Today’s new gTLD passes, signings and withdrawals

ICANN signed 21 new gTLD registry contracts late last week, while one applicant has withdrawn and another has passed evaluation.
First, Donuts has pulled out of its two-way contest for .global, leaving the path clear for CloudNames to be awarded the gTLD, which is to be an open-registration generic.
I gather that the contention set was settled in a rare example of a privately negotiated deal, rather than an auction, involving Donuts.
On Thursday, several applicants signed Registry Agreements with ICANN.
Famous Four Media, which applied for 60 strings, signed its first RA, for .bid.
Fellow portfolio applicant Top Level Domain Holdings signed for .miami, .country, .work, .vodka and .rodeo; Donuts got .supplies, .supply and .商店 (“shop”) and Top Level Spectrum got .feedback.
PeopleBrowsr contracted for .best and .kred and Punto 2012 got .rest (for “restaurant” and its many non-English variants).
In dot-brands, World Trade Centers Association got .wtc, Sohu.com got .sohu, Frogans got .frogans, AXA got .axa and Brazilian media conglomerate Globo got .globo.
In geographic strings, PointQuebec got .quebec, while FAITID got .moscow and its Cyrllic IDN equivalent .москва.
Finally, on Friday ICANN passed Bosch Rexroth’s dot-brand application for .rexroth through Extended Evaluation.

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Extortion.sucks — Vox Pop CEO defends “under-priced” $25,000 sunrise fee

Vox Populi Registry, the .sucks new gTLD applicant backed by Momentous Corp, is to charge trademark owners $25,000 to participate in its Sunrise period, should it win the TLD.
Not only that, but it’s become the first new gTLD applicant that I’m aware of to start taking pre-registration fees from trademark owners while it’s still in a contention set with other applicants.
At first glance, it looks like plain old trademark-owner extortion, taken to an extreme we’ve never seen before.
But after 45 minutes talking to Vox Pop CEO John Berard this evening, I’m convinced that it’s worse than that.
The company is setting itself up as the IP lobby’s poster child for everything that is wrong with the new gTLD program.
If Vox Pop wins the .sucks contention set — it’s competing against Donuts and Top Level Spectrum — it plans to charge trademark owners $25,000 to participate in Sunrise and $25,000 a year thereafter.
Registrations during general availability, whether they match a trademark or not, will cost $300 a year.
During the pre-registration period, the Sunrise fee is $2,500 and the “Priority Reservation” fee is $250.
The Sunrise fee is, I believe, higher than any sunrise fee in any TLD ever to launch.
But Berard said that he believes Vox Pop’s .sucks proposition is, if anything, “under-priced”.
“Most companies spend far more than $25,000 a month on a public relations agency, most companies spend more than $25,000 a month on a Google ad campaign,” he said.
“Companies spend millions of dollars a year on customer service. We view .sucks as an element of customer service on the part of companies,” he said.
Berard, a 40-year veteran of the public relations business, said that he believes .sucks represents an opportunity for brands to engage with their customers, gaining valuable insight that could help them improve product development or customer service.
“The last thing I view .sucks as is a domain name. That’s the last value proposition for .sucks,” he said. “The primary value proposition is as a key and innovative part of customer service, retention and loyalty.”
It’s about giving companies “the ability to bring internet criticism and commentary out of the shadows and into the light” and “an opportunity to actually have a legitimate ability to correct misconceptions and engage, in much the way they’re doing now with Facebook”, he said.
It’s all about helping companies create a dialogue, in other words.
But Berard said that Vox Pop does not intend to launch any value-added services on .sucks domains.
While a domain name may be the “last value proposition” of .sucks, it is also the only thing that Vox Pop is actually planning to sell.
Asked to justify the $25,000 Sunrise fee, at first Berard pointed to policies that he said will ensure a transparent space for conversation.
“A company might not have to register its brand in .sucks, because if someone else does the policies and practices that we hope to deploy give that company a transparent opportunity to participate,” Berard said. “There’s no chasing unknown people down dark alleys for unfounded criticism. It will all be done in the light of day.”
“We have built-in policies that prevent sites from being parked pages,” he said. “The site must be put to that use — of customer service — whether you are the company that owns [the brand] or a customer that wants to complain about it.”
There was some confusion during our conversation about what the policies are going to be.
At first it sounded like companies would be obliged to run criticism/conversation sites targeting their own brands or risk losing their domains, but Berard later called to clarify that while pages cannot be parked under the policy, they can be left inactive.
It will be possible, in other words, for a company to register its brand.sucks and leave the associated site dark.
The registry would also have an “authenticated Whois database”, he said, though it would allow registrants to use privacy services.
There would also be prohibitions on cyber-bullying and porn in .sucks, if Vox Pop wins it. It has committed to these policies in its Public Interest Commitments (pdf)
But the company does not appear to be doing anything that ICM Registry did not already do when it launched .xxx a couple of years ago, when it comes to making brand owners’ lives easier.
In fact, it’s planning to do a lot less, while being literally a hundred times more expensive.
By contrast, if Donuts wins .sucks, brand owners will be able to defensively block their marks using the Domain Protected Marks List for $3,000 over five years, which would cover all of Donuts 200-300 new gTLDs.
There doesn’t appear to be any good reason Vox Pop is charging prices well above the market rate, in my view, other than the fact that the company reckons it can get away with it.
In what may well be a deliberate move to put pressure on trademark owners, Vox Pop is also the first registry I’ve encountered to say it will do a 30-day, as opposed to a 60-day, Sunrise period.
Under ICANN rules, registries have to give at least 30 days warning before a 30-day Sunrise starts, but once it’s underway they are allowed to allocate domains on a first-come-first-served basis.
All of the 30-odd registries currently in Sunrise have opted for the traditional 60-day option instead, where no domains are allocated until the end of the period.
There’s also the question of accepting Sunrise pre-registrations before Vox Pop even knows whether it will get to run .sucks.
There are two other applicants and Berard said that he reckons the contention set is likely to go to an ICANN last-resort auction.
Judging by ICANN’s preliminary timetable, the .sucks auction wouldn’t happen until roughly September next year, by my reckoning.
Anyone who pre-registers today will have to wait a year before they can use (or not) their domain, if they even get to register it at all.
Any money that is taken during the pre-reg period will be refunded if Vox Pop fails to launch.
In the meantime, it will be sitting in Momentous’ bank account where the company, presumably, will be able to use it to try to win the .sucks auction.
Trademark owners, in my view, should vote with their wallets and stay the hell away from Vox Pop’s pre-registration service.
I’m not usually in the business of endorsing one new gTLD applicant over another, but I think Vox Pop’s Sunrise pricing is going to make the whole new gTLD program — and probably also ICANN and the domain name industry itself — look bad.
It’s a horrible reminder of a time when domain name companies were often little better than spammers, operating at the margins and beyond of acceptable conduct, and it makes me sad.
The new gTLD program is about increasing choice and competition in the TLD space, it’s not supposed to be about applicants bilking trademark owners for whatever they think they can get away with.

16 Comments Tagged: cybersquatting, donuts, ICANN, momentous, new gTLDs, sucks, sunrise, tld spectrum, trademarks, vox pop, vox populi registry

Applicants spank IO in .health objections

Donuts and Dot Health LLC have beaten back objections filed by ICANN’s Independent Objector over the .health gTLD.
In simultaneous separate rulings by the same three-person International Chamber of Commerce panel, it was decided that the string “health” is not intrinsically offensive.
The IO, in his Limited Public Interest Objections, had argued that health is a human right protected by international law, and that .health should be managed with certain safeguards to protect the public.
But the ICC panels sided with the applicants, finding that in order for an objector to prevail in a LPI objection he must show that the string itself contravenes international law.
The panels used a strict reading of the Applicant Guidebook and supporting documentation to come to their conclusions. In the Donuts case, the panel ruled:

The Panel has no hesitation in finding that the string “health” is not objectionable in and of itself. It is obvious to the Panel that the word “health” does not conflict with any generally accepted legal norms relating to morality and public order of the same nature as the first three grounds ICANN listed in AGB Section 3.5.3.

The LPI objection was created in order to prevent gTLDs from being delegated where the string itself endorses ideas such as racism, slavery or child abuse.
ICANN has said that applications for such strings “may well be rare or non-existent”.
The panels sharply dismissed claims that IO, Alain Pellet, and a staff member were conflicted due to their previous work for the World Health Organization.
The Donuts ruling is here and the Dot Health ruling is here.

2 Comments Tagged: .health, donuts, dot health, ICANN, icc, independent objector, limited public interest objection, new gTLDs

1&1’s new gTLD ads banned for “misleading” viewers

TV ads promoting 1&1’s new gTLD pre-registration services have been banned from the UK’s airwaves after being ruled “likely to mislead” by the Advertising Standards Authority.
The ads were part of probably the biggest new gTLD marketing outreach to date, a worldwide campaign I’ve heard is costing 1&1 up to $80 million. The UK ad stated:

Do you own a company? Or an online shop? Are you an estate agent? Or a car dealer? Are you from London? Or maybe Scotland? Are you looking for a great new web or e-mail address? Then choose from over 700 new domains. Pre-order yours for free, before someone else does, and link it to your website.

The ASA ruled that the ads would have led consumers to believe that they would definitely get the name they pre-registered as soon as it became available.
In fact, of course, allocation is dependent largely on registry policy, Sunrise registrations, name collisions blocking, and whatever other barriers ICANN can think up in the meantime.
The ASA said in its decision:

Whilst we considered consumers would understand the reference to ‘pre-order’ to mean that the domain names were not currently available, we considered they would understand the ad to mean that they could place an order with 1&1 Internet that would secure their chosen domain name when it became available. However, we understood that that was not the case and that upon receipt of a pre-order, 1&1 Internet would pass on the customer’s request to the relevant domain name registry, who would apply their own allocation process when the requested domain name became available. We therefore considered the presentation of the ad was likely to mislead.

The ad therefore “must not appear again in its current form”, the ASA ruled.

3 Comments Tagged: 1&1, asa, new gTLDs

Donuts officially richer than God after winning three new gTLD auctions

Donuts has a clear path to being awarded the .church, .life and .loans new gTLDs, following a private auction managed by Innovative Auctions this week.
Life Covenant Church and CompassRose.life have already withdrawn their applications for .church and .life respectively, and others are expected to follow soon.
Life Covenant Church, which does business at LifeChurch.tv, was described as the largest multi-site church in the US last year, with 46,000 regular attendees across 15 locations.
A lucrative business, no doubt. But apparently not lucrative enough to beat Donuts.
In the three-way contention set for .life, Donuts beat CompassRose.life, which seems to be affiliated with a Canadian housing developer and Xiamen 35.com Technology.
In .loans, which still faces Governmental Advisory Committee advice, Donuts beat fellow portfolio applicant Radix.
The losing applicants will all receive pay-offs from Donuts as a result of losing the auctions.
Innovative has now helped resolve 21 contention sets.

5 Comments Tagged: .church, .life, .loans, auctions, donuts, innovative, new gTLDs

.buzz and .support go live

DotStrategy has become the newest registry with a gTLD live in the DNS root.
Its .buzz, which is aimed at “groups related to blogging, communications, journalism, advertising, and marketing and development” was delegated last night.
The first second-level name, nic.buzz, is currently resolving to a parking page — seemingly managed by one of the usual parking companies — which, let’s face it, looks a bit crap even as a temporary measure.
That said, I really like .buzz as a concept, if for no other reason than it’s a rare example of a gTLD string that seems to have been selected by a human rather than an algorithm.
Speaking of which, Donuts also had its 42nd gTLD, .support, delegated last night.
There are now 54 new gTLDs live in the DNS root.

1 Comment Tagged: .buzz, delegation, donuts, dotstrategy, ICANN, new gTLDs

Seven registrars sign up to M+M pre-reg platform

Top Level Domain Holdings has signed up 12 registrars to sell its forthcoming gTLDs, seven of which are to also use its recently announced OPEN pre-registration platform.
While TLDH is operating vertically integrated registrar/registrar business, Minds + Machines it’s also built a pre-registration service that it wants other, higher-profile registrars to access.
OPEN, for Online Priority Enhanced Names, allows pre-registrations to be purchased on a more-or-less buy-it-now basis. Names blocked or claimed in Sunrise will be refunded.
The company also said in a market update today that 12 registrars have signed Registry-Registrar Agreements, and that it expects it first new gTLDs to launch in the first quarter 2014.

Comment Tagged: m+m, Minds + Machines, new gTLDs, open, tldh, top level domain holdings

The plurals debate is over as ICANN delegates 17 more new gTLDs

Another 17 new gTLDs were delegated to the DNS root last night, most of them belonging to Donuts.
Notably, Donuts now runs .photos and .careers, the first two delegated gTLDs where live applications also exist for the singular form of the string.
Uniregistry is currently contracted and awaiting the delegation of .photo, while dotCareer is already contracted for .career.
The debate about whether ICANN should permit singular and plural versions of the same string to coexist is now surely over.
Just a week ago, the Internet Association — a trade group comprising Amazon, Google, AOL, Yahoo, Salesforce, Zynga and many others — called on ICANN to rethink its policy of coexistence.
Calling the policy a “violation of user trust”, the Association said (pdf), “the existence of these domain names poses significant risks to the DNS, Internet companies, and their users”.
The Association noted that the Governmental Advisory Committee had strong concerns about singular and plural coexistence, due to the risk of consumer confusion.
String Confusion Objection panels have reached quite different conclusions about whether adding an “s” makes a string confusingly similar to another.
Personally, while I’m all for competition, I believe coexistence will lead to parasitical business models that will bring the domain name industry into further disrepute.
I know for a fact that some registries are considering the merits of tailgating their confusingly similar competitors.
But it seems ICANN’s decision was final.
There’s currently no mechanism for ICANN to un-approve a gTLD once it’s been delegated — failing serious wrongdoing by the registry — so it’s difficult to see how it could now decide that plural and singular forms of the same string should be mutually exclusive.
While I’m sure the Internet Association and others will carry on complaining, I think they’re now talking to deaf ears.
There were 17 new gTLDs delegated yesterday in total, 15 of which were in Donuts portfolio.
Donuts has also added the following to its portfolio: .cab, .camp, .academy, .center, .company, .computer, .domains, .limo, .management, .recipes, .shoes, .systems and .viajes (Spanish for “travel”).
CONAC, the China Organizational Name Administration Center had .政务 (“government”) and .公益 (“public interest”) delegated.

11 Comments Tagged: conac, donuts, gac, ICANN, internet association, new gTLDs, plurals, string confusion objection

ICANN publishes accelerated gTLD auction timeline

ICANN has cut the anticipated length of its “last resort” new gTLD auctions in half, last night publishing a schedule that would take 10 months and end in early 2015.
The draft schedule and auction rules, put together by selected auctioneer Power Auctions, would see 10 monthly batches of auctions, with 20 contention sets resolved per month.
The revised rules, which are open for public comment, read:

It is anticipated that Auctions will be conducted once per month to resolve 20 Contention Sets per Auction, with the intention to complete all Auctions within one (1) year from the date of the first Auction.

It’s still anticipated that auctions will begin in March 2014.
That’s a lot better for applicants than the original plan, which was to limit each applicant to only five auctions per month. Due to Donuts’ large portfolio, that would have stretched the process out to April 2016.
An accompanying schedule (pdf) published last night actually batches up 201 of the remaining contested gTLDs into 10 buckets, so most applicants now know where they stand.
It’s good news for applicants that have high priority numbers but are in contention sets with applicants with low priority numbers — they’ll get bumped to the front of the queue.
For example, dot Buy Limited drew 1,883 in the prioritization lottery, but will be in the first monthly auction because it’s up against Amazon, with priority number 128, for .buy.
There’s still no news about how ICANN will handle indirect contention, however.
While the schedule has placed the likes of .unicom and .unicorn — which were found similar by evaluation panels — in the same auction, it does not yet reflect the results of objections that should (in theory) place different strings in the same contention set.

1 Comment Tagged: auctions, ICANN, new gTLDs, power auctions

Finally, domain-slamming registrar gets ICANN breach notice

Domain “slamming” registrar Brandon Gray Internet Services, which does business as NameJuice.com, has finally received its first ICANN compliance notice.
If you’ve been around the industry for a while you’ll know Brandon Gray better as Domain Registry of America, Domain Registry of Canada, Domain Renewal Group and various other pseudonyms.
DROA is known for being the prime perpetrator of the old “slamming” scam, where fake postal renewal notices that look like invoices trick busy or gullible registrants into transferring their names.
It was sued for slamming by Register.com back in 2002, spanked by the UK’s Advertising Standards Agency as recently as 2009, and de-accredited by .ca registry CIRA.
There’s a list of the various times it’s run afoul of regulators over on Wikipedia.
ICANN yesterday sent a breach notice (pdf) to Brandon Gray, saying the company failed to “maintain and make available to ICANN registration records relating to dealings with the Registered Name Holder” of businesspotion.com, in violation of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement.
A Whois look-up reveals that businesspotion.com has belonged to the same registrant since 2009. However, in April 2011 it was transferred from 1&1 to Brandon Gray (DROA/NameJuice).
I can only guess why it might have been transferred.
However, the material ICANN wants only relates to the period from July this year.
It appears from the compliance notice that the owner of the domain tried to transfer his name away from DROA recently but claims to have not received the necessary authorization codes.
Brandon Gray has until January 13 to provide ICANN with the requested documentation or face losing its accreditation.
Back in 2011, the last time Brandon Gray tried to slam me, I asked: “Isn’t it about time ICANN shut these muppets down?”
Hopefully, that wish is a step closer to reality today.

8 Comments Tagged: brandon gray, domain registry of america, droa