Tickets on sale for newdomains.org conference

After a year’s hiatus, the newdomains.org conference organized by United-Domains is back this October.
Registration has now opened for the two-day event, which is entirely focused on the new gTLD market. The agenda is still forming and United is looking for speakers.
The conference will take place in Munich at the Sofitel Munich Bayerpost hotel from October 28 to 29. Unlike the 2011 event, I believe this time the official Oktoberfest jollities will be over.
Early bird registration comes to €583 ($780) when you include VAT. Prices go up to €821 July 15.
Afilias, Verisign, Donuts, PIR, InternetX, Sedo, Nic.at have already signed up to sponsor.
While in 2011 newdomains had to compete with .nxt for your new gTLD conference dollar, this time it’s competing with Momentum’s gTLD Strategy Congress, coming to London in September.
Like .nxt, the first newdomains.org suffered from coming before the Big Reveal and became a bit of a vendor echo chamber as a result, but was nevertheless a breath of fresh air compared to ICANN meetings.
By October we might have seen the first new gTLDs go live, so this year it will likely be a different story. DI will be in attendance.

Comment Tagged: new gTLDs, newdomains.org, united domains

Nominet brings back second-level .uk proposal

Nominet has resurrected Direct.uk, its plan to allow people to register domain names directly under .uk.
But the proposal, which was killed off in February, has been significantly revised in response to complaints from domain investors and others.
The idea is one of a collection being announced by Nominet this afternoon.
It’s also proposing to shake up how it accredits .uk registrars and, borrowing a page from the current ICANN playbook, how .uk registrant Whois information is verified.
Second-level domains make a comeback
If the Direct.uk proposal is approved and you own a .co.uk, .me.uk or .org.uk domain name, you’ll get rights to the matching .uk name, according to Nominet COO Eleanor Bradley.
“The registrant of oldest current domain name at the third level will have first right of refusal to register that name at the second level,” she said.
When a .uk is contested by, for example, the owners of matching .co.uk and .org.uk domains, the older registration would win the name.
The clock on registration period is reset to the date of the current registration if the domain has ever dropped before, but not if it’s been transferred between registrants, she said.
This change may settle some of the concerns emerging from the domain investor community, which was outraged by Nominet’s original plan to give trademark holders first rights to .uk names.
Giving the .uk and .co.uk to different people would stand to confuse internet users, they said, not to mention devaluing their portfolios.
It wasn’t just domainers that stood to lose out under the old plan, however.
British domainer Edwin Hayward compiled a some examples of big brands that have invested in generic .co.uk domains but do not own matching trademarks, meaning they would not necessary get the second-level.
Barclays owns bank.co.uk and Kellogg owns breakfast.co.uk, for examples. Under the new Nominet proposal, it looks like these companies would get first dibs on the matching .uk addresses.
“We feel we’re responding to the feedback we heard, but it’s also our strong view that registrations at the second level are really important for what we do to maintain the relevance of .uk going forward,” Bradley said.
Plans to ramp up Whois verification
The revamped plan will also see Nominet drop its demands for mandatory extra security features under second-level .uk names.
Some critics had said that this would ghettoize .co.uk by suggesting it’s not secure.
Instead, the company is proposing blanket Whois verification for the whole of .uk — second and third-level — and a suite of optional security services to be provided in-house and via partners.
The Whois checks will take the form of email verification, in much the same way as ICANN has proposed for gTLDs in its new Registrar Accreditation agreement.
Nominet also plans to check physical mailing addresses against public databases to make sure they’re genuine. This apparently already happens to an extent.
Three tiers of registrar
The company today also unveiled plans for three types of registrar: Self-Managed, Channel Partner and Accredited Channel Partner.
Self-Managed would be domainers and big corporate users that manage their own portfolios. Channel Partners would be the vanilla registrars we know today, and Accredited would have been certified as having a certain level of security and Whois quality, among other things.
Existing registrars could do nothing and become Channel Partners, or migrate to one of the other two tiers, Bradley said.
Those in the Self-Managed and Accredited tiers would get free inter-registrant transfers, she said. Accredited registrars would also be trusted to handle their own Whois verification.
The proposals are still currently proposals, but it sounds like Nominet is determined to get it right this time.
The Direct.uk consultation is not expected to be over until November, so we’re not likely to see any movement until next year.

2 Comments Tagged: .uk, direct.uk, nominet, whois

Demand Media commits Designs.com to new gTLDs

Demand Media has announced a new web publishing service that it says is designed specifically for new gTLD registrants, at the category-killing domain Designs.com.
Designs.com will provide users with tools to quickly build web sites for their new domains, with no coding experience required, according to the site.
Conceptually, there’s nothing new about selling do-it-yourself web site building services alongside domain names of course; they’ve been around for over a decade.
But Demand says it’s tailoring the product to niche gTLDs, promoting certain features depending on the gTLD string in which the customer has bought. From a press release:

“A consumer using .FAN needs features related to sharing, ‘liking’ and growing a community, while a professional using .ARCHITECT needs features related to a strong visual portfolio and self-promotion,” explained Nick Nelson, general manager of Designs.com for Demand Media. “Until today, tools and templates have been designed for no-one in particular. New gTLDs are for specific audiences, so we must have tools that create a web presence with the same tailored approach, making the website and web address inseparable.”

It’s exactly the kind of marketing effort that new gTLDs are going to need if they’re going to be successful, particularly if they’re targeting greenfield opportunities such as small business owners.
Based on the little we know today, it almost sounds like innovation.
The Designs.com service will be made available via partnering registrars, according to the company. We can only assume that eNom and Name.com are a shoo-ins.
On the registry side, there’s nothing stopping the company adding the service to pretty much every new gTLD for which, as a registrar, it is accredited.
Demand has 26 active new gTLD applications and has rights to buy into about 100 of Donuts’ gTLDs, should they be approved by ICANN and win their contention sets.

2 Comments Tagged: demand media, designs.com, donuts, ICANN, new gTLDs

Google beaten in new gTLD contention set

When it comes to new gTLDs, Google is not invulnerable.
Japanese web portal NTT Resonant, a subsidiary of the country’s incumbent national telco, has drawn first blood against the search giant, apparently forcing Google to withdrawn its application for .goo.
NTT has also applied for .goo, the name of its primary portal site, which competes with Google for Japanese-language searchers.
The company had filed a formal legal rights objection with WIPO. The withdrawal demonstrates that the mechanism can protect trademark owners, at least insofar as it can scare off competing applicants.
Google’s bid was marked as withdrawn on ICANN’s web site overnight. It’s the fourth withdrawal from the company, following three misjudged geographic applications, leaving it with 97 active bids.
There are now 82 withdrawn and 1,848 live applications. The maximum number of delegated strings remains steady at 1,365. More program status stats can be found over on DI PRO.

Comment Tagged: .goo, google, ntt

Verisign steps up anti-gTLD campaign with attack on ICANN’s war chest

Verisign wants ICANN to publish a list of all the reasons it might be sued over the new gTLD program, claiming security and stability risks might be one of them.
In the latest salvo fired in its war against new gTLDs, the company now suggests that the $115 million “risk fund” surplus that ICANN has accumulated is for fending off lawsuits when it breaks the internet.
In a letter (pdf) sent Friday, Verisign asks ICANN to justify the existence of this war chest in light of the fact that it has managed to secure legal indemnities from pretty much everyone involved in the program.
It attempts to link the risk fund to the possible security risks of introducing new gTLDs to the internet, which Verisign has been haranguing ICANN about for the last few months.
“We believe ICANN should be forthcoming about the risks it is shifting and the need for the substantial risk reserve fund, in particular,” the letter, signed by general counsel Richard Goshorn, says.
It’s been well known for a few years that $60,000 of each $185,000 new gTLD application fee was to be allocated to a risk fund created to cover unexpected extra program costs.
The reserve was designed to cover things like underestimating the costs or time needed to evaluate applications, but also, crucially, the lawsuits that ICANN expected but has not yet received.
The cash pile is often to referred to, usually with black humor, as the “legal defense fund”.
Now Verisign seems to be saying that the legal risks are not limited to trademark disputes or the usual antitrust nonsense, but to the security risks ICANN is “transferring” to others.
As we’ve been reporting for the last few months, Verisign has suddenly decided that new gTLDs pose a risk to the internet, largely due to the potential for clashes between newly delegated strings and the unnofficial domains that many organizations already use on their intranets.
For a great discussion on the merits of this argument check out this DI article and comment thread.
With the latest letter, Verisign suggests that ICANN knows it might be sued for messing up corporate intranets, but is keeping that fact quiet.
Referring to a report it issued in March, when its security concerns first emerged, it says:

We believe that ICANN may have established and be maintaining the Risk Reserve in such a high amount in anticipation of significant claims relating to one or more risks identified in the Verisign Report.

If ICANN does get sued on these grounds, the defense cost will effectively have been covered by new gTLD applicants (and therefore their customers, assuming the costs are passed on), Verisign says.
It’s therefore asking for ICANN to disclose the reasons why its risk fund is so big, “in particular, the details regarding what ‘possible litigation’ factored into ICANN’s decisions”.
In other words, Verisign is asking ICANN to publish a list of reasons people might sue it, something I can’t imagine its general counsel agreeing to any time soon.
Is this an effort to shame ICANN into taking its security concerns more seriously, or just more FUD designed to disrupt the new gTLD program and protect its .com dominance?
Opinions, no doubt, will be split.

5 Comments Tagged: budget, ICANN, internal names, new gTLDs, risk fund, security, verisign

Are some new gTLD evaluations getting screwed up?

At least two new gTLD applicants reckon ICANN has screwed up their Initial Evaluation, flunking their applications due to missing or mishandled communications.
Following Friday’s batch of IE results, which saw four failures, one angry applicant got in touch with DI to complain about discrepancies in how his bids were scored.
Dot Registry has applied for five “corporate identifier” strings — .inc, .corp, .ltd, .llc and .llp — and has made decent progress convincing the powers that be that they will be operated responsibly.
On Friday, its .inc bid passed its Initial Evaluation with flying colors while .llc and .ltd were marked as “Eligible For Extended Evaluation”, a polite code phrase for #fail.
Both of the unsuccessful bids scored 0 on question 50, “Funding Critical Registry Functions”, which is an automatic failure no matter what the overall score on the financial evaluation.
Applicants are scored on question 50 from 0 to 3 by showing that they have a “Continuing Operations Instrument” to cover three years of operations in the event that their registry fails.
Most applicants have been submitting letters of credit supplied by their bank, which promise to pay ICANN these emergency funds should the need arise.
A zero score indicates basically that no COI was provided.
But CEO Shaul Jolles claims that Dot Registry submitted a single letter of credit to cover all five applications, later amended at ICANN’s request so that each string in the portfolio was broken out individually.
“We then received a note that they now have whatever they needed and it’s resolved,” he said.
He noted that .inc, which passed on Friday with maximum score of 3, is covered by exactly the same LOC as the two applications that scored a 0, which doesn’t make much sense.
A second applicant, which does not currently wish to be named, has told DI that it failed its financial evaluation on a question for which it received no Clarifying Questions.
CQs are the handy method by which ICANN gave applicants a second shot at getting their applications right. Hundreds have been issued, the vast majority related to financial questions.
The common complaint to both failing applicants is that at no point did ICANN inform the applicant that its application was deficient.
We understand both applicants are currently in touch with ICANN management in order to try to get their predicaments resolved.

Comment Tagged: .inc, .llc, .ltd, continuing operations instrument, dot registry, ICANN, new gTLDs

Innovative Auctions hires storied new employee

Innovative Auctions, which is running private new gTLD auctions, has hired a poker-playing former Google engineer and grandson of Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman.
Patri Friedman becomes the company’s 11th employee, according to an Innovative blog post.
According to his Wikipedia page, Friedman has had some success playing high stakes poker and was once a software engineer for Google, but his most recent gig was with the Seasteading Institute, where he’s still listed as chairman.
Seasteading is an ambitious project to create a floating libertarian nation state off the coast of Northern California, like something out of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. Really.
At Innovative, he’ll be in charge of user experience and documentation, which seems quite dull in comparison.
Innovative has so far carried out just six new gTLD auctions. Presumably, it’s expecting to manage many more.

Comment Tagged: auctions, innovative auctions, new gTLDs

Four failures and 92 passes in latest new gTLD results

ICANN has just released 96 new Initial Evaluation results, a batch which doubles the number of failures the first phase of the new gTLD program has produced.
The following applications failed to receive passing scores and are now “Eligible for Extended Evaluation”:

• .locus — a strange and ambitious-sounding single-registrant bid filed by Locus Analytics. The company scored 6 out of the necessary 8 points on its financial evaluation with zero scores on the Financial Statements and Funding Critical Registry Functions questions.
• .llc — This is the bid filed by Dot Registry, the company that seems to have a degree of governmental support for its portfolio of corporate identifier bids. It scored a 0 on its Funding Critical Registry Functions question.
• .ltd — Another Dot Registry bid. Failed for the same reason.
• .life — A values-oriented open gTLD application filed by Canadian company CompassRose.Life. Scored a zero on its Financial Statements.

ICANN said last week that it was changing the way it scored the “Funding Critical Registry Functions” question, due to the problems many applicants have been having with Continuing Operations Instruments.
That change only seemed to hit applications with scores of 1, however, so it does not appear to apply in the cases of today’s failed bids.
Applications for the following strings received passing scores.

.legal .sbi .inc .americanfamily .lacaixa .voting .realestate .rest .pfizer .macys .gift .hangout .clinic .blockbuster .lixil .cbre .blog .new .fund .prudential .tab .anquan .group .sale .gay .art .sandvik .security .now .social .shoes .qpon .sohu .fedex .storage .caseih .blog .online .cricket .gal .vip .app .moe .buzz .show .promo .music .cbn .dhl .attorney .sports .legal .football .acer .direct .open .dds .capetown .app .furniture .telefonica .eus .calvinklein .toys .eat .book .axis .casino .ren .crs .baby .ladbrokes .show .call .tech .solar .sanofi .toyota .ubank .canalplus .lexus .immo .moto .hyundai .green .ismaili .health .trading .marketing .llc .xihuan .gratis

We’re now up to 720 passes and 8 failures in the program, with 1,124 results still to be announced.

4 Comments Tagged: ICANN, initial evaluation, new gTLDs

Get live new gTLD program stats

Today DI PRO is launching a new live dashboard for new gTLD program statistics.
The idea is to give users quick and easy access to key program metrics.
Want to know the maximum number of gTLDs that can be delegated in the current round? It’s 1,365.
Want to know how many contention sets remain? It’s 222.
Want to know how many how many applications have failed Initial Evaluation? It’s 4.
Here’s a partial screenshot:

While almost all of this data has been easily accessible via the DI PRO New gTLD Application Tracker for months, the new Live Stats interface provides a quicker, at-a-glance view.
All the stats are generated live from the DI PRO database, which is updated at least once a day with the current status of all 1,930 new gTLD applications. New IE results are added Fridays at 8pm UTC.
What’s more, users can drill down into detailed search results by clicking the stat they’re interested in.
User previews have been positive, but we’re always open to suggestions if there’s a stat you’d like to see included.
Subscribers can check it out here: Live New gTLD Stats.

1 Comment Tagged: di pro, ICANN, new gTLDs

Donuts loses five of the first six new gTLD auctions

The full results of the first six new gTLD auctions are now known. Donuts lost five of them, raising millions of dollars in the process.
Here are the winners of last week’s auctions, which were managed by Innovative Auctions:

• .club — .CLUB Domains.
• .college — XYZ.COM.
• .luxury — Luxury Partners.
• .photography — Donuts.
• .red — Afilias.
• .vote — Monolith Registry

Five of the six were a two-way battles between Donuts, which has applied for 307 gTLDs, and one other applicant. Each of the losing applicants has now withdrawn its application with ICANN.
The exception is .club, a three-way fight that included Merchant Law Group. Neither losing application has been withdrawn with ICANN yet, but the result it well-known.
Innovative revealed last week that the round raised $9.01 million in total. The winning bids for each auction were not disclosed.
Given that Donuts managed to lose five out of the six, it’s a fairly safe assumption that most of that money will have gone into its war chest, which can be used in future auctions.
Of the five applications it has now withdrawn, only .red had already passed its Initial Evaluation, so the company will have also clawed back a $130,000 ICANN refund on each of the other four.
The auctions mean that we now know with a high degree of certainty which companies are going to be running these six gTLDs.
Most of them have not yet passed IE, but with the success rate so high to date I wouldn’t expect to see any failures. None of them are subject to objections or direct GAC Advice.

14 Comments Tagged: .club, .college, .luxury, .photography, .red, .vote, donuts, ICANN, innovative auctions, new gTLDs