software Development Manager, Registry Services to “help develop and launch innovative business models across Amazon’s new domain program.”.
Applicants will need to “see beyond DNS in its traditional function”, one of the ads intriguingly notes.
The project manager role is described as “a start-up opportunity with the backing of a larger organization”.
Amazon currently has 63 live new gTLD applications, of its original 76, 21 of which are currently in the final testing phase before delegation. Those include strings such as .buy, .read, .author and .like. Another 29 are in contracting with ICANN right now.

3 Comments Tagged: amazon, new gTLDs

.CLUB sells $200,000 domain for $10.99

.CLUB Domains has honored the $10.99 registration of credit.club, a premium domain it had hoped to sell for a record-busting $200,000.
The registry this week said it would allow registrant Bruce Marler to keep hold of the domain he bought at the base registration fee, even though it was due to be sold as a premium with an asking price above the previously record price for a .club name.
Marler acquired the name January 14, the day wine.club sold for $140,000 at NamesCon, for a reported $10.99 via Name.com. He’s since launched a basic web site there, though he made his intention to sell the domain clear in an email exchange with DomainGang.
.CLUB CEO Colin Campbell told DI: “It was listed for 200,000 on StartUp.club.”
StartUp.club is the company’s recently launched site for selling premium .club domains, many for six-figure sums.
A registry screw-up seems to be to blame for the sale.
Judging by a a post on NamePros by Campbell, the company was in the process of transferring 130 premium .club names from a registry-reserved status to its own ownership.
During the 26-hour period the domain was unreserved and available, Marler grabbed it.
Campbell said that the contracts between Name.com, itself, and the registrant would allow it to reclaim the domain, but said:

The registry does not believe it is in our best interest nor the best interest of the registrant to pull the name back given the substantial investment in time and money he has invested to launch credit.club. I informed the registrant of such matters and wish him a continued success.

While domainers are obviously lauding the decision as an example of registries owning — and paying for — their technological mistakes, I can’t help but wonder whether this was an economically sound decision.
The registry has certainly won brownie points in the investor community, it’s also lost a potential $200,000 sale.
Marler, by his own admission, intends to sell on the domain. While the domain hosts content today, it may not wind up being the kind of flagship, big-ticket anchor tenant that new gTLD registries need.
UPDATE: Marler, in the comments below, says he feels morally obliged to develop the site.

20 Comments Tagged: .club, credit.club, new gtlds .club domains

Dot Vegas sells $2m of premiums

New gTLD registry operator Dot Vegas says it has sold over $2 million worth of “premium” .vegas domain names to date.
The registry, which went to general availability in September, has also registered 1,000 additional premiums to itself in an effort to drum up more sales.
The list is available at the registry’s web site (pdf).
As you might expect, gambling and tourism related keywords feature heavily, but there are also names geared towards locals.
The names don’t appear to have buy-now prices. Rather, Dot Vegas is soliciting interested potential buyers via the reserved sites.
.vegas zone files show just over 12,000 names currently. That number will include the registry-reserved ones. According to DomainTools, Dot Vegas owns about 2,200 names across all TLDs.

2 Comments Tagged: .vegas, dot vegas, premiums

Two legit registrars held to account for lack of abuse tracking

ICANN Compliance’s campaign against registrars that fail to respond to abuse reports continued last week, with two registrars hit with breach notices.
The registrars in question are Above.com and Astutium, neither of which one would instinctively bundle in to the “rogue registrar” category.
Both companies have been told they’ve breached section 3.18.1 of their Registrar Accreditation Agreement, which says: “Registrar shall take reasonable and prompt steps to investigate and respond appropriately to any reports of abuse.”
Specifics were not given, but it seems that people filed abuse reports with the registrars then complained to ICANN when they did not get the response they wanted. ICANN then was unable to get the registrars to show evidence that they had responded.
Both companies have until February 12 to come back into compliance or risk losing their accreditations.
Domain investor-focused Above.com had over 150,000 gTLD domains on its books at the last official count. UK-based Astutium has fewer than 5,000 (though it says the current number, presumably including ccTLD names, is 53,350).
It’s becoming increasingly clear that registrars under the 2013 RAA are going to be held to account by ICANN to the somewhat vague requirements of 3.18.1, and that logging communications with abuse reports is now a must.

Comment Tagged: 2013 raa, 3.18, abuse, breach, compliance, ICANN

New ccTLDs may have to block name collisions

ICANN is thinking about expanding its controversial policy on name collisions from new gTLDs to new ccTLDs.
The country code Names Supporting Organization has been put on notice (pdf) that ICANN’s board of directors plans to pass a resolution on the matter shortly.
The resolution would call on the ccNSO to “undertake a study to understand the implications of name collisions associated with the launch of new ccTLDs” including internationalized domain name ccTLDs, and would “recommend” that ccTLD managers implement the same risk mitigation plan as new gTLDs.
Because ICANN does not contract with ccTLDs, a recommendation and polite pressure is about as far as it can go.
Name collisions are domains in currently undelegated TLDs that nevertheless receive DNS root traffic. In some cases, that may be because the TLDs are in use on internal networks, raising the potential of data leakage or breakages if the TLDs are then delegated.
ICANN contracts require new gTLDs to block such names or wildcard their zones for 90 days after launch.
Some new gTLD registry executives have mockingly pointed to the name collisions issue whenever a new ccTLD has been delegated over the last year or so, asking why, if collisions are so important, the mitigation plan does not apply to ccTLDs.
If the intent was to persuade ICANN that the collisions management framework was unnecessary, the opposite result has been achieved.

3 Comments Tagged: ccnso, cctlds, collisions, ICANN, idn cctlds, idns