Short .tel domains available tomorrow

Telnic has announced that two-letter and numeric-only .tel domain names will becomes available from tomorrow at 2pm UTC.
You’ll be able to register any two-letter .tel domain that has not already been claimed in a two-week landrush period, which ends today, with the exception of combinations that match ccTLDs.
Numeric-only and numeric/hyphen domains are restricted to seven characters and under, in order to avoid clashes with telephone numbers.
The release of numeric .tel domains was the subject of a minor controversy when Telnic first made the request to ICANN last year.
Telnic said pricing is expected to be the same as regular .tel registrations – usually about the same price as a .com domain name.
A list of participating registrars can be found here.

3 Comments Tagged: .tel, landrush, short domains, telnic

M+M gets into bed with Neustar

Minds + Machines has committed to use Neustar’s registry services for some of its new top-level domain applications, the companies have announced.
M+M parent Top Level Domain Holdings said in a press release that the companies:

will work together exclusively in respect of all geographic gTLDs pursued by TLDH, apart from a short list of those already in progress. TLDH will oversee sales, marketing, registrar relations, ICANN compliance and other management functions, while Neustar will provide back-end registry and DNS services.

The deal may cover applications including .bayern, .berlin, and .mumbai, judging from the press release.
M+M will continue to use Espresso, its version of the CoCCA registry platform, for non-geo TLDs.
Under ICANN rules, geographical TLDs will require the support of the respective governments.
Reading between the lines, it appears that demand for proven scale and financial stability may have been the primary driver for the deal.
Neustar manages .us and biz, among others, while M+M has a far shorter track record. Neustar has annual revenue of over half a billion dollars, compared to TLDH’s approximately $100,000.

4 Comments Tagged: .bayern, .berlin, .mumbai, ICANN, Minds + Machines, neustar, new TLDs

ICANN independence request denied

ICANN’s request for greater independence has been rejected by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
In its new Further Notice Of Inquiry (pdf) investigation into the IANA contract, through which ICANN is granted its internet management responsibilities, the NTIA said:

NTIA reiterates that it is not in discussions with ICANN to transition the IANA functions nor does the agency intend to undertake such discussions.

Transitioning the IANA functions would have meant less power over the domain name system for the US government and more for ICANN.
Privatizing the DNS was one of the original goals when ICANN was set up in 1998 — it was meant to happen before Clinton left office — but the US government has been dead set against such a move since at least 2005.
The latest decision was expected. NTIA assistant secretary Lawrence Strickling had flagged up the agency’s position in a recent speech.
Nevertheless, it’s a blow to ICANN and its CEO, Rod Beckstrom, who since the San Francisco meeting in March has been pushing for the IANA contract to be re-framed into a longer-term “cooperative agreement” to better reflect ICANN’s international nature.
But the NTIA said this would not be possible:

NTIA does not have the legal authority to enter into a cooperative agreement with any organization, including ICANN, for the performance of the IANA functions.

To drive the point home, the FNOI also calls for the functional aspect of IANA – the updates it makes to the DNS root database – to be clearly separated from the policy-making side of ICANN.
On the bright side, ICANN can rest assured that the NTIA seems to have put aside thoughts of breaking up the IANA functions and distributing them between different entities.
This notion was put to bed primarily because the organizations most likely to take over roles such as protocol and IP number administration (such as the NRO and the IAB) did not seem to want them.
The FNOI also suggests a raft of process and technology requirements that ICANN’s IANA team will have to abide by after the contract is renewed.
The process for redelegating ccTLDs is currently an absolute bloody mess – utterly opaque and with no historical consistency with how decisions for transferring ownership of TLDs are made.
The ccNSO is working on this problem, but its policy development is likely to take a year or two.
In the meantime, the NTIA will mandate through the IANA contract at least one major nod to ccTLD redelegation reform, in the form of the “respect rule” I blogged about earlier.
Under the heading “Responsibility and Respect for Stakeholders”, the proposed IANA Statement of Work says: “the Contractor shall act in accordance with the relevant national laws of the jurisdiction which the TLD registry serves.”
This provision is already included in most of the agreements ICANN has signed with ccTLD registries and ICP-1, the policy that governs its redelegation processes.

3 Comments Tagged: iana, ICANN, ntia

US resurrects the controversial new TLDs veto

The US government intends to give itself greater oversight powers over ICANN’s new top-level domains program, according to a partial draft of the next IANA contract.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has proposed what amounts to a Governmental Advisory Committee veto over controversial new TLDs.
The agency last night published a Further Notice Of Inquiry (pdf), which includes a proposed Statement Of Work that would form part of ICANN’s next IANA contract.
The IANA contract, which is up for renewal September 30, gives ICANN many of its key powers over the domain name system’s root database.
The new documents seem to fulfill NTIA assistant secretary Lawrence Strickling’s promise to use the IANA contract “as a vehicle for ensuring more accountability and transparency” at ICANN.
If the new draft provisions are finalized, ICANN would be contractually obliged to hold new gTLD applicants to a higher standard than currently envisaged by the Applicant Guidebook.
The FNOI notes that the US believes (my emphasis):

there is a need to address how all stakeholders, including governments collectively, can operate within the paradigm of a multi-stakeholder environment and be satisfied that their interests are being adequately addressed

The Statement Of Work, under the heading “Responsibility and Respect for Stakeholders” includes new text that addresses this perceived need:

For delegation requests for new generic TLDS (gTLDs), the Contractor [ICANN] shall include documentation to demonstrate how the proposed string has received consensus support from relevant stakeholders and is supported by the global public interest.

The current Applicant Guidebook does not require “consensus support from relevant stakeholders” before a new gTLD is approved.
It gives applicants the opportunity to show support from self-defined communities, and it gives communities the right to object to any application, but it does not require consensus.
Earlier this year, the GAC asked ICANN to beef up the Guidebook to make community support or non-objection a proactive requirement for applicants, but ICANN declined to make the change.
The .xxx Factor
The NTIA’s proposed “respect rule” alludes to the approval of .xxx, which the US and other governments believe was both not in the global public interest and unsupported by the porn industry.
Had the rule been applicable in March, ICANN could very well have found itself in breach of the IANA contract, and the NTIA could have been within its rights to block the TLD.
One way to look at this is as a US government safeguard against ICANN’s board of directors overruling GAC objections to new TLDs in future.
The Guidebook currently gives the GAC the right to object to any application for any reason, such as if it believed a proposed string was not supported by a community it purported to represent.
But the Guidebook, reflecting ICANN’s bylaws, also gives ICANN the ability to disagree with GAC advice (including its new TLD objections) and essentially overrule it.
Under the NTIA’s proposed IANA contract language, if ICANN were to overrule a GAC objection to a controversial application, the NTIA would be able to claim that the gTLD was approved without stakeholder consensus, in violation of the IANA contract.
The new gTLD program would have, in essence, a backdoor GAC veto.
While these changes are being made unilaterally by the US, they are certain to be supported by the European Commission and probably other members of the GAC.
Commissioner Neelie Kroes urged Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke to block or delay .xxx back in April, and subsequently met with Strickling to discuss their mutual opposition to the TLD.
Kroes and Strickling seem to agree agree that ICANN should not have signed the .xxx registry contract over the (weak, non-consensus) objection of the GAC.
The FNOI will shortly open for 45 days of public comment, so we’re not likely to know precisely how this is going to play out in the new IANA contract until August.
ICANN is now in the tricky position of trying to figure out how to incorporate this mess into the Guidebook, which it has indicated it plans to approve just over a week from now.
Singapore is going to be very interesting indeed.

15 Comments Tagged: applicant guidebook, european commission, fnoi, iana, ICANN, lawrence strickling, neelie kroes, new TLDs, ntia, singapore, sow

Find domain keywords with new VeriSign apps

VeriSign has released a suite of cute applications for visualizing keywords mined from newly registered domain names.
DomainView has been around for a few months as a tag cloud on the VeriSign web site, but it’s now also an embeddable web widget and a scrolling ticker plug-in for Firefox and Chrome browsers.
The service samples recently registered .com and .net domains for recurring keywords, and spits those keywords back out, along with a short list of related domains that are available to register.
The company is planning to release an iPhone app in the near future, and there’s an API for developers to use today.
I’ve installed the ticker. It’s a nice idea, but it does get a bit distracting after a few minutes. Thankfully, it can be hidden through the options menu.
You can find the new applications here.

1 Comment Tagged: domainview, verisign

Go Daddy to sell .xxx domains

Go Daddy has become the latest registrar to agree to sell .xxx domain names.
It’s a bit of a big deal for ICM Registry, given how dominant Go Daddy is in the registrar channel.
There are about 50 .xxx registrars on this ICANN web page, which lists all the accredited registrars along with which top-level domains they’re approved to sell.
Go Daddy isn’t listed as a .xxx registrar yet, but its accreditation was just announced in a press release.
Read more at The Register.

5 Comments Tagged: go daddy, icm registry, xxx

Second .music applicant is Demand Media partner

Far Further has come out as the second company to say it plans to apply to ICANN for the .music top-level domain.
It’s also, I believe, the first applicant to reveal that it has partnered with Demand Media registrar eNom for its back-end registry services.
Far Further is one of a number of likely applicants for .music. The only other applicant to go public to date is Constantine Roussos’ dotMusic.
The new company is headed by former Warner Music record producer Loren Balman, CEO, and former music journalist John Styll, president. Former PIR chief Alexa Raad of Architelos is advising.
Far Further says its .music will “provide the global music community a secure identifying Internet address that supports the promotion of music, the protection of intellectual property rights, and the advancement of global access to music education.”
It’s my belief that the successful .music applicant will be the one that can secure the support of organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America and its overseas counterparts.
The RIAA’s concerns about piracy spreading through .music domains, however misplaced, suggest that any other applicant is likely to find itself on the receiving end of objections, if not lawsuits.
Support from such organizations would also be critical to any bid that plans to invoke a Community Priority Evaluation — a trump card that well-supported applications can play in the ICANN process.
Perhaps the most interesting revelation about Far Further is the company’s selection of eNom, and its Shared Registry System, as its back-end technology services provider.
eNom is of course the world’s second-largest domain name registrar, with over 11 million domains under management, but it has yet to enter the registry services market.
There’s still a bit of a question mark over eNom’s ability to pass ICANN’s background checks, due to its UDRP losses, but this may not be a problem if it is merely the back-end provider, rather than the applicant itself.

13 Comments Tagged: .music, architelos, demand media, dotmusic, enom, far further, ICANN, new TLDs

Atlas shrugs after movie UDRPs

The producers of a movie based on the cult novel Atlas Shrugged have become the latest recipients of conflicting Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy decisions.
In two recent WIPO decisions, both written by the same panelist, Atlas Productions won its complaint over atlasshruggedmovies.com (plural), but lost another over atlasshruggedmovie.com (singular).
The company released a movie adaptation of the 1957 Ayn Rand book in April, having secured the rights in 1992, but did not appear to have a registered trademark on the name.
The split decisions, both made by WIPO panelist Richard Lyon, rested largely on whether the company had secured, through its investment, common law rights to “Atlas Shrugged”.
In the atlasshruggedmovies.com case, the panelist decided on balance it had rights, and awarded the domain to Atlas without discussing whether the domain had been registered in bad faith.
The decision to allow atlasshruggedmovie.com to remain with the original registrant appears to be because it was registered in 2004, well before Atlas started promoting its movie, and because the respondent made a convincing case that he is a writer/director of spoof movies.
Lyon noted: “There is much to spoof in Atlas Shrugged the novel.”
The fact that the respondent was lawyered up (represented by the law firm Greenberg Traurig) probably helped matters also.
By contrast, the respondent in the atlasshruggedmovies.com sent WIPO an email that constituted the entirety of his defense:

I am the owner of ‘atlasshruggedmovies.com’
I have no motives to go into infringe on any copyrights.
I am in fact the rightful owner and am waiting the interested party to contact me and make a reasonable communications regarding the domain.
I am not permitting the transfer of this domain to any parties at this time.
Thanks for your considerations.

His domain was registered in 2009, around the same time Atlas started plugging its movie, so it was a more clear-cut case of cybersquatting.

Comment Tagged: atlas shrugged, atlasshruggedmovie.com, atlasshruggedmovies.com, udrp

Feds did not seize conspiracy domain

I reported earlier in the week that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency had seized a domain name belonging to an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist.
It seems I may have jumped the gun. The seizure of lowellsfacts.com almost certainly didn’t happen.
Ars Technica called up ICE for the affidavit used to win the court order to seize the domain, and received this statement from an apparently baffled press officer:

ICE has not taken any enforcement action against this site. The site owner/administration redirected www.lowellsfacts.com to our name server, where the seizure banner is hosted.

If this is true, it seems that any idiot can change their name servers to ns1.seizedservers.com and ns2.seizedservers.com and ICE will happily serve up a warning about copyright infringement without even checking whether the domain has actually been seized.
While the lowellsfacts.com case did seem odd, I had assumed that ICE was doing some basic domain verification before displaying its increasingly infamous banner.
This was not an unreasonable assumption – previously, domains seized due to child pornography have displayed a different banner to those involvement with counterfeiting.
There is some code on the site checking the incoming domains before displaying the banner, in other words, apparently just not enough to stop the wave of spoof seizures we’re now likely to see.

2 Comments Tagged: correction, ice, lowellsfacts.com, seizures

IPv6 addresses are the new domain hacks

It’s World IPv6 Day today, and a number of companies have decided to get a little playful with their new IP addresses, using them to spell out their brands.
IPv6 uses hexadecimal notation – the 10 digits and the letters A through F – so it’s possible to use them as “vanity” addresses using something like h4x0r-speak or license plate hacks.
Here’s a few IPv6 “hacks” I’ve found in AAAA records so far today:

BBC – bbc.net.uk – 2001:4b10:bbc::1
Facebook – facebook.com – 2620:0:1c18:0:face:b00c:0:3
Cisco – cisco.com – 2001:420:80:1:c:15c0:d06:f00d (Cisco dog food)
F5 Networks – f5.com – 2001:19b8:101:2::f5f5:1d
US Department of Commerce – commerce.gov – 2610:20:0:20:5ec:d0c:d0c:d0c

A few more, such as Daily Kos’ 2001:48c8:1:c::feeb:beef, seem deliberate but don’t seem to pertain particularly to the site’s brand.
I don’t think anybody’s going to use these addresses to navigate, but I suppose they make prove useful mnemonics for address administrators within those companies.

3 Comments Tagged: domain hacks, ipv6