Ashley Madison .sucks domain mysteriously vanishes

The domain ashleymadison.sucks, which hosted a tool to search a database of millions of stolen Ashley Madison users’ data, has been deleted.
According to Uniregistry CEO Frank Schilling, the domain was deleted by its registrant within the five-day grace period permitted under ICANN rules.
The site looked like this shortly after it launched at the weekend.

Ashley Madison, which uses .com, is the “dating” site specifically designed for people who want to have extra-marital affairs.
Hackers recently released a 9GB file containing, reportedly, as many as 32 million users’ email addresses. The breach has led to much online shaming of public figures and has reportedly led to suicides.
The ashleymadison.sucks site hosted a forum and a search engine that allowed partial email address searches. Even in the short time it was up, it attracted a fair amount of forum posts, as well as the attention of Vox Populi itself, which tweeted:

Of all the new sites emerging on the dotSucks platform, none seems more timely or driven by passion than http://t.co/2sx4zk6s7V

— DotSucks (@DotSUCKSDomain) August 22, 2015

Interestingly, I’m not sure if the site would have fallen foul of any Vox Pop policies.
There’s a provision against hacking, but the site was merely showing the proceeds of hacking rather than doing any hacking. In addition, the registry’s prohibition on cyberbullying only extends to children.
The domain, at time of writing, is back in the available pool. Uniregistry wants $2,078.96 for it, which may explain why it was deleted while a refund was still available.

Radix targets 25,000 names for .online’s first day

Radix Registry reckons .online will move at least 15,000 domains in its first day of general availability, but it’s aiming higher.
“We are confident .online will be amongst the biggest new gTLDs that have launched,” Radix business head Sandeep Ramchandani said in a press release today.
“The same sentiment across several Registrar Partners has reinforced our beliefs. We expect to start off with at least 15,000 registrations at launch and would love to break .club’s launch record,” he said.
When .CLUB Domains launched .club in 2014, its zone file showed over 25,000 domains after the first 10 hours.
Radix is basing its projections not only on its registrar conversations, but also on .online’s sunrise period, which ended yesterday with 775 sales.
That number is of course low by pre-2012 standards, but it’s in the top tier of sunrise periods for non-controversial new gTLDs.
The only strings to top 1,000 names to date have been ICM Registry’s .porn and .adult and Vox Populi’s .sucks.
.CLUB’s sunrise weighed in at 454 domains.
Radix had better hope .online is successful — the gTLD sold for seven or eight figures at private auction.
The gTLD will go to its Early Access Period tomorrow before settling down to regular pricing August 26.

.sucks won’t discount its fee for $10 domains

Vox Populi Registry is looking for a free speech advocate partner willing to absorb hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of dollars in costs.
The .sucks registry has for many months promised that later this year it will introduce a Consumer Advocate Subsidies program that will enable people to get a .sucks for the deeply discounted price of $10 a year.
Currently, the standard recommended retail price of a .sucks is $249, with a registry fee of $199.
Users of the subsidy program would get their names for $10 or under but they’d have to agree to host a free forum on the site, open to anyone that wanted to criticize (or, I guess, praise) the subject of the domain.
It has been broadly assumed that the subsidy would be matched by a discount in the registry fee.
But it’s emerged that Vox Pop has no plans to lower its own fees in order to offer the subsidy.
Essentially, it’s looking for a partner willing to swallow a cost of essentially $189 a year for every subsidized domain name.
CEO John Berard said in a blog post this week, and has subsequently confirmed to DI, that the subsidy is a subsidy and not a discount.
Vox Pop will still demand its full wholesale registry fee for every .sucks domain that is sold. Berard blogged:

Whether a registration is subsidized, the price to the registrar and registry is unaffected. That is the nature of a subsidy. Neither is the program to be offered by the registry. We are talking to a number of free speech advocates and domain name companies to find the right partner.

“The partner has to be one committed to free speech and confident in its ability to rally contributions to underwrite the activity,” Berard told DI.
To me, this proposition suddenly looks hugely unattractive.
There are over 6,000 domains in the .sucks zone today, just a month after general availability began, and that’s with registrants paying $250 to $2,500 a year.
With a $10 free-for-all, the number of registrations would, in my view, spike.
Unless there was some kind of gating process in place, the subsidy partner would likely face hundreds of thousands of dollars in recurring annual fees almost immediately. It could escalate to millions a year over the long run.
I’m trying to imagine how an organization such as Which? (which I’m guessing is the kind of organization Vox Pop is talking to) would benefit from this arrangement.
There is “quite an interest” in signing up to become the subsidy partner, Berard said. He said that in some cases potential partners are looking for marketing opportunities or ways to “enhance their reputation”.
Details of subsidy program are expected to be announced early in the fourth quarter.

Does this fun video prove that the .sucks message isn’t total BS?

At least one big brand seems to have the same idea about “sucking” as the .sucks gTLD registry, even if it does not appear to own any .sucks domain names.
Three, which is currently the smallest of the UK’s four major mobile phone networks, is advertising its services using very similar messaging.
The fun 90-second commercial embedded below, featuring a Muppet, an old East 17 track, and quite a lot of dancing, ends with the slogan “When Stuff Sucks #makeitright” and the call-to-action “The mobile industry sucks. See how we’re making it right.”

Clicking through to the Three website, visitors see messages including “People think our network sucks. Guess what? We’re voted most reliable” and “Charging extra for 4G sucks. We don’t.”
The campaign was reportedly conceived by ad agency Wieden & Kennedy London. It’s been getting a fair bit of TV airtime over the last month.
This seems to substantiate something Vox Populi has been saying for the last 18 months: that “sucks” is not necessarily a hugely derogatory term any more, and in fact can be embraced by companies to engage with customers, challenge criticism and promote their brands.
That said, Three isn’t using any .sucks domains — three.sucks, makeitright.sucks and whenstuff.sucks do not appear to be registered.
Three, part of Hutchison Whampoa, is currently undergoing a merger with Telefonica-owned rival O2 which would create the largest UK mobile operator.

First example of .sucks cybersquatting?

The .sucks domain has been generally available for a little over a week now, and I’ve found what may be the first example of somebody attempting to sell one to a brand owner.
amherstcollege.sucks is one of only a handful on non-registry-owned .sucks domains to have a web site already indexed by Google.
The site solicits commentary about Amherst College — a liberal arts university in Massachusetts that owns a US trademark on “Amherst” — but does not yet publish any such criticism.
However, the phrases “AMHERSTCOLLEGE.SUCKS DOMAIN NAME + WEBSITE IS FOR SALE” and “IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN PURCHASING THIS DOMAIN AND WEBSITE CONTACT US” appear prominently on the bare-bones WordPress blog currently running at the site.
The Whois record shows “THIS DOMAIN IS FOR SALE” as the registrant organization.
Under the UDRP, offering a domain for sale is usually considered enough to meet the “bad faith” part of the three-prong cybersquatting test.
I doubt it’s the only example of a .sucks domain matching a brand currently listed for sale by a third-party registrant, but it is the first one showing up in Google.
It’s still early days; the other .sucks domains with sites and a Google presence are a mix of redirects, mirroring and placeholders.
Microsoft-owned microsoft.sucks is one of them. It redirects to a Bing search results page.
The $250-a-year .sucks gTLD, managed by Vox Populi registry, currently has fewer than 5,700 domains in its zone file. Growth has ground almost to a halt over the last few days.

Want to slam .sucks? You can at dotsucks.sucks

Vox Populi Registry is eating its own dog food and has launched a .sucks gripe site targeting itself.
DotSucks.sucks has gone live, allowing critics to take a pop at the company and its gTLD.
The registry-owned site says: “if we intend to build it, then we need to live here.”
The domain hosts a simple forum. Anyone can sign up using their social media accounts and start posting in moments.
The site says:

WHO SUCKS? US?
Here (right here) is a chance to tell us to our face.
If you are right, we’ll own up to the shortcoming, but if you’re wrong, we get to tell you so!
Criticism can be constructive. Good for the bottom line. It can also be therapeutic. Good for the soul. It ultimately clears the air. Good for making progress.
We are the Vox Populi Registry, a small company with a big mission to create a new and vibrant Internet community. And if we intend to build it, then we need to live here. So tell us what you think. We think you should consider getting a place of your own.

So far, only one idiot has posted a topic. For testing purposes, you understand.
The site does not appear to be moderated.
Earlier this year, Vox Pop CEO John Berard said in an interview he was unsure whether the company would launch a .sucks site for itself.

First .sucks gripe site goes live

Just half a day after the new gTLD became available, the first .sucks sites have started going live.
So far, only one .sucks domain that does not belong to Vox Populi Registry is showing up in Google.
It’s dealman.sucks, and it does not appear to belong to the brand owner.
The domain, which was registered in the first minute of general availability this morning, leads to a “Coming Soon” page that merely says:

CONSUMER FORUM AND ARTICLES
A place for Dealman customers to have a voice and get clarification on issues important to them.
We’ll invite Dealman to contribute and engage with customers too.

Deal Man is a New Zealand web site selling clothes. It does not seem to be a particularly famous brand, but it has attracted criticism.
It has been the subject of recent negative media coverage in the Kiwi press and already has a gripe page on Facebook.

.sucks made millions from sunrise

Vox Populi could have made over $6 million from defensive registrations during its sunrise period.
The company’s first post-sunrise zone file was published today, and according to DI PRO it contains 3,394 domains, the vast majority of which were newly added today.
If all of these names were sunrise registrations, that would add up to an almost $6.8 million windfall for the registry.
However, I don’t think that’s a completely reliable figure. I believe that not all of the names are from sunrise.
The zone file seems to have been generated after .sucks general availability kicked off at a minute after midnight UTC this morning. ICANN publishes zone files around 5am UTC but the time it collects them from registries can vary between TLDs.
Poring over Whois records, I’ve found many examples of domains in the .sucks zone that have creation dates in the early minutes and hours of GA.
Many domains that are not obvious trademarks show creation times in the first 60 seconds of GA, suggesting they were pre-orders and sold for GA prices.
It’s also probable that some sunrise names are not showing up in the zone file yet due to a lack of name servers.
According to a source talking to DI last November, Vox Pop paid “over $3 million” for the right to run .sucks at auction.
It seems to have made its money back — and then some — purely from sunrise fees.
Sunrise names are charged at $1,999 a year by the registry. In GA, most names have a recommended retail price of $250. Strings considered valuable, many of them trademarks, carry a $2,500 “Market Premium” recommended price.

Famous Four following .sucks playbook with premium pricing for brands?

New gTLD registry Famous Four Media has slapped general availability prices of $500 and up on domain names matching famous brands.
The company plans to shortly introduce eight “premium” pricing tiers, ranging from $200 a year to $10,000 a year.
The first to launch, on July 8, will be its “brand protection tier”, which will carry a $498 registry fee.
Famous Four told its registrars that the tier “will provide an additional deterrent to cyber-squatters for well-known brands ensuring that domain names in this tier will not be eligible for price promotions”.
The gTLDs .date, .faith and .review will be first to use the tiered pricing structure.
It’s not entirely clear what brands will be a part of the $498 tier, or how the registry has compiled its list, but registrars have been given the ability to ask for their clients’ trademarks to be included.
I asked Famous Four for clarification a few days ago but have not yet had a response.
While other registries, such as Donuts, used tiered pricing for GA domains, I’m only aware of one other that puts premium prices on brands: .sucks.
Vox Populi has a trademark-heavy list of .sucks domains it calls Market Premium — formerly Sunrise Premium — that carry a $1,999-a-year registry fee.
Unlike Vox Pop, Famous Four does not appear to be planning a subsidy that would make brand-match domains available at much cheaper prices to third parties.
Famous Four’s gTLDs have seen huge growth in the last month or two, largely because it’s been selling domains at a loss.
.science, for example, has over 300,000 registrations — making it the third-largest new gTLD — because Famous Four’s registry fee has been discounted to just $0.25 from May to July.
The same discount applies to .party (over 195,000 names in its zone) and .webcam (over 60,000).
Those three gTLDs account for exactly half of the over 22,000 spam attacks that used new gTLD domains in March and April, according to Architelos’ latest abuse report.
With names available at such cheap prices, it would not be surprising if cybersquatters are abusing these gTLDs as much as the spammers.
Will intellectual property owners believe a $498+ reg fee is a useful deterrent to cybersquatting?
Or will they look upon this move as “predatory”, as they did with .sucks?

Canada shrugs over .sucks

The Canadian trade regulator has sent ICANN a big old “Whatever” in response to queries about the legalities of .sucks.
The response, sent by Industry Canada’s deputy minister John Knubley yesterday, basically says if the intellectual property lobby doesn’t like .sucks it can always take its complaints to the courts.
Other than opening and closing paragraphs of pleasantries, this is all Knubley’s letter (pdf) says:

Canada’s laws provide comprehensive protections for all Canadians. Canada has intellectual property, competition, criminal law and other relevant legal frameworks in place to protect trademark owners, competitors, consumers and individuals. These frameworks are equally applicable to online activities and can provide recourse, for example, to trademark owners concerned about the use of the dotSucks domains, provided that trademark owners can demonstrate that the use of dotSucks domains infringes on a trademark. Intellectual property rights are privately held and are settled privately by the courts.

There’s not much to go on in there; it could quite easily be a template letter.
But it seems that Vox Populi Registry has been cleared to go ahead with the launch of .sucks, despite IP owner complaints, at least as far as the US and Canadian regulators are concerned.
The Federal Trade Commission was equally noncommittal in its response to ICANN two weeks ago.
Vox Populi is based in Canada. It’s still not entirely clear why the FTC was asked its opinion.
ICANN had asked both agencies for comment on .sucks’ legality after its Intellectual Property Constituency raised concerns about Vox Pop’s “predatory” pricing.
Pricing for .sucks names in sunrise starts at around $2,000.
ICANN told DI in April that it was in “fact finding” mode, trying to see if Vox Pop was in breach of any laws or its Registry Agreement.
The .sucks domain is due to hit general availability one week from now, June 19, with a suggested retail price of $250 a year.
If anything, the $250 says much more about Vox Pop’s business model than the sunrise fees, in my opinion.