.xxx reveals new gTLD support problems

It’s late 2012. You’ve spent your $185,000, fought your way through objections, won your contention set, and proved to ICANN that you’re technically and financially capable of running a new generic top-level domain.
The registry contracts have been signed. But will your gTLD actually work?
The experiences of .xxx manager ICM Registry lately suggest that a certain amount of outreach will be needed before new gTLDs receive universal support in applications.
I’ve encountered three examples over the last few days of .xxx domain names not functioning as expected in certain apps. I expect there will be many more.
Skype. Type http://casting.com into a chat window and Skype will automatically make the link clickable. Do the same for the .xxx equivalent, and it does not.
Android, the Google mobile platform. I haven’t tested this, but according to Francesco Cetaro on Twitter, unless you manually type the http:// the domain doesn’t resolve.
TweetDeck, now owned by Twitter. It doesn’t auto-link or auto-shorten .xxx domains either, not even if you include the http:// prefix.
This problem is well known from previous new gTLD rounds. ICANN even warns applicants about it in the Applicant Guidebook, stating:

All applicants should be aware that approval of an application and entry into a registry agreement with ICANN do not guarantee that a new gTLD will immediately function throughout the Internet. Past experience indicates that network operators may not immediately fully support new top-level domains, even when these domains have been delegated in the DNS root zone, since third-party software modification may be required and may not happen immediately.
Similarly, software applications sometimes attempt to validate domain names and may not recognize new or unknown top-level domains.

As a 10-year .info registrant, I can confirm that some web sites will still sometimes reject email addresses at .info domains.
Sometimes this is due to outdated validation scripts assuming no TLD is longer than three characters. Sometimes, it’s because the webmaster sees so much spam from .info he bans the whole TLD.
This is far less of an issue that it was five or six years ago, due in part to Afilias’s outreach, but just this week I found myself unable to sign up at a certain phpBB forum using my .info address.
I understand ICM has also been reaching out to affected app developers recently to make them aware that .xxx now exists in the root and has resolvable domains.
ICANN also has released code in C#, Java, Perl, and Python (though not, annoyingly, PHP) that it says can be easily dropped into source in order to validate TLDs against the live root.
The last beta was released in 2007. I’m not sure whether it’s still under development.
(UPDATE: CentralNic CTO Gavin Brown has knocked up a PHP implementation here.)

9 Comments Tagged: android, ICANN, icm registry, new gTLDs, skype, tweetdeck, twitter, xxx

Advertisers threaten to sue over new gTLDs

The Association of National Advertisers is threatening legal action unless ICANN “abandons” its recently approved new generic top-level domains program.
Its CEO, Robert Liodice, has written to his ICANN counterpart Rod Beckstrom outlining its litany of concerns about new gTLDs.
ANA’s strongly worded arguments will be familiar territory for anyone who has been following development of the program for the last few years.
It’s worried about cybersquatting, typosquatting, phishing, as well as the cost of defensive registrations and post-launch trademark enforcement.
The organization represents 400 companies that collectively spend $250 billion every year on their brands, according to the letter.
It also claims that ICANN shirked its duties by failing to adequately consider the economic impact of the program, and that it failed to develop it in a transparent, bottom-up manner.
Liodice wrote (pdf), with my emphasis:

ICANN must not ignore the legitimate concerns of brand owners and the debilitating effect on consumer protection and healthy markets its unsupervised actions will cause. Should ICANN refuse to reconsider and adopt a program that takes into account the ANA’s concerns expressed in this letter, ICANN and the Program present the ANA and its members no choice but to do whatever is necessary to prevent implementation of the Program and raise the issues in appropriate forums that can consider the wisdom, propriety and legality of the program.

The letter ends with a bunch of legal blah about ANA’s rights and remedies, a pretty obvious indication that it’s considering its legal position.
ICANN should “abandon” the program until ANA’s concerns have been addressed, Liodice wrote.
That’s not going to happen, of course.
There’s no way ICANN can put a halt to the program without basically admitting ANA’s analysis of it has merit.
If ANA wants to stop new gTLDs from going ahead, it’s going to need to do more than send a letter.
The letter is CC’d to the US Department of Commerce and several Congressmen, which suggests that we may see another Congressional hearing into the program before too long.
But will we see a lawsuit as well?
ICANN, at least, has anticipated the likelihood of having to defend itself in court for some time.
About 30% of the the $185,000 application fee – $30 million in a 500-application round – is allocated to various “risks”, of which a legal defense fund is one component.
I’d be surprised if ICANN’s legal team hasn’t war-gamed potential claims and defenses every time the Applicant Guidebook has been updated.
The next five months are going to be very interesting times.

2 Comments Tagged: ana, association of national advertisers, cybersquatting, defensive, ICANN, new gTLDs, new TLDs

Is 80% of .xxx going to be defensive?

Is the new adults-only top-level domain going to turn out to be just as big of a trademark shakedown as some had feared?
EasySpace, a British domain name registrar, claims that 80% of its .xxx pre-orders are from organizations outside the porn industry.
“Out of the hundreds of businesses that have rushed to pre-register with Easyspace ahead of the opening of the Sunrise phase for .XXX domains on 7 September 2011, only 20% of them are from the adult industry,” the company said in a press release.
EasySpace is just one rather small registrar, of course, and its marketing of .xxx is very much in the “Protect your brand” camp, so its numbers may not necessarily hold up industry-wide.
The company is charging $189.99 ($310) for non-porn defensive registrations, an almost 100% markup on the registry fee.
Still, 80% is a big number, and likely to be used by critics not only of .xxx but of new TLDs in general.

Comment Tagged: cybersquatting, icm registry, xxx

Win $4,000 of newdomains.org conference tickets

I have four free passes for the upcoming newdomains.org conference, a total value of $4,000, which I will be giving away to lucky DomainIncite readers over the coming week.
The conference, the first in Europe to focus purely on the opportunities and challenges in ICANN’s new generic top-level domains program, is due to run September 26-27 in Munich, Germany.
The organizer, United-Domains, has generously offered to give four free “Full Conference” passes to DI readers. These are currently selling for €699 ($1,000) each.
The passes include full access to the panels (which will all be conducted in English) and the exhibits, as well as dinner, lunches and ample networking opportunities.
The prizes do not include transport to or accommodation in Munich. The passes also do not include the social event at the Oktoberfest beer festival scheduled for the second night.
See the newdomains.org site for ticket details.
I’ve agreed to participate in two of the conference panel discussions, but don’t let that put you off.
Competition Day One
There will be four random draws conducted over the coming week, with one ticket for each winner.
To be in with a chance to win the first pass, simply leave a comment on this post answering the following questions:

1) Which new gTLD(s) do you think will be successful?
2) Why?

You can define “successful” in any way you want. I will use the random number sequence generator at Random.org to select the winning order of comments, so there’s no “correct” or “best” answer.
It doesn’t have to be an already-announced gTLD bid. Any string(s) you think will be successful as a gTLD is acceptable. If you want to plug your own application, that’s okay too.
But anybody who answers “1) .com, 2) because it’s king” will be automatically disqualified.
The closing time for entries is 1159 UTC, Sunday August 7, judged by the time-stamp on the comment. The winner will be announced here on Monday. One entry per person.
Make sure to leave your comment using a genuine email address, as that is the method I’ll use to hook the winner up with the conference organizers.
The draw will be completely fair, so no asking for favors. In true ICANN spirit, if I suspect “gaming” is going on I reserve the right to unilaterally change the rules.
Okay, let’s see how this goes…

21 Comments Tagged: competition, newdomains.org, united domains

The first .xxx porn site has gone live

Casting.xxx tonight has become officially the first live porn site to use a .xxx domain name.
It’s very not safe for work, of course, but if you head over there right now you can watch a handful of streaming videos, according to sources.
Casting.xxx is the first site to use a domain granted under ICM Registry’s Founders Program, which let the registry sell off or basically give away premium names to publishers.
ICM says it’s allocating about 1,500 domains to about 35 Founders, which is quite a lot more domains than I was expecting.
The .xxx top-level domain has been active in the domain name system for a few months now, but to date the only resolving domains have been those belonging to registry manager ICM.
Casting.xxx is registered to a Really Useful Ltd, which appears to have been set up purely to build sites on .xxx domains, of which casting.xxx is the first of several.
The .xxx sunrise period begins next month, with landrush in November and general availability slated for December.

3 Comments Tagged: casting.xxx, founders program, landrush, sunrise, xxx

Breaking: CentralNic regains control of gb.com

CentralNic has taken back control of gb.com, which was seized without warning by the company’s founder at the weekend.
The domain gb.com now resolves to CentralNic’s site, and the company has posted the following message:

The CentralNic service for domains ending in .gb.com has been fully restored. We apologize for any inconvenience – the interruption was effected without any warning by a third party, and was therefore out of our control.

The pseudo-TLD service, which serves primarily UK small businesses that couldn’t get the .co.uk they wanted, went down on Saturday, leaving registrants confused and angry.
I’ve reached out to CentralNic for comment and will update when I have more information.

1 Comment Tagged: centralnic, gb.com

Tucows expands into 200 TLDs with $2.5m deal

Tucows has acquired EPAG Domainservices, a Bonn, Germany-based domain name registrar, for $2.5 million.
The deal is notable for the size of EPAG’s top-level domain catalog – it offers registrations in 200 TLDs compared to Tucows’ current 33.
Tucows hopes to offer all 200 to its 12,000-strong reseller channel before the end of the year, according to a press release.
CEO Elliot Noss said: “We expect that the deep expertise in registry integration we gain from EPAG will add invaluable bench-strength to our team as we prepare for ICANN’s roll-out of new TLDs.”
EPAG was previously owned by QSC, one of Germany’s largest ISPs.
The registrar has a portfolio of 400,000 customer domains under management, which Tucows is getting its hands on for an average of $6.25 per domain.
Tucows’ OpenSRS channel currently accounts for about 11 million domains, making it the third-largest registrar after Go Daddy and eNom.
More than half of EPAG’s registrations appear to be in ccTLDs. Webhosting.info puts its share of the ICANN gTLD market at 160,623 domains.

Comment Tagged: acquisition, epag, new gTLDs, new TLDs, qsc, tucows

ICANN appoints new Ombudsman

ICANN has named Kiwi lawyer Chris LaHatte as its new Ombudsman.
The appointment, which runs for an initial period of two years from July 28, was made during a board meeting last Thursday, and revealed today.
LaHatte said this of his qualifications, on the ICANN blog:

I am an experienced mediator and lawyer and have practiced in New Zealand, Taiwan and Central Asia. I qualified as a lawyer from the University of Auckland and earned a Masters Degree in Dispute Resolution from Massey University, with judicial settlement conferences as my thesis. I am a Fellow of the Arbitrators and Mediators Institute of New Zealand, a mediator for the New Zealand Law Society on cost issues and a construction law adjudicator.

While his experience appears to be primarily in the construction industry, he seems to have at least a bit of domain savvy already, given that he owns his last name under .co.nz.
LaHatte replaces interim Ombudsman Herb Waye, who stood in following the departure of his old Mountie colleague Frank Fowlie, ICANN’s first Ombudsman, who quit in January.
The Ombudsman role was set up to handle complaints about the organization. It is often criticized for being relatively toothless.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, Ombudsman

PIR sets its sights on .ngo

The .org registry hopes to add .ngo – for Non-Governmental Organization – to its stable of top-level domains, when ICANN opens its new gTLD program next year.
It may well face competition for the domain, however.
It’s quite difficult to narrowly define what an NGO is, but the Public Internet Registry plans to adopt a fairly broad definition that will give it potentially “millions” of new registrants.
“We’re looking at global, regional, and local NGOs, we’re engaging with all of them,” said PIR chief Brian Cute. “This acronym is something that these organizations strongly identify with.”
Cute said PIR has letters of support from some NGOs already, but is not prepared to disclose the identities of its supporters just yet.
Many NGOs are based in emerging markets – according to Wikipedia, India has as many as 3.3 million of them. PIR hopes to encourage domain growth in developing nations, Cute said.
With that in mind, we’re probably not looking at super-premium pricing, though PIR is not talking specific details of its plan yet.
It will be a self-designated “community” application, meaning it will qualify for a Community Priority Evaluation in the event that ICANN receives more than one bid for .ngo.
When a CPE kicks in, applications are scored against a number of criteria and have to get 14 out 16 points in order to win a contested gTLD without going to auction.
Those 14 points are not easy to win, however. Even .ngo, with its commonly understood meaning, may be a hard call.
As it happens, there is already potentially one other .ngo bidder.
The British charity Article 25 has been pondering a .ngo application since 2008, according to its web site at dotngo.net.
That initiative seems to have roughly similar goals to PIR — global, restricted, non-profit — and VeriSign seems to have been engaged as a possible registry services provider.
PIR plans to stick to its existing back-end infrastructure provider, Afilias.
As a community application, it will be a “closed domain”, Cute said. Unlike .org, there will be eligibility criteria to pass before you’re allowed to register a domain name.
PIR also plans to apply for internationalized domain name transliterations of .org, in Chinese, Hindi, Cyrillic and Arabic, Cute said.
Here‘s the site for the application.

1 Comment Tagged: .ngo, .org, article 25, idns, pir, public interest registry, verisign

Big Content calls for government new gTLD oversight

The music, movie and advertising industries have backed a US move that could see governments getting more control over the approval of new top-level domains.
They’ve urged the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to keep a proposed rule that would force ICANN to show a new gTLD is in the “global public interest” before giving it the nod.
But they are opposed by many other stakeholders who responded to the NTIA’s Further Notice Of Inquiry on the renewal of ICANN’s IANA contract.
The FNOI resulted in about 35 responses, from companies and organizations on five continents.
The most controversial question posed by the NTIA was whether the IANA contract should include this provision:

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.

This was broadly interpreted as a way for governments to have a de facto veto over new gTLD applications, via ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee.
The proposed measure has now been supported by the Recording Industry Association of America, the Association of National Advertisers, and the Coalition for Online Accountability, which represents the music and movie industries.
Brand owners want another bite
In his strongly worded response, ANA president Robert Liodice wrote that the new gTLD program “is likely to cause irreparable injury to brand owners”, adding that it supported the NTIA’s proposal.

[It] provides a layer, however thin, of contractual protection that gTLDs will not be deposited to the authoritative root zone without appropriate justification. While the ANA believes that these protections are marginal at best, and that a more secure, safe and permanent solution must be found to prevent the harms to brand owners and consumers described above; nonetheless, “something is better than nothing”

Special interests
The RIAA said in its filing that it “strongly supports” the proposal, on the basis that it thinks .music, if approved as a gTLD, could lead to more online music piracy.

there are no concrete obligations in the latest application guidebook to implement heightened security measures for these types of gTLDs that are focused on particular industries such as record music. Given the the risk that such a gTLD application could pass through the ICANN process without committing to such measures, it should be incumbent on the IANA contractor to document how its entry into the root would meet the “global public interest” standard.

It’s a drum the RIAA, never afraid of making special-interest arguments on matters of internet governance, has been beating for some time.
It stopped short of asking for all existing TLDs (and IP addresses, in the case of peer-to-peer applications) to be banned outright, which would presumably do much more to prevent piracy.
Oh no you ditn’t!
The COA, which includes the RIAA among its members, has the honor of being the first of ICANN’s critics to raise the Peter Dengate Thrush Situation to officially bash the organization.
PDT, as you’ll recall, joined Minds + Machines, likely to be a volume gTLD applicant next year, just a few weeks after he helped push through ICANN’s approval of the gTLD program.
COA counsel Steve Metalitz wrote:

This development tends to confirm COA’s view that “the new gTLD process, like so much of ICANN’s agenda, has been ‘led’ by only a small slice of the private sector, chiefly the registrars and registries who stand to profit from the introduction of new gTLDs.”
…
If a “check and balance” on addition of these new gTLDs to the root was advisable prior to this announcement, it now appears to be indispensable.

Plenty of ICANN stakeholders on both sides of the new gTLD debate have been calling for a review of ICANN’s ethics policies recently, so the COA is far from alone in highlighting the perception problem PDT’s move, and others, may have created.
It looked dodgy, and people noticed.
But on the other hand…
Many responses to the FNOI take the opposing view – saying that the “global public interest” requirements appear to run contrary to IANA’s technical coordination mandate.
IANA’s statement of work, which mandates IANA staff independence from ICANN policy-making, seems like a very odd place to introduce a vague and highly policy-driven oversight check.
Opposition came from the gTLD registry community and likely applicants, as you might expect, as well as from a number of ccTLD operators, which was perhaps less predictable.
A typical response, from the ccNSO, was:

While recognising and supporting the need for ensuring that new gTLDs have consensus support and are consistent with the global public interest, the ccNSO suggests that the IANA contractor’s role should simply be to verify that ICANN has followed the Guidebook process and that all the evaluation criteria (not just the two referred to) have been met.

A number of responses also call for the strict separation of IANA staff from ICANN’s policy-making functions to be relaxed. The way the NTIA’s proposal is currently worded, it’s not clear if IANA’s experts would be able to provide their input to important work.

1 Comment Tagged: cybersquatting, fnoi, iana, ICANN, ntia, piracy