New gTLD batching: should .brands go first?

Should “.brand” and “.city” top-level domain applicants get priority treatment when ICANN picks which new gTLDs get to go live first?
That’s the worry in the domain name industry this week, in the wake of rumors about ICANN’s latest thinking on “batching” applications into a processing queue.
ICANN has said it will not process more than 500 applications at a time, but this may well be a low-ball estimate of how many it will actually receive in the first round.
Depending on how many companies decide to pull the trigger on .brand or .keyword applications, we could be looking at three times that number.
Random selection is probably a non-starter due to the risk of falling foul of US gambling laws, and ICANN has already ruled out an auction.
It’s likely that there will be a way to “opt out” of the first batch for applicants not particularly concerned about time-to-market, senior staff said at ICANN’s meeting in Dakar last month.
But the rumor doing the rounds this week is that the organization is thinking about prioritizing uncontested applications – gTLDs with a single applicant – into earlier batches.
This would mean that .brand and .city gTLDs would probably find themselves in the first batches, while contested generics such as .web and .music would be processed later.
It’s just a rumor at this point, but it’s one I’ve heard from a few sources. It also got an airing during Neustar’s #gtldchat Twitter conflab this evening.
Any gTLD purporting to represent a geographic location will need an endorsement from the relevant local government, which will lead to most geo-gTLD being uncontested.
Most, but perhaps not all, .brands are also likely to be uncontested, due to the relative uniqueness of the brand names with the resources to apply.
On the other hand, potentially lucrative strings such as .web, .blog, and .music will almost certainly have multiple applicants and will require lengthier processing cycles.
With a de facto prioritization of .brands and .cities, ICANN could put a bunch of gTLDs into the root, proving the new gTLD concept and giving it time to bulk up on experienced staff, before the whole thing sinks into a quagmire of objections, trademark gaming and spurious litigation.
I can see how that might be attractive option.
I’m not sure if it would solve the problem, however. If we’re looking at 1,500 applications, that’s three batches, so it would not be as simple as dividing them into contested and uncontested piles.
Of course, nobody knows how many applications will be submitted, and what the mix will be. It’s a very difficult problem to tackle in the dark.
What do you think? Should the contested status of a gTLD be used as a criterion for batching purposes?

2 Comments Tagged: batching, icann. new gtlds, new TLDs

Donald Trump files UDRP on wine domains

Donald Trump, who recently got into the wine business, has filed cybersquatting complaints against the owners of trumpwine.com and trumpwines.com.
Both domains were first registered prior to Trump’s purchase of a Virginia vineyard in April this year, which appears to be the first time he was connected to wine.
The registrant of trumpwine.com has had it since 2008, while the owner of trumpwines.com evidently picked it up in February. It was previously owned by DirectNIC, after the original 2007 registration expired.
Both registrants appear to have some connection to the alcohol industry. That said, neither of the domains currently points to an active web site.

3 Comments Tagged: donald trump, udrp, wine

Twitter co-founder to headline DOMAINfest

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is to keynote the 2012 DOMAINfest Global conference, organizer Oversee.net has just announced.
It sounds rather like his speech will focus on the “inspirational story” angle, rather like Go Daddy founder Bob Parsons’ keynote at the 2011 show.
According to the agenda, Stone will “share his thoughts on Twitter’s future and the evolving world of social media”.
Judging by the other speakers and panelists lined up, it’s an SEO-heavy agenda, but there will be a workshop entitled “Everything You Need to Know about New TLDs”.
For the new gTLDs panel, so far only Neustar’s Ken Hansen is listed as a confirmed speaker. I don’t expect that state of affairs to last long.
The show will be held at the Fairmont Miramar in Santa Monica, California, from January 31 to February 2 next year. Prices start at $1,195 if registering before December 31.

Comment Tagged: domainfest, new gTLDs, twitter

Go Daddy bans DNS harvesting

Go Daddy is blocking companies from harvesting its DNS records, the company has confirmed.
CTO Dave Koopman denied that Go Daddy has a “DNS Blackouts” policy, but confirmed that it has banned certain IP addresses from doing DNS queries for its customers’ domains. He wrote:

The rumor about “DNS Blackouts” was started by someone using Go Daddy servers to cache all Go Daddy DNS records on his personal servers for financial gain.
Back to our previous example of 100 queries a day. Instead of one person accessing 100 domain names, this individual was attempting to download tens of millions of Go Daddy DNS records – twice daily. While his behavior did not cause any system issues, we felt it best to revoke access to the offending IPs.
If Go Daddy finds unwanted activity in our network, Go Daddy takes actions to stop it.

That appears to be a reference to a blog post from DNSstuff.com founder R Scott Perry, who complained in early September about what he called a “Selective DNS Blackouts” policy.
Perry suggested that Go Daddy was trying to drum up interest in its Premium DNS service by providing poor DNS service to regular customers.
Blocking DNS queries from selected IP addresses draws to mind Go Daddy’s policy of banning DomainTools and other companies from harvesting Whois records in bulk.
In January, the company confirmed, that it was blocking commercial Whois aggregators including DomainTools. The ban appears to still be in affect for non-paying DomainTools users.
Like DomainTools, DNSstuff.com offers DNS monitoring and alerts for premium fees.

1 Comment Tagged: dns, dnsstuff.com, DomainTools, go daddy, whois

Registrar threatened with shutdown for failing to reveal registrant

ICANN has told a Turkish domain name registrar that its accreditation will be terminated unless it fixes its apparently shoddy Whois services.
While Alantron has a track record of Whois failures and connections to abusive domains, ICANN’s threat appears to have been made in connection with a single domain name.
ICANN compliance director Stacey Burnette wrote to Alantron (pdf):

On 12 October 2011, ICANN requested that Alantron make registration records available to ICANN concerning a specific domain name, as ICANN received a complaint that there was no Whois output available for the domain name. Although numerous requests were made by ICANN to make the registration records available for inspection and copying, as of the date of this letter, Alantron has not made any arrangements to comply with ICANN’s request.

The letter also details Alantron’s alleged failures to make Whois available through Port 43 and its web interface going back to September 1.
ICANN has also threatened to suspend Alantron’s ability to create new registrations. Alantron received a similar de-accreditation warning for Whois failures in April 2010.
It does not say who made the complaint or which domain is in question, but the company has come under fire from security pros in the past for allowing its services to be abused to push fake pharmaceuticals.
Alantron, which has about 26,000 domains under management according to Webhosting.info, has until November 25 to rectify the problem.

2 Comments Tagged: alantron, compliance, fake pharma, ICANN, spam

Google threatens domain names with Direct Connect

Google’s latest social networking play is a potential threat to the relevance of domain names.
The company has announced the launch of Direct Connect, a feature that enables direct navigation to Google+ pages via the search engine.
Essentially, typing a + sign before the name of a brand in the search box will take you directly to that brand’s Google+ page, assuming it has one, bypassing search results.
This video explains it pretty well:

Google said yesterday that at launch a handful of brands, including Pepsi, Toyota and Angry Birds, are signed up, but from where I’m sitting only +google seems to work as advertised.
The feature also only seems to work when used with the search box on Google’s home page.
However, it does not require a massive leap of the imagination to see it quite easily showing up soon in the Google Toolbar and the integrated search/URL bar in Chrome.
Direct Connect was launched alongside Google+ Pages, the company’s answer to Facebook Pages – a way for companies to have their own branded fan page for interacting with customers.
Many companies are already advertising their Facebook addresses, or simply encouraging people to search Facebook for their brand, in print, on TV and elsewhere.
It might not be long before we see +brand advertising along similar lines.
Could Google train people to type +pepsi instead of pepsi.com? It’s an interesting notion.
The + operator was of course until recently a way of telling Google that you really, really wanted to see search results containing your query.
As Google has increasingly crapified its search engine with infuriating “user-friendly” guff over the last few years, I’ve trained myself to automatically put a + in front of every search in order to get the results I want rather than what Google, in its infinite wisdom, thinks I might want.
I’m sure I’m not alone.
While the + function has now been deprecated in favor of enclosing queries in quotation marks, it is nevertheless already trained user behavior in many cases.
I’m not suggesting that Google is going to kill domain names, but at first glance Direct Connect certainly seems to be a step toward attempting to make them less relevant for branding and advertising.
I can’t help but note that Google+ Pages was launched unilaterally by Google with no multi-stakeholder consultation, no battles with intellectual property interests, and no government oversight.
The Association of National Advertisers has yet to demand that Google shuts it down.

12 Comments Tagged: direct connect, google

Companies that can’t apply for .brand gTLDs say they have decided not to apply for .brand gTLDs

Hewlett-Packard and Proctor & Gamble have ruled themselves out of applying to ICANN for .brand top-level domains, or so they claim.
Bloomberg yesterday reported a distinct lack of enthusiasm for new gTLDs from many large brands, leading with quotes from P&G and HP:

P&G, the world’s largest consumer products company with more than 50 brands including Tide detergent, Pampers diapers and Crest toothpaste, won’t apply for new suffixes, said Paul Fox, a spokesman. HP, the biggest computer maker, considers the program costly and has no plans to take part, said Gary Elliott, vice president of global marketing.
“A lot of companies are looking at the same math as we are and saying, ‘Let’s stop this proposal from happening,’” Elliott said in an interview. “There’s a tremendous amount of confusion about what this means and what the costs are.”

HP’s Elliot is chairman of the Association of National Advertisers, the most vocal opponent of the new gTLD program, as the Bloomberg report notes.
One fact the report doesn’t mention – and I’d bet Elliot didn’t volunteer – is that HP and P&G cannot apply for .hp or .pg due to ICANN’s strict three-character minimum for new gTLD strings.
HP had campaigned for ICANN to scrap the two-character prohibition for a number of years, though it usually also noted that in principle it was opposed to the program.
Nevertheless, it strikes me as disingenuous for the company to say it’s decided against a .brand on the basis of cost, when ICANN essentially made its decision for it years ago.
P&G, which mostly makes cosmetics and toiletries, has also ruled out applying for gTLDs to represent any of its 50 or so well-known brands, Bloomberg reported.
The internet will have to go without .tampax and .pampers for the foreseeable future.
General Motors, Wal-Mart, Adobe, Porsche, Vodafone and Puma are all generally negative on the program but are still evaluating their options, according to Bloomberg.
It’s quite possible that these outfits are just as opposed to the new gTLD program as HP and P&G.
But if they’ve been talking to consultants, they will also have been advised not to publicly talk about their applications. Nothing can be gained by going public before April 12.

3 Comments Tagged: .brands, ana, association of national advertisers, hp, ICANN, new gTLDs, new TLDs, proctor & gamble

.xxx faces big test as landrush kicks off

The landrush phase for ICM Registry’s .xxx domain is scheduled to begin today, following the oversubscribed sunrise period that closed last week.
Given the inherently defensive nature of sunrise periods – most of the almost 80,000 applications were for non-resolving domains – landrush is the first big test of public demand for working .xxx names.
I expect healthy interest from domainers, despite the relatively high price of landrush registrations.
High-profile investors including Frank Schilling and Mike Berkens have already invested seven figures in .xxx via its Founders Program, which may set the tone for the rest of the community.
The landrush period runs until November 25. Contested domains will go to auction in December. General availability is currently scheduled to begin December 7.
Domain Name Wire has compiled a handy guide to the best-priced landrush registrars.

Comment Tagged: icm registry, landrush, sunrise, xxx

Afilias to apply for Chinese .info

Afilias has announced that it plans to apply for the traditional and simplified Chinese script equivalents of .info under ICANN’s new generic top-level domains program.
The company becomes the last of the Big Three registries to give a glimpse into its new gTLD strategy.
VeriSign has said it wants transliterations of .com in multiple scripts, while Neustar has said it plans to apply for its own dot-brand, .neustar.
Afilias did not disclose the exact strings it wants in its announcement. There was no mention of .mobi, which the company also runs.
According to the last official count, there are close to 7.9 million registered .info domains. Marketing director Roland LaPlante said in September that about 19% host unique web sites.

5 Comments Tagged: .info, afilias, chinese, ICANN, idns, new gTLDs, new TLDs

Over 7,500 .uk cybersquatting cases heard

Nominet is celebrating the 10-year anniversary of its Dispute Resolution Service this week, saying that it has settled over 7,500 cybersquatting cases.
Based on a £15,000 estimated cost of legal action, the .uk registry reckons DRS has saved companies about £110 million ($176 million) over the last decade.
DRS has similarities but differences to UDRP. Notably, DRS has a formal mediation phase and an appeals process for registrants who believe their domains were wrongly taken from them.
The .uk zone currently has fewer than 10 million registrations, compared to the 135 million gTLD domains to which the UDRP applies.
WIPO and the National Arbitration Forum have settled about 35,000 UDRP complaints over the last decade. With that in mind, cybersquatting enforcement in .uk appears to have been relatively heavy.

Comment Tagged: .uk, dispute resolution service, drs, naf, nominet, udrp, wipo