Last chance to tell ICANN how to plug new gTLDs

“How Do We Raise Global Awareness of New gTLDs?”
ICANN asked that question a month ago and tomorrow is your last chance to respond to the public comment period it set up to gather suggestions.
So far, the number of responses is in the single figures.
I quite like Danny Younger’s suggestion: “It might be wise for a communications plan to include a warning to the general public about misleading ‘pre-registration’ schemes.”
A press release containing such a warning would almost certainly gather headlines – hacks love a bit of conflict – but it could also risk making the new gTLD process look a bit slapdash.
Easily the most laughable suggestion filed with ICANN so far comes from 4U Systems:

I would like to offer the use of .4U.com in your campaign. For example, New-gTLDs.4U.com, Domains.4U.com,Internet-Innovations.4U.com, new-domains.4U.com, Internet-expansions.4U.com, ICANN-applications.4U.com, TLD-launch.4U.com, ICANN-facts.4U.com, podcasts.4U.com, social-media.4U.com…the possibilities are limitless… the avenues to the information, countless. Therefore, we would like to talk further about how we may assist in the gTLD campaign with 4U.

Has any reader ever encountered a more fundamentally badly judged or desperation-smacking piece of business development outreach?

1 Comment Tagged: ICANN, new gltds, new TLDs

Ambitious .app project seeks funding

A community initiative to apply to ICANN for the .app top-level domain is looking for expert assistance and, more importantly, financial backers.
The .app Project sprung up in late June, after ICANN approved the new gTLD program. It hopes to raise a total of $535,000 to support the application, via memberships and sponsorship.
It appears to have been launched and is being coordinated by Matthew Baxter-Reynolds, director of a British mobile software consultancy called AMX Software.
The project’s site, at dotappapp.com, says:

Our aim is to keep the .app gTLD open and accessible such that it becomes an entity that properly support the app software development community, particularly in areas of intellectual property protection.

To raise money for the $185,000 ICANN fee, it’s selling memberships for between $25 and $100, which include a number of “free” .app domains if the application is approved.
It hopes to later raise an additional $350,000 for the technical infrastructure through sponsorship and investment.
I say the project is “ambitious” because I fully expect .app to be a contested TLD with multiple serious bidders that may well wind up duking it out at auction.
The iPhone platform alone already has over 400,000 third-party apps in the Apple App Store, so .app is a string that could potentially be a modest commercial success.

Comment Tagged: .app, dotappapp, ICANN, new gltds, new TLDs

Anti-.jobs coalition keeps up pressure on ICANN

The .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition, which wants ICANN to rein in .jobs registry Employ Media, has sent a couple of stern letters to ICANN recently.
Neither are especially exciting, but as ICANN has yet to publish them on its correspondence page I thought I’d make them available here.
The first (pdf), sent July 5, demands to know why ICANN has not yet provided an update to its forthcoming arbitration with Employ Media, which was due a few weeks ago.
ICANN and the registry are set to face off at the International Chamber of Commerce over the disputed Universe.jobs service, which ICANN believes was launched in breach of the .jobs Charter.
My understanding is that the arbitration is going ahead, but that ICANN has been granted an extension to the deadline to file its reply.
The second letter (pdf) notes that .jobs’ IANA listing was recently updated with language more friendly to Employ Media’s position that not only human resources managers qualify for .jobs domains.
It asks why this change was made, invoking the Documentary Information Disclosure Policy.
The Coalition is made up of independent jobs site operators unhappy that Employ Media appears to be using its position as the .jobs registry to compete with them.

Comment Tagged: .jobs, .jobs charter compliance coalition, employ media, ICANN

Sedo launches domain pricing index

Sedo has launched Internet Domain Name Index, a research project that shows long-term domain pricing trends and compares the data to larger economic trends.
Using January 2006 prices as a baseline, the IDNX index will be updated monthly showing how much, relatively, domains are selling for on the secondary market.
Currently, domains are valued at 183% of January 2006 prices, for example.
The index uses something called a “hedonic repeat sales methodology” to come up with its numbers. No, I don’t know what that means either.
However the numbers are arrived at, the conclusions are quite interesting, showing that domain prices rise and fall in lockstep with the financial markets.
In this graph, the green line is the IDNX number and the blue one represents the value of the Nasdaq 100.

“The strong correlation shows that domain name buyers and sellers make economically motivated price decisions,” researcher Thies Lindenthal concludes. “Domain markets are not a cloud-cuckoo-land where dreamers trade esoteric goods at imaginary prices.”
Sedo expects domainers to use the index to adjust their portfolios’ changing values over time.

Comment Tagged: idnx, internet domain name index, sedo

Will Larry Flynt sue over .xxx domains?

The porn publisher Hustler is “prepared to take whatever legal action may be necessary” to stop ICM Registry letting people register its trademarks in .xxx, according to a report.
I’ve been hearing rumors for several weeks that some companies are so unhappy about having to pay to block their brands in .xxx that they may consider legal action.
Now Xbiz reports that Hustler has said it refuses to be “shaken down” by the registry, but that ICM has not responded to its written demands for protection.
But will the company sue ICM (and ICANN?) over what may amount to just a few thousand dollars in defensive registration fees? And on what grounds?
In the US, the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, which has been on the books since 1999, is rather friendly to registries unless they behave really, really badly.
ICM will have some of the strongest trademark protection mechanisms of any gTLD, suggesting that it could have quite a strong defense to a cybersquatting claim.
Hustler could of course decide to sue based on a different law.
Threats of lawsuits are something that new gTLD applicants will need to bear in mind if they plan to apply for a TLD that encompasses an industry or community, as .xxx does.
Even if applicants manage to win the support of a portion of the affected industry, community members that think they’re likely to be cybersquatted or lose valuable real estate may well resort to the courts.
This is why about 30% of every new gTLD application fee goes into an ICANN war chest reserved in part for legal fees. ICANN knows what could be coming down the pike.
Xbiz quoted Hustler attorney Jonathan Brown saying: “We are constantly policing the registration and use of domain names that attempt to capitalize on Hustler’s trademarks.”
But the record shows that the company does not appear to be an especially aggressive enforcer of its marks in other top-level domains.
The magazine’s parent, LFP, has filed 29 UDRP complaints since 2002, all relating to Hustler and Barely Legal and, apart from hustler.tv, all for .com domains. The most recent filing was in 2009.
The company does not own the string “hustler” in .net, .org, .info, .biz or in a number of high-visibility ccTLDs that I checked. It does, however, own hustler.mobi.

1 Comment Tagged: hustler, ICANN, icm registry, new gTLDs, xxx

Another new gTLD consultancy launches

ITEMS International, a Paris-based consulting firm, has launched a practice to specialize in helping new top-level domain applicants with their ICANN proposals.
The firm says it has more than 20 consultants on gTLD Team, based around Europe and North Africa, including one former ICANN board member and a few other ICANN regulars.
ITEMS says it has previously worked with the .fr registry, AFNIC, and has been contracted to support applications by the Burgundy Region Council and other undisclosed company.
It appears that the company plans to largely focus on geographic and dot-brand applications.

Comment Tagged: gtld team, ICANN, items international, new gltds, new TLDs

Confirmed: Go Daddy bought NoDaddy.com

Go Daddy has confirmed that it has acquired the domain name nodaddy.com, which until recently was the address of a gripe site frequented by the registrar’s biggest critics.
“Sometime in July we reached an agreement between Insecure.Com LLC and GoDaddy.com to transfer the domain name NoDaddy.com,” a Go Daddy spokesperson confirmed.
I’ve reported on the deal for The Register, here.
I should probably offer apologies to Toby Harris for disbelieving him, without doing my own checking, when he speculated that Go Daddy had bought out the site’s original owner.

12 Comments Tagged: go daddy, nodaddy.com, toby harris

Go Daddy’s Bob Parsons set for Forbes rich list

Go Daddy founder and executive chairman Bob Parsons is likely to be included on the next Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans, according to Forbes reporter Luisa Kroll.
Kroll estimates that Parsons will be worth at least $1.5 billion following the closure of its recent reported $2.25 billion investment with KKR, Silver Lake and Technology Crossover Partners.
That valuation would place Parsons at #269 on the current Forbes rich list.
He would rank higher than former AOL CEO Steve Case, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, former eBay chief Meg Whitman and Yahoo’s Jerry Yang.
Parsons, whose public image is largely that of a regular guy fulfilling the American dream, reluctantly admitted that he may belong on the list, although he does not consider himself a billionaire, Kroll blogged.
“I am going to give most of the proceeds to a foundation,” Parsons reportedly said.

Comment Tagged: bob parsons, go daddy

Wiki to shake up the new gTLD market

Tens of thousands of dollars worth of registry secret sauce is set to be released under a Creative Commons license on a new wiki, courtesy of the International Telecommunications Union.
Applying for a new generic top-level domain could be about to get a whole lot cheaper.
Before October, the ITU plans to publish template answers to all 22 of the questions about registry technical operations demanded by ICANN’s Applicant Guidebook.
Because they will be published under a Creative Commons license, new gTLD applicants will be able to copy and paste the whole lot into their applications for free.
And because they will be on a wiki, approved contributors will be able to fine-tune the templates to increase their chances of passing ICANN’s technical evaluation.
Currently, gTLD applicants are generally paying registry back-end providers to take care of this part of their applications, paying $10,000 and up for the privilege.
I think the word that applies here is “disruptive”.
Consultant and former ICANN board member Michael Palage, who has worked on a number of previous TLD launches, is coordinating the creation of the templates with input from registries and engineers.
The resulting “best in class” material will also be used by the ITU and the League of Arab States in their bid for .arab and its Arabic equivalent, .عرب.
According to the Guidebook, applicants do not need hands-on experience running a registry in order to have their application approved. ICANN is trying to enable competition, after all.
But there is a period of pre-delegation testing that each successful applicant must endure before their new gTLD is added to the root, so a simple copy-paste of the ITU’s templates will not suffice.
I doubt this project will take a great deal of money out of the pockets of the incumbent registries – well-funded applicants will presumably be happy to pay the extra money for certainty – but it will provide a bit of flexibility for applicants not already in bed with a back-end.
It could also help open up the new gTLD market to companies that may not have otherwise considered it, such as those in the developing world.
Indeed, part of the rationale for the Creative Commons publication is to aid with “capacity building” in these nations, according to an ITU presentation delivered in Cairo this week.
We’ve already seen pricing competition hit the registry services market in the wake of the approval of the new gTLD program, now it appears we’re seeing the dawn of “free”.

14 Comments Tagged: ICANN, itu, jas, new gTLDs, new TLDs

Firm offers .xxx trademark checks

We’ve seen domain “reservation” services and “preregistration” services, now the soon-to-launch .xxx top-level domain is getting a pre-sunrise trademark verification service.
Trademark Fact Check is a new offering from EnCirca president Tom Barrett and Mark Kudlacik, formerly of NetNames and now president of Checkmark Network.
It’s an automated tool for checking whether a trademark will qualify for the .xxx sunrise period – and the sunrise periods of other new gTLDs – according to the service’s web site.
The output, among other things, consists of a list of domain names you qualify to register in the sunrise.
It supports about 30 national jurisdictions.
Checks will cost $10 a pop, but Barrett and Kudlacik think they can save applicants money.
If a sunrise application is rejected due to a filing error, the only option is to pay again to file again, which for .xxx is likely to cost at least $200 with the cheapest registrars.
There’s a money back guarantee if Trademark Fact Check says an application will pass and it does not.
I’m not sure how much of a market there will be for this kind of thing when the new gTLDs start to launch in 2013 and sunrise trademark validation will be largely handled by the Trademark Clearinghouse.

Comment Tagged: checkmark network, encirca, icm registry, new TLDs, trademark fact check, xxx