Loss-making M+M predicts December new TLD announcement

Top Level Domain Holdings, the parent company of Minds + Machines, has reported another six months of steep losses as it patiently waits for ICANN to launch its new TLD round.
The company, which is listed in London, reported revenue for the period to the end of April of £32,000 ($49,000), with a loss of £462,000 ($708,000).
TLDH still has almost £4m in cash and equivalents, so it’s not likely to go out of business before the new TLD round commences. Unless the round is delayed by litigation, of course.
M+M has apparently been tightening its belt a little since April. I’m aware of at least one key employee who is no longer working there.
TLDH says in its interim report that it expects ICANN to finalize its Applicant Guidebook in November and announce the application window for the first round in Cartegena in December.
While that’s definitely compatible with noises ICANN’s chairman was making in Brussels, I know I’m not the only person who believes this is a somewhat optimistic estimate.
The report also makes reference to the issue of registry-registrar integration, noting that the ICANN Nairobi resolution to prohibit cross ownership benefits M+M, which is not a registrar.
TLDH’s share price closed up 2% today.

Comment Tagged: brussels, cartagena, Minds + Machines, new TLDs, tldh, top level domain holdings

DirectEmployers calls shenanigans on .jobs outcry

The DirectEmployers Association has gone on the offensive in the continuing battle over the .jobs liberalization, accusing its detractors of conducting an “astroturf” campaign.
Bill Warren, founder and executive director of the DEA, has filed comments to ICANN here.
He accuses the International Association of Employment Web Sites of conducting “nothing less than a smear campaign using modern day technology such as e-mail, blogs, and twitter”.
He’s referring to the scores of letters and emails that have arrived at ICANN over the last week, criticizing .jobs registry Employ Media’s proposal to drop the rule that only company names are allowed in the .jobs namespace.
Jobs sites, in particular, are pissed that Employ Media plans to hand over tens of thousands of premium generic .jobs domains to the DEA to use as gateways to a massive new jobs board, rather than open them up for general registration.
If you currently run a jobs site at NewYorkJobs.com or NursingJobs.com, for example, you would be unable to register NewYork.jobs or Nursing.jobs.
The DEA would likely own both of these domains, along with thousands of others, a situation described by one commenter as a “big giant SEO scam“.
Warren’s letter generally avoids discussing the merits of this plan, instead focusing on attacking its critics’ tactics.

the overwhelming majority of opposing comments – and we’ve reviewed each – clearly indicate no review of the substantial body of work that comprises the RSEP [Registry Services Evaluation Process] submission by Employ Media

It’s true that the majority of the letters include at least some form text created by Steven Rothberg of CollegeRecruiter.com, one of the key individuals behind the IAEWS campaign.
The letters are generally less spammy than similar letter-writing campaigns conducted during the recent .xxx controversy, however, with many writers attempting to add their own two cents.
(Speaking of .xxx, Warren claims that IAEWS has hired the same lawyer who represented .xxx registry ICM. I’m guessing he means Becky Burr of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, but I’m waiting for confirmation of that)
Warren believes that the Society of Human Resource Management, the sponsor and policy-maker for the .jobs domain, “managed a policy development process to arrive at a bottom up, consensus recommendation in the interests of the specific community .jobs exists to serve”.
According to ERE.net, the HR news site that has been doing a far better job of reporting this story than me, this SHRM policy council has been pretty much asleep at the wheel, and may even have been captured. Warren himself apparently used to chair it.
Personally, as somebody with no horse in this race, I merely find it distasteful that Warren is complaining so vehemently about jobs boards having their say in the ICANN process, when the SHRM process deliberately excluded their opinions from its outreach.
The SHRM survey (pdf) filed in support of the .jobs proposal specifically says: “Consultants were also not included in this universe, so that companies specializing in providing job search engines/job boards could not distort the responses from practicing HR professionals.”
The Employ Media proposal to change its contract has already passed an ICANN competition review, so I’m not sure there are any documented ways it can be killed off under the RSEP, although the board will still have to vote on it.

1 Comment Tagged: .jobs, bill warren, directemployers association, employ media, ICANN, shrm, society for human resource management

RapidShare has no rights to “rapid”, says WIPO

RapidShare, the file-sharing service that recently embarked upon a spree of UDRP filings against domain name registrants, has lost its first such case.
A WIPO panelist denied the company’s claim on RapidBay.net, saying it had “not proved that they have any trademark or service mark rights in the expression ‘rapid bay’, or in the word ‘rapid'”.
RapidShare therefore failed to prove that “RapidBay” was identical or confusingly similar to its RapidShare trademark, and the complaint was thrown out.
The decision does not bode well for the company’s ongoing UDRP claims over rapid4me.com, rapidownload.net, rapidpiracy.com and rapid.org, among others.
Rapid.org’s registration, in particular, would appear to be safe, if the panelist in that case follows the same line of reasoning.
That will no doubt please the many people visiting my previous post recently, apparently looking for an explanation of why Rapid.org, a forum for sharing mainly copyrighted works, recently started bouncing to Bolt.org.
RapidShare has in recent months filed a couple dozen UDRP complaints against people who have registered “rapid” domains and are using them to help people find pirated material on the service.

Comment Tagged: bolt.org, rapid.org, rapidbay.net, rapidshare, udrp, wipo

ICANN un-terminates domain name registrar

In what I believe is an unprecedented move, ICANN has renewed a domain name registrar’s accreditation having already sent it a public notice of non-renewal.
A Technology Company, aka ATECH, was told last month that its accreditation would expire July 12 because it had failed to pay over $5,600 in ICANN fees.
That letter (pdf) suggested that ATECH had been in breach since before April 2009.
On all previous occasions, whenever ICANN has posted a notice of termination or non-renewal on its site, it’s game over for that registrar.
Today, a brief note on ICANN’s web site says simply:

A Technology Company, Inc. cured all outstanding contract breaches as of 30 June 2010. A Technology Company, Inc.’s accreditation was renewed on 13 July 2010.

As I’ve previously noted, ATECH and .xxx registry hopeful ICM Registry share a common founder, although the two companies are no longer affiliated.

5 Comments Tagged: a technology company, accrediation, atech, ICANN, xxx

.CO sunrise sees gaming attempts

.CO Internet has published a list of over 1,500 domains that were rejected during its two-month-long trademark-protection sunrise period for the .co namespace.
While the document does not break down the reasons why each name was rejected, it appears to list some attempts to game the system by registering non-existent trademarks or trademarks belonging to other entities.
It’s a 48-page document, compiled by Deloitte, but the range of rejected domains can be illustrated without leaving the C’s.
Names that were applied for and rejected despite being household names include the likes of circuitcity.co, compusa.co, comet.co and currys.co, all electronics retailers, and chevrolet.co.
Since these are names for which trademarks certainly do exist, I’m drawing the conclusion that the sunrise applicant was not the owner of the trademark.
There were also attempts to register personal names, such as christopher.co and courtney.co, as well as geographical terms, such as coventry.co, cleveland.co and chennai.co.
One wildly optimistic applicant even took a chance on colombia.co.
Some applicants went after the .co variants of popular .com web sites, such as chucknorrisfacts.co and collegehumor.co.
In terms of generic terms, applications were rejected for the likes of coffeehouse.co and countrymusic.co.
All of these names, and 1,500 more from the list, will be released back into the landrush period, in which anybody can attempt to register them, a few hours from now.
The recently extended landrush period ends this Friday. General availability begins next week.
Hat tip to Key-Systems, which released the list earlier today.

Comment Tagged: .co, .co internet, chuck norris facts, deloitte, key-systems, sunrise, trademarks

ICANN to stream DNSSEC ceremony live

ICANN is to webcast the second of its root server DNSSEC key generation ceremonies, this coming Monday.
You’ll be able to find the stream here, from 2000 UTC, according to a message ICANN’s DNS director Joe Abley just sent to the DNS-Ops mailing list.
The ceremony, which will likely take several hours, takes place in El Segundo, California.
In it, staff will create the Key Signing Key used in cryptographically signing the very root of the DNS according to the DNSSEC standard.
The first such ceremony took place last month at a facility in Virginia. While it was recorded, as well as witnessed by several well-known security experts, it was not streamed live.
The full transition to a validatable DNSSEC-signed root is still scheduled for next Thursday, July 15.
Abley’s update is likely to be available here shortly.

Comment Tagged: DNSSEC, ICANN, joe abley, ksk, root servers

VeriSign antitrust claims will be heard in court

VeriSign has suffered another legal setback in its antitrust court battle with the Coalition For ICANN Transparency, after an appeals court ruled that CFIT has a case to be heard.
CFIT reckons VeriSign’s deal with ICANN to run the .com registry, which has a presumptive right of renewal and allows annual price increases, breaks US competition law.
Its complaint had been thrown out of court, but was restored on appeal last year. Today, VeriSign’s request for a rehearing was rejected, meaning the case is cleared for trial.
CFIT counsel Bret Fausett tweeted this evening that it will head either back to the District Court, or to the Supreme Court.
The news couldn’t come at a worse time for VeriSign.
The company has spent the last couple of years getting out of most of its non-domain markets, epitomized by the recent sale of its SSL unit to Symantec, so it is ultra-exposed to risk and uncertainty in its highly lucrative .com business.
For that reason, I doubt this case will ever see trial. We’re looking at a settlement, most likely. VeriSign’s probably going to have to break out the check-book.
CFIT is basically a front operation for Momentous.ca, owner of aftermarket player Pool.com.

2 Comments Tagged: bret fausset, cfit, coalition for icann transparency, momentous.ca, pool.com, verisign

Jobs boards slam plan to open up .jobs

Providers of online jobs boards have started to complain to ICANN about plans by registry manager Employ Media to liberalize the .jobs sponsored top-level domain.
It’s rare that an ICANN public comment period attracts a decent amount of comment from outside the usual suspects, but this controversial proposal seems to be heading that way.
Employ Media wants to amend its registry contract to remove the restriction that limits .jobs registrations to the corporate name of employers, a key component of its original commitments.
This has naturally enough stirred debate in the HR community, which now appears to have divided itself into two camps – employers for the changes and jobs boards strongly against.
Several HR professionals with large companies including IBM, BT and Intercontinental Hotels have already filed brief messages with ICANN in support of the .jobs proposal.
Now, the counterargument is being made by a few operators of employer-independent jobs boards, including CollegeRecruiter.com and SalesGravy.com.
The Employ Media proposal would allow it to fulfil its deal with the DirectEmployers Association, which plans to lease thousands of geographic and industry domains.
The DEA plan would essentially be a single jobs site with thousands of domains acting as entry points to vertical listings. Want a job in Chicago? Type in chicago.jobs.
Importantly – and this may explain why HR folk like it – the site would be ad-supported and free for employers to list their openings.
Naturally, existing listings sites see this as an unacceptable competitive threat.
Steve Rothberg, CEO of CollegeRecruiter.com, said in his comment that Employ Media “went out of its way” to avoid getting feedback from existing jobs sites.
The results of an Employ Media survey submitted as part of its application to ICANN make that point pretty clearly.
Todd Goldstein, founder of AccountingJobsToday.com, observed in his comment that the proposal would dilute Employ Media’s original commitment to be “a place for employers” and accused the registry of trying to “route around” its promises to ICANN.

10 Comments Tagged: .jobs, accountingjobstoday.com, collegerecruiter.com, directemployers association, employ media, ICANN, salesgravy.com

Which top brands turned down their .co domains?

Playboy, Pepsi and Pizza Hut are among 17 of the world’s top 100 brands that did not use the .co sunrise period to register their trademarks as .co domain names.
This is effectively the first empirical data we have to judge the demand for a Globally Protected Marks List along the lines of that which ICANN was toying with for its new TLD program.
.CO Internet, the registry operator behind the newly liberalized Colombian top-level domain, chose to implement a Specially Protected Marks List as one of several IP-protection mechanisms.
The list, maintained by Deloitte, comprises the 100 trademarks thought to be the most valuable, and the most rigorously defended, on the internet.
All of these marks, which include some generic dictionary words, are classified as registry reserved and will be impossible to register unless you are the trademark owner.
Yet 83 of the companies on the list chose to register their names in the .co sunrise anyway.
This may show that famous brands are more interested in owning a name that resolves, rather than merely defensively registering in order to keep their marks out of the hands of cybersquatters.
I can only speculate as to why these 83 chose to participate in the sunrise.
Two obvious reasons are the need to establish a Colombian presence on the internet, and the desire to capture any typo traffic from people miskeying “.com”.
For both these reasons, the data is probably not a reliable indicator of how these companies would act during a generic TLD sunrise.
Of the 100 marks on the Deloitte list, these are the 17 that have so far chosen not to acquire their domains:

Accenture, Accor, Armani, Blackberry, BMW, Carrefour, Dell, Fedex, Ferrari, General Electric, Nivea, Pedigree, Pepsi, Pizza Hut, Playboy, Prada, Reebok, Sanyo, SAP, Sheraton, Tiffany and Total.

Because these are registry-reserved names, there’s no danger of cybersquatters picking them up when .co goes to general availability in a little under 11 days.
UPDATE 2010-07-13: See the comment from .CO Internet below. It seems the SPM list is not as useful for brand holders as I had thought.

11 Comments Tagged: .co, .co internet, deloitte, globally protected marks list, gpml, ICANN, new TLDs, sunrise, trademarks

Investors circle ICM as .xxx enters home straight

ICM Registry’s board of directors has approved a $5 million funding round, following the recent decision by ICANN to put the .xxx top-level domain onto the path to approval.
ICM president Stuart Lawley tells me he’s underwritten the whole round himself, already injecting another $500,000 of his own money into the company.
Venture capital investors have already approached the company, following the Brussels decision two weeks ago, according to Lawley.
In Brussels, ICANN’s board resolved to re-enter contract negotiations with ICM, following years of wrangling with ICANN’s appeals and independent review processes.
While .xxx’s approval and entry to the DNS root is not a slam-dunk, the only major hurdle appears to be ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee, and many believe the GAC is unlikely to stick its neck out on such a controversial issue.
While demand for .xxx domains is yet to be proven, there are already 162,000 pre-registrations, which would work out to a $10 million business, not including premium sunrise and landrush fees.
A report in Business Week last week said ICM could bring in $200 million per year in revenue on registrations alone.
I think that’s a pretty ambitious prediction, to be honest, and I can’t help but wonder in Business Week got ICM’s ten-year and one-year projections mixed up.
Even at $60 a pop, that’s still 3.3 million registered domains. The stars will have to align in unexpected ways for .xxx to reach that kind of penetration (pun intended).
ICM has previously projected near-term registrations in the low-mid hundreds of thousands.
ICM is currently owned by a close-knit group of investors, mainly Lawley’s circle and ICM’s management, with Lawley himself owning roughly 70% of the business.

3 Comments Tagged: brussels, ICANN, icm, stuart lawley, venture capital, xxx