Could litigation delay ICANN’s new TLDs?

Intellectual property lawyers are wondering aloud about the possibility of ICANN being sued in order to delay the launch of new top-level domains.
The idea was raised during a panel at the annual meeting of INTA, the International Trademark Association, in Boston yesterday, according to its daily newsletter (pdf).
Kristina Rosette of the law firm Covington & Burling reportedly “suggested litigation is a possibility to slow down the application launch. One source of litigation could be trademark owners, worried about mass cybersquatting”.
That’s reported speech, by the way, not a quote. The article does not make clear the context.
Rosette is Intellectual Property Constituency representative for North America on ICANN’s GNSO Council.
The IP community is worried that the launch of new TLDs will lead to companies splurging more money unnecessarily on defensive registrations.
The current best, arguably most optimistic guess on the new TLD timeline comes from registry hopeful Minds + Machines. M+M has applications opening next April.
A delay in the launch of new TLDs would hurt most the startup companies that intend to apply for them, and the service providers and consultants hoping to facilitate the launches.
Some of these companies make minimal revenue, are dependent on funding, and would prefer applications open sooner rather than later.

3 Comments Tagged: covington & burling, ICANN, inta, international trademark association, kristina rosette, Minds + Machines, new TLDs

Symantec gets into the DNS game with Dyn

Symantec has partnered with Dyn to offer a free DNS service to mobile Norton users.
As part of its new mobile strategy, expected to be announced later today, Symantec will provide free DNS resolution with a built-in filter that blocks potentially dangerous domains.
Dyn.com will provide the back-end, which will compete with the likes of OpenDNS and Google’s DNS service.
Non-technical users will be able to download a client application that configures their local DNS to work with the service, which drops one barrier to entry.
Symantec reportedly expects to earn revenue from advertising links – presumably by intercepting NXDOMAIN responses and providing sponsored error pages.
So the deal could be a bit of a money-spinner for Dyn; it’s certainly a further validation of its service.
But is it sexy? Hmm…

Comment Tagged: dns, dyn, dynamic network services, google, norton, opendns, symantec

VeriSign announces bizarre ‘.com 25’ award winners

As part of its 25th anniversary of .com celebrations, VeriSign has today announced the 25 winners of its “.com 25” award.
The award was given to “the 25 people and/or companies whose inspiring contributions were fundamental in shaping the Internet and, thereby, our worlds”, VeriSign said.
The winners all seem to deserve the recognition, even if one of them, craigslist, is technically a .org.
But looking at the 75 nominees the judging panel had to choose from, I’m scratching my head on at least half a dozen of them.
What is Zappos? What does Pandora do? Why is Muhammad Yunus on the list? What on earth is TheKnot.com?
And where are Jon Postel and Paul Mockapetris, who between them basically created the domain name system in the first place?
It’s a little disappointing that the only European with a gong appears to be web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. It’s even more disappointing that I can’t think of any other deserving Europeans.
The full list of winners can be found here.

1 Comment Tagged: .com 25, 25yearsof.com, craigslist, jon postel, paul mockapetris, tim berners-lee, verisign

E.co up for charity auction at Sedo

Sedo is to host a charity auction for the domain name e.co, under a deal with .CO Internet, manager of the newly relaunched Colombian ccTLD.
The auction will run from June 7 to June 10, with the final hour hosted live at the Internet Week show in New York, simultaneously webcast to the Internet Retailer and TRAFFIC conferences.
The winner of the auction gets to choose which charity the sale price is donated to.
Juan Diego Calle, CEO of the registry, said e.co is “perhaps the shortest, most memorable digital brand in the world”, which is hard to argue with.
You’ve got to hand it to .CO Internet, and to its PR outfit BM, they’re doing a hell of a job keeping the pre-launch .co buzz going. New TLD applicants take note.
Could we see seven figures? It seems quite possible.
Let’s hope the winning bidder throws the money at a worthy cause and doesn’t blow it on a donkey sanctuary or something.

Comment Tagged: .co, .co internet, cctlds, colombia, e.co, new TLDs, sedo, traffic

Four of the top 100 brands have insecure domain names

Some of the world’s most famous global brands have domain names that are still vulnerable to the Kaminsky exploit and could be hijacked by others.
Earlier today, I ran all of the brands on Deloitte’s list of the top 100 brands through a vulnerability testing tool provided by IANA.
The results show that four of these brands – all household names – have domains classed as “highly vulnerable” to the Kaminsky exploit.
If the IANA test is reliable, this means that false data could be injected into their name servers, potentially redirecting users to a web site belonging to the attacker.
Another eight brands had domains that the IANA tool reported might be “vulnerable” to attacks, but which had measures in place to mitigate the risk.
The Kaminsky bug has been public for almost two years. It’s a cache poisoning attack in which a recursive name server is tricked into providing false data about a domain.
It becomes particularly scary when a domain’s authoritative name servers also have their recursive functions turned on. A successful attack could redirect all traffic to a compromised domain to a server managed by the attacker.
The surest way to avoid vulnerability is to turn off recursion. IANA says: “Authoritative name servers should never be configured to provide recursive name service.”
Alternatively, a method known as source port randomization can make the risk of being compromised by the Kaminsky exploit so small it’s barely a threat at all.
The IANA tool reports that four of the top 100 brands have at least one “highly vulnerable” authoritative name server that has recursion enabled and no source port randomization.
The other eight “vulnerable” domains were identified as running on at least one authoritative server that had recursion turned on and source port randomization enabled.
I’m not an expert, but I don’t believe this second category of companies has a great deal to worry about in terms of Kaminsky.
I picked the Deloitte brand list for this experiment because it is the list of brands Deloitte believes require the most trademark protection under ICANN’s new TLD process.
.CO Internet is already using the list during its sunrise period for the .co domain.
Michele Neylon of Blacknight has found some more vulnerable servers over here.

3 Comments Tagged: brand list, deloitte, iana, ICANN, kaminsky bug, new TLDs

dotSport complains to ICANN about other .sports

One of the companies that intends to apply for the .sport top-level domain has written to ICANN, begging that it does not approve any TLDs for individual sports.
dotSport’s Policy Advisory Committee, which appears to think it already has rights in the .sport string, said ICANN should respect “sport solidarity”.
In other words, please don’t allow .tennis or .golf to be approved.
The company wrote:

The PAC members reiterate our concern that ICANN may be prematurely entertaining a process that will allow proliferation of names in sub-categories or individual sports, which will lead to a number of detrimental effects

The detrimental effects, referenced in this letter last August, basically boil down to the potential for user confusion and the need for defensive registrations by sports teams and personalities.
You could apply the same arguments to pretty much any potential new TLD – what would .music mean for the .hiphop community?
The dotSport PAC is filled with high-level appointees from more than half a dozen sports federations, representing sports from basketball to rugby to archery, so its views are far from irrelevant.
Its position appears to be that the DNS hierarchy should be used for taxonomic purposes, at least when it comes to sports.
It’s an argument that was floated all the way back in the 2000 round of TLD applications, and probably before.
Purely from a marketing point of view, it seems like a self-defeating objective to mandate the use of www.example.hockey.sport when www.example.hockey is an option.
The main example of such a mandatory multi-level taxonomy, the old-style .us ccTLD, was a spectacular commercial failure.
Could it be that dotSport wants to be the registry for all .sports for the price of one? It certainly appears that way.

2 Comments Tagged: .sport, dotsport, ICANN, new gTLDs, new TLDs

DotAsia wants lower ICANN fees

As its active base of .asia domain name registrations continues to plummet, the DotAsia Organization wants to reduce its ICANN fees by a third.
CEO Edmon Chung has written to ICANN’s Kurt Pritz, asking if the annual transaction fee it pays per domain can be reduced from $0.75 to $0.50.
“A lower fee would enable DotAsia to invest further into meaningful community projects as well as to extend the awareness and adoption of the .ASIA domain,” Chung wrote. “The suggested amendment would also bring the fees into line with other gTLDs.”
I don’t expect the proposed changes to be especially controversial, but they do highlight how tough it is to launch a new TLD.
The .asia TLD has proved to be a bit of a damp squib, especially since the early-mover speculators started jumping ship, so the company could probably use being thrown a bone.
After .asia’s landrush, the company grew its registration base to a peak of 243,000 in April 2009, according to HosterStats.com, but it currently stands at around 183,000.

Comment Tagged: .asia, dotasia, edmon chung, ICANN, kurt pritz

.CO Internet scores TechCrunch marketing coup with Disrupt.co

The newly relaunched .co domain has won itself a whole bunch of free publicity by signing up TechCrunch to its Founders Program.
The tech news blog will use the domain Disrupt.co as part of its startup conference of the same name that kicks off today.
The web site will host “Startup Battlefield”, a competition during TechCrunch Disrupt for new companies and services.
.CO Internet is marketing Colombia’s .co ccTLD as a generic. The launch is currently in its trademark sunrise period, with registrations opening to other registrants next month.
Its Founders Program is a marketing scheme designed to get the word out about the availability of .co domains. Few partners could be as useful to this end as TechCrunch.
Founders get a free premium domain if they promise to promote it properly. CO Internet is still looking for more partners, with applications closing June 15.
I expect disrupt.com, currently parked, will also be getting a lot of traffic today.

3 Comments Tagged: .co, .co internet, colombia, disrupt.co, techcrunch, techcrunch disrupt

UrbanBrain proposes first properly generic new gTLD

Japanese registry wannabe UrbanBrain will apply for .site under ICANN’s first round of new top-level domain applications.
Of all the registries to so far show their hands for the new TLD round, .site is probably the first that could properly be described as both new and “generic”.
UrbanBrain said the namespace will be targeted at “Internet users, hobbyists, and business owners”. A pretty generic constituency.
Also, the dotSiTE launch page currently contains a bullet-pointed list of three reasons why .site will indeed be as generic as they come.

The dotSiTE internet extension is full of possibilities.
* Optimize your SiTE with great keywords
* Some other text
* Another reason

All the other 100-odd new TLD applications to have been publicly disclosed to date address specific geographical, cultural or niche interest markets.
There are also two (for now) applications for .web, which I’m not counting as “new” gTLD applications because they’ve been on the table for over a decade.
UrbanBrain is affiliated with Japanese ISP Interlink, and registry-in-a-box venture RegistryASP.

3 Comments Tagged: .site, ICANN, interlink, new gTLDs, new TLDs, registryasp, urbanbrain

Go Daddy tech support is a cash cow

Go Daddy’s call center support staff make the company hundreds of thousands of dollars a day in up-sells, according to documents revealed as part of an employee class-action lawsuit.
I covered the lawsuit (PDF), filed by three former Go Daddy employees, for The Register on Friday.
One of the plaintiffs, Toby Harris, was fired after he leaked “confidential” screenshots of the company’s CRM system to his home email address.
I’m not going to get into the details of the lawsuit, which concerns labor practices, here.
But the screenshots, which offer a bit of insight into how much revenue these front-line call center staff make for Go Daddy, are worth looking at.
According to one, Harris delivered over $10,000 in gross sales for the company over nine working days in January, taking about 5% of that for himself in commission.
Not bad for a rookie $12-an-hour support guy, considering how cheap most Go Daddy products are.
Another CRM screen shows the performance of a couple dozen members of Harris’ team, including how much commission they made over a two-week period and how many customer calls they handled.
These 23 employees made between $1,290 and $255 in commissions over the period, averaging $564 each, dealing with on average 31 calls each per day.
If that’s 5% of the gross, over 10 business days, you could try to extrapolate some company-wide data, but the screenshot probably represents too small a sample to make any precise calculations.
Still, it’s pretty clear that that a substantial chunk of Go Daddy’s revenue is generated by call center staff.
Harris told me he was expected to shift $250 to $450 worth of product every day, the equivalent of selling at least one new $8 domain name to every caller.
Domain Name Wire reported last December that the company had 1,600 support staff. At the low end of $250 a day, that would equate to $400,000 a day or $146 million a year from the phones alone.
I guess I found this a little surprising because while I always knew Go Daddy’s web site was a cash machine, I had assumed its call center spent most of its time providing technical support.
As a customer, I often wondered how the company managed to run such a high-quality support service on such a pitifully low-margin loss-leader.
Now I know. Judging by these leaked numbers, those guys more than pay for themselves.

8 Comments Tagged: call center, class action, go daddy, revenue, tech support, toby harris