Cancelled misogynist Andrew Tate moves domain to (drumroll)… Epik!

Andrew Tate has become the latest high-profile controversy magnet to move his domain to Epik, at the end of a week that saw him thoroughly “cancelled” over reportedly violently misogynistic speech.

Tate, a former kick-boxer and reality TV contestant who made his money through a large social media following and an online course called Hustler’s University, reportedly told Fox News host Tucker Carlson yesterday:

When they go to cancel you, ladies and gentlemen, it comes hard and fast. You lose your Facebook, then your Instagram, then your Gmail, your Discord, then your website hosting, your domain name, like then your payment processor, and your bank.

Tate reportedly had his accounts on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Tiktok deleted this week. He was getting banned so much it briefly became a meme.

The domain name in question appears to be cobratate.com, based on his apparent nickname “Cobra”, and it appears to still be in his possession, although he has changed registrars.

Up until an hour or two ago the name was managed by Tucows, via United-Internet-owned reseller Fasthosts, but the Whois record now shows it’s with Epik.

It’s not clear right now whether he jumped or, as he implied to Fox, was pushed. Tucows tells me it had not received any complaints about the site, had not investigated, and had not asked Tate to leave. I’ve asked United for comment.

Epik has over the last few years become the safe-haven registrar of choice for people and groups who become internet persona non grata, typically those with far-right or violent views, such as Infowars, 8chan, Gab and The Daily Stormer.

3 Comments Tagged: andrew tate, epik, fasthosts, tucows, united internet

Google reveals launch dates for two new gTLDs

Google is slowly working through its backlog of unlaunched new gTLDs, this week announcing go-live dates for two dormant strings.

.boo and .rsvp will both follow the same launch schedule, with month-long Sunrise periods for trademark owners beginning October 4 and general availability starting November 15.

There will also be Early Access Periods, where names can be secured early for daily-decreasing premium fees, running from November 8 to November 15.

Google Registry described .boo as for those “building a website for love, laughs, or a surprise”, while .rsvp is for customers “celebrating a wedding, throwing a fundraiser, or accepting bookings for their business”.

They appear to be among the lightest-touch Google TLDs in terms of restrictions.

Google has been sitting on both gTLDs for over eight years.

Comment Tagged: .boo, .rsvp, google, google registry, ICANN, new gTLDs, sunrise

Ducos a shoo-in for GNSO Council chair

The next chair of ICANN’s GNSO Council will be GoDaddy’s Sebastien Ducos.

Ducos, who manages TLD clients for GoDaddy Registry, will stand unopposed for the role after the GNSO’s Non-Contracted Parties House decided not to field a candidate.

The election, which seems a formality, will take place at the end of ICANN 75, the Org’s Annual General Meeting, in Kuala Lumpur and Zoom next month.

Australian Ducos has been a vice-chair of the Council since the last AGM.

He will replace Philippe Fouquart, an employee of Orange from the NCPH, after his second one-year term ends.

There hasn’t been a contested election for Council chair since 2018.

Comment Tagged: election, gnso council, ICANN

NameSilo reports revenue up 33%

Canadian registrar NameSilo this week reported its second-quarter financial results, showing revenue up 33.7% compared to the year-ago period.

The company said it now has 4.61 million domains under management and had revenue of $11.2 million for the quarter. It reported a net loss of $683,000.

Bookings, the best indicator of future revenue, were up 22% to $12 million. The company had $25.3 million of deferred revenue on its balance sheet at the end of the quarter.

NameSilo said “an increase in domains under management, marketplace revenues, and from the sale of ancillary services” all contributed to the growth.

1 Comment Tagged: earnings, financials, namesile

Adoption light with four weeks to .au’s 2LD deadline

Australians have just four weeks left to take advantage of auDA’s second-level domain grandfathering program, but so far uptake has been light.

Owners of third-level .au domains have until September 20 to claim their matching 2LDs before they are released into the general availability pool, the end of a six-month process.

But to date there have only been about 200,000 2LD registrations, auDA said in a press release this week, a small percentage of the almost 3.7 million overall .au registrations.

“We received more than 35,000 registrations in the first 24 hours, nearly 80,000 registrations in the first week and over 200,000 registrations to date,” CEO Rosemary Sinclair said, describing uptake as “strong”.

Second-level liberalizations in other ccTLDs have not exactly set the world on fire. Nominet’s .uk 2LDs under management currently run at less than 15% of the 3LD level.

Comment Tagged: .au, 2lds, auda

It’s hustings season at Nominet

Hustings are very much in vogue in the UK right now. Two Conservative politicians have been clouding our airwaves, bickering over who should lead the country, for weeks, and now two candidates to join the board of .uk registry Nominet are following suit.

The London Domain Name Summit, a two-day, free-to-attend domainer conference in London next week, will host a debate between local lads Jim Davies and Kieren McCarthy, two of the three candidates for an opening non-executive director spot on Nominet’s board.

CentralNic lawyer Volker Greimann, the third candidate, who is based in Germany, will not be in attendance.

The debate between reporter McCarthy and IP lawyer Davies will take place next Tuesday at 1600 local time (1500 UTC) and will apparently be live-streamed for people not able to attend in person.

McCarthy, who according to Twitter chatter is a paid-up exhibitor, also gets a solo speaking spot on Monday at 1830 local time. Nominet, not an exhibitor, is hosting an event the same day.

All three candidates are standing for election at a time when Nominet has recently come under new leadership after several years of scandal that cumulated last year in a member coup.

The latest controversy emerged last month when it came out that Nominet blew about $23.5 million on an abortive attempt to get into the security market in the US, something the candidates all hope to address.

According to Nominet, all three candidates have their candidacy statements published in the members area of the web site. Davies and McCarthy have also published commentary on their respective blogs.

Voting opens September 12.

1 Comment Tagged: elections, london domain name summit, nominet

ICANN rushes mystery directors onto board in apparent bylaws breach

ICANN is hurrying two new directors onto its board despite that fact that hardly anybody, apparently including the people who this week gave them the nod, seemed to know who they are.

The Org also seems to have technically breached its bylaws with the timing of the move, which also sees chair Maarten Botterman appointed for another three-year term.

Earlier this week the Empowered Community Administration, which has broad powers to hire and fire directors, submitted ICANN-drafted letters formally approving this year’s Nominating Committee picks — Botterman, Christopher Chapman and Sajidur Rahman.

But I’m told that the ECA, like the rest of us, were not given any information by ICANN about the two newcomers beyond their names and the geographic regions they hail from. They were basically waved onto the board blind, it seems.

Photographs subsequently published on the NomCom web site confirm the two directors’ identities. They’re the former head of the Australian Communications and Media Authority Chris Chapman, and Indonesian venture capitalist Sajid Rahman of MyAsiaVC.

Judging by the ICANN bylaws, approval by the ECA — which comprises one person from each of the ASO, the ccNSO, the GNSO, the ALAC and the GAC — is pretty much just a rubber-stamp. All the due diligence is done by NomCom and the Org.

But the appointments appear to amount to a technical bylaws breach on timing grounds, coming about a month late. The bylaws state:

At least two months before the commencement of each annual meeting, the Nominating Committee shall give the EC Administration (with a copy to the Decisional Participants and Secretary) written notice of its nomination of Directors for seats with terms beginning at the conclusion of the annual meeting, and the EC Administration shall promptly provide the Secretary (with a copy to the Decisional Participants) with written notice of the designation of those Directors.

This year’s AGM will be held in Kuala Lumpur from September 17, with the new directors taking their seats at its conclusion on September 22. So NomCom seems to have missed its “at least two months before” deadline by a month. ECA approval came August 15.

This year’s AGM is a little earlier than usual, which may help explain the problem. They’re usually held in October or November, and there hasn’t been one held in September since 2001.

NomCom also missed the two-month window in 2020, by an even bigger margin, for entirely understandable pandemic-related reasons. It announced its selections just a couple of weeks before the AGM.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, icann 75, kuala lumpur, nomcom

ICANN staffing up for next new gTLD round

ICANN has started hiring staff to support the next round of new gTLD applications.

The Org this week posted an ad for a “Policy Development Support Analyst” who will “track generic top-level domain policy proposals and contribute to capacity development in the civil society and noncommercial communities”.

It also appears to be still looking for a “Senior Director, New gTLD Subsequent Procedures”, with an ad first posted in June.

The latter is almost certainly a revolving-door type of opening, where somebody with deep, long-term insight into the industry and ICANN would be the likely hire.

ICANN describes it as a “highly visible role requiring a high degree of organization, leadership experience, management and communications acumen, and subject matter knowledge” where the successful candidate “will provide leadership and direction over multiple tracks of organizational activities toward implementation of a subsequent round of ICANN’s New gTLD (Generic Top-Level Domain) Program”.

The newer, more junior opening appears to have a broader remit, with the focus on non-commercial stakeholder engagement as well as the new gTLD program.

The two jobs are among 35 currently being advertised by ICANN.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs

Radix premium revenue hits $3.8 million in first half

New gTLD portfolio registry Radix this week gave its twice-yearly premium domain sales report, declaring first-half revenue of $3.8 million.

That figure includes $2.5 million in renewal revenue from premium-priced names, because Radix charges premium renewal fees.

For Radix, premiums sold through the registrar channel are arranged into eight tiers from $100 to $10,000 a year. While there were eight sales at the top end, most sales were concentrated in the $500-and-below tiers.

The average first-year revenue was $558 per domain.

There were 1,767 premiums sold across the stable of 10 gTLDs, compared to 1,378 in the second half of 2021 and 1,436 in H1 2021.

.tech is the highest-performing, with $643,825 of recurring retail renewal revenue reported.

Comment Tagged: premiums, radix

GoDaddy shutters Twitter accounts after MMX deal

GoDaddy is closing down a bunch of Twitter accounts it acquired when it bought MMX last year.

The company this morning notified followers of 13 TLD-specific feeds that it will no longer post updates and that they should subscribe to @GoDaddyRegistry instead.

We will no longer be posting to this account. To all our followers, we hope you’ve found this channel helpful.

To stay informed about alternate domain extensions we will be posting related content @GoDaddyRegistry.

We can’t wait to see you there. pic.twitter.com/EBn9Nxwcjg

— .vodka (@DotVodka) August 18, 2022

Accounts such as @GetDotFishing, @JoinDotYoga and @DotWorkDomains were affected. They hadn’t posted much in a couple of years.

GoDaddy last year acquired MMX’s portfolio of .law, .abogado (“lawyer” in Spanish), .beer, .casa (“home” in Spanish), .cooking, .dds (“dentists” in American), .fashion, .fishing, .fit, .garden, .horse, .luxe, .rodeo, .surf, .vip, .vodka, .wedding, .work, .yoga, .xxx, .porn, .adult and .sex gTLDs.

Not ever gTLD had its own Twitter account.

The deal was worth about $120 million and led to MMX winding down earlier this year.

Comment Tagged: godaddy, godaddy registry, mmx, new gTLDs