ROTD lends geo names to CentralNic registrar push

CentralNic and Right Of The Dot have teamed up to offer a series of geographically themed registrar storefronts for new gTLDs.
Under a joint venture, the companies are launching sites such as london.domains, vegas.domains, tokyo.domains and nyc.domains.
ROTD, the new gTLD venture launched by Mike Berkens and Monte Cahn, acquired these premium domains from Donuts during the .domains Early Access Period.
The second level strings all match the third-party geo-gTLDs that will be offered via these sites. Another 12 will be launched before the end of the year, the companies said.
CentralNic, best known as a registry, will provide the back-end for the site, as part of its push into the registrar side of the market that kicked off with its $7.5 million acquisition of Internet.bs.

3 Comments Tagged: .domains, centralnic, right of the dot, rotd

Oops! Cock-up reveals ICANN survey respondent emails

An ICANN contractor accidentally revealed the email addresses of almost 100 people who responded to a survey related to a review of the Generic Names Supporting Organization.
An invitation to participate in a follow-up survey was sent out to respondents today with all the email addresses in the To:, rather than BCC:, field.
Westlake Governance, which is conducting the survey for ICANN, quickly sent an apology:

We have been sending invitations in batches, and regret that we included your address in the only set of invitations that was copied inadvertently in the “To” line as addressee, rather than as a “Bcc.”
We sincerely apologise for this breach of our internal protocols and potentially of your privacy.

The misfire revealed that 15 out of the 98 listed respondents have @icann.org email addresses, suggesting roughly 15% of the responses came from ICANN staffers.
While the survey certainly anticipated responses from within the organization — one question gives “staff” as an option for the respondent to state their affiliation — some are not happy anyway.
Neustar vice president Jeff Neuman tweeted:

Should #ICANN staff be providing feedback on GNSO review? I see value in that; but results should not be grouped in with other responses.

— Jeff Neuman (@jintlaw) November 1, 2014

The massive, 93-question survey (pdf) was designed to kick-start the next cycle in ICANN’s interminable reviews of its policy-making bodies, in this case the GNSO.
The results of the survey will be used to inform a review of the GNSO’s structure, which could potentially re-balance power within the organization.

Comment Tagged: gnso, ICANN

ICANN board bill tops $2 million

ICANN’s board of directors cost the organization over $2 million in pay and expenses in its fiscal 2014, a document released last night shows.
The total bill for the year ended June 30 was $2,000,609, up 16% on FY13’s $1,721,191 and up 27% on the FY12 figure.
The majority of the expenditure went on travel and other expenses. Just $538,983 went on compensation.
ICANN directors get $35,000 per year basic, plus another $5,000 for each board committee they chair. Board chair Steve Crocker gets $75,000 and accumulated $149,000 in FY2014 expenses.
Six directors chose to receive no compensation whatsoever, though they all racked up travel expenses.
The $2 million total does not include any contribution from CEO Fadi Chehade.
Chehade’s salary was $559,999. He also received $253,826 in bonuses and accumulated expenses totaling $519,421.
FY14 was of course the year in which Chehade and members of the board traveled extensively for outreach related to the IANA stewardship transition process and the NetMundial initiative.

1 Comment Tagged: budget, ICANN

Nominet hires venture capitalist as new CEO

Nominet has named Lesley Cowley’s replacement as CEO as Russell Haworth, a Thomson Reuters alum who’s spent much of 2014 working as a venture capitalist.
Russell was previously managing director of Thomson Reuters’ Middle East & Africa division.
Since January, he’s been a co-founder and partner at Saya Ventures, an investment company focused on early-stage technology companies.
“Russell will lead the organisation as it develops its core registry business, explores the potential of new technologies, and delivers on its commitment to ensuring the internet is a force for good,” Nominet said.
He’s set to join the .uk registry in January 2015.
He replaces Cowley, who resigned in May and earlier this month revealed several new jobs.

1 Comment Tagged: .uk, nominet

Quitted ICANN director gets old job back

Olga Madruga-Forti, who quit ICANN’s board of directors earlier this month, has gone back to work for the US Federal Communications Commission.
I gather that while ICANN was aware of her new job, it was unable to announce the move at the time of her resignation.
The FCC said Madruga-Forti will be chief of Strategic Analysis and Negotiations Division at its International Bureau.
She worked for the FCC for nine years until 1997 as special counsel with responsibility for satellite policy. She’s spent the intervening years working for satellite companies in the US and Argentina.

Comment Tagged: ICANN

Former pop star is .uk’s 10,000th cybersquatting case

Nominet has processed its 10,000th cybersquatting dispute, according to the company.
Conveniently for the .uk registry’s public relations department, the complainant in the case was Aston Merrygold, a well-known former member of the pop group JLS.
He won astonmerrygold.co.uk, which was registered to London-based Martyn O’Brien, using Nominet’s 12-year-old Dispute Resolution Service.
Merrygold does not have a trademark covering his name, but the DRS panelist found that he had rights anyway, due to his relative fame and numerous TV appearances.
O’Brien registered the name in 2008, along with the names of Merrygold’s band-mates, after JLS appeared in the final of TV talent show The X Factor.
JLS had a brief but successful pop career before breaking up last year. Merrygold currently intends to go solo, which presumably inspired the DRS complaint.
Nominet also announced today that Tony Willoughby, who has been chair of the DRS panel since 2002, has stepped aside and will be replaced by DRS appeals panelist Nick Gardner.

Comment Tagged: cybersquatting, drs, nominet

gTLD auctions net ICANN another $13m

ICANN has raised another $12.9 million from new gTLD auctions.
A small batch of three contention sets — .realty, .salon and .spot — were resolved last Wednesday in the third so-called “last resort” auction.
.realty went to Fegistry for $5,588,888, .salon to Donuts for $5,100,575 and .spot to Amazon for $2.2 million.
ICANN now has accumulated new gTLD auction sales totaling $27.8 million.
It raised $14.3 million selling off .buy, .tech and .vip in September. The auction for .信息 fetched $600,000 in June.
ICANN’s share — after auctioneer Power Auctions is paid off — is being put into a special fund, rather that ICANN’s current account. The community will one day have to decide what to spend it on.

Comment Tagged: .realty, .salon, .spot, amazon, auctions, donuts, Fegistry, ICANN, last resort

Is the free ride over for Verisign’s .net?

Verisign’s .net is on the rocks due to new gTLDs, executives have confirmed.
Speaking to investors and analysts on the company’s third-quarter earnings call last week, CFO George Kilguss said that .net “is experiencing some headwinds from the launch of the new gTLD program”.
Further comments from Kilguss and CEO Jim Bidzos seem to confirm what DI reported a month ago: .net is in trouble.
Latest stats collated by DI show that the .net zone file shrunk by over 121,000 domains in the seven months between March 26 and October 26 this year.
Executives said on the call that .net stood at 15.1 million names at the end of September. That compares to 15.2 million at the end of the previous quarter.
“It’s been relatively flat,” Kilguss said. “I actually think .net has held up pretty well over the year with all these new names coming on… So I don’t view .net’s performance as anything negative.”
Bidzos told analysts that “confusion” around the new gTLDs was to blame.
“I think generally, .net may be more susceptible to that confusion that swirls around new gTLDs,” he said.
He characterized .net as being like new gTLDs, falling into “that category of ‘different'”.
In my view, this is an implicit acknowledgement that .net has been getting a free ride for the last 20 years.
Asked whether the .net weakness could spill over to .com, Bidzos said that .com is a “trusted brand” because it’s almost 30 years old and has a 17-year record of uninterrupted up-time.
While there’s no doubt that .com is a trusted brand, it’s not because of its up-time or longevity, in my view — .net has the same stability record and is actually fractionally older than .com.
The reason .net is suffering now is that that for the last two decades it’s been essentially a defensive play.
People buy the .net when they buy the .com because they’ve been marketed as a bundle — the only two truly generic TLDs out there. Unlike .org, .net lost its semantic differentiation a long time ago.
As .com buyers start to see more and more options for duplicative or defensive registrations in their shopping carts, they’re going to be less likely to grab the .net to match their .com, in my opinion.
And it’s likely to get worse.
“It’s going to continue,” Bidzos said. “We’re seeing hundreds of more new gTLDs coming, and they’re coming at the rate of many every single week. So that confusion is likely to get worse.”

3 Comments Tagged: .net, new gTLDs, verisign

ICANN terminates deadbeat registrar

ICANN has started termination proceedings on Domain Services Rotterdam, a Dutch registrar, for failure to pay accreditation fees.
The company owes ICANN $5,118.83 in dues but has failed to pay up despite breach notices dating back to May, according to an ICANN termination notice (pdf)
Domain Services does not have any gTLD domains under management, so no registrants will be affected by the termination, which is due to kick in November 21.
The registrar was accredited in March this year.

Comment Tagged: compliance, domain services rotterdam, ICANN, termination

ICANN may cancel Morocco meeting over Ebola fear

ICANN may cancel its forthcoming meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, due to fears about the spread of Ebola in Africa.
The organization issued a statement last night, after local reports said the decision to cancel had already been made:

Following Morocco’s recent request to postpone the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament because of possible African travel restrictions, ICANN is in active and ongoing discussions with our ICANN 52 Marrakech hosts.
ICANN is considering postponing the meeting in Marrakech scheduled for 8-12 February, 2015 as the likelihood of travel restrictions being imposed on nationals from African countries would reduce participation in the meeting. ICANN’s multistakeholder, bottom up model relies on the broad, active participation of communities across geography and society.
ICANN staff is working closely with the ICANN Board and its Community representatives.
No decision has been taken yet, however ICANN understands the importance of providing timely updates and path forward on the status and location of ICANN 52.

Citing an unnamed ICANN source, Le360 reported on Saturday that ICANN 52 had been canceled due to the Moroccan government’s reluctance to host large international gatherings.
While Morocco is not affected by the current Ebola outbreak — which has infected over 10,000 people thousands of kilometers away, mainly in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia — there are fears that major international events could bring the virus into the country.
The government has been urging the Confederation of African Football to postpone the Africa Cup of Nations, a football tournament due to take place January 17 to February 8.
The ICANN meeting in Marrakech is scheduled for February 8 to 12.

Comment Tagged: ebola, ICANN, icann 53, marrakech