Ramchandani promoted to Radix CEO

New gTLD registry Radix has appointed long-time business head Sandeep Ramchandani as CEO.
He’s replacing Bhavin Turakhia, who is CEO of parent company Directi and executive chairman of Radix.
Ramchandani had a lot of autonomy as business head and VP of the company and, in my view, has been basically CEO in all but name for years. I’ve accidentally called him CEO in the pages of DI more than once.
In a press release, he said: “Just as the first few years of Radix were about demonstrating proof of concept, the next few will be about growing awareness and delivering accelerated growth. We are also actively looking to acquire more TLD assets to reach newer segments of the market while leveraging economies of scale.”
The company has a portfolio of nine gTLDs, including .website, .store and .online, and recently announced that its 2017 revenue topped $12 million.

Radix says it’s profitable after making $12 million this year

New gTLD stable Radix said today that it expects to top $12 million in revenue this year.
The company also told DI that it is currently profitable.
Radix, which counts the likes of .site and .store among its portfolio of nine active gTLDs, said revenue so far for the calendar year has been tallied at $11.7 million.
The company said that more than half of revenue came from “non-premium domain renewals”, an important metric when considering the long-term health of a domain business.
Recurring revenue of non-premiums was almost twice as much as new registrations, Radix said. Only $1.76 million of revenue came from premium sales (14%) and renewals (86%).
The US accounted for just under half of revenue, with Germany at 14.4% and China, where .site was fully active for the whole year and four other TLDs were approved in October, coming in at 7.7%.
Radix is a private company, part of the Directi Group, and has not previously disclosed its financials.
Assuming apples-to-apples comparisons are valid (which may not be the case), its figures compare favorably to public competitors such as MMX, which expects to report 2017 in the same ball-park despite having more than twice as many gTLDs under management.

Radix claims 77% renewal rates after two years

New gTLD registry Radix says that three of its larger TLDs have seen a 77% renewal rate two years after launch.
The company said today that .online had 75% renewals, with .tech at 78% and .site at 81%.
It appears to have carved out these three from its portfolio for attention, ignoring the rest of its portfolio, because they all went to general availability in the same two-month period July and August 2015.
The renewal rates are for the first month of GA. In other words, 77% of the domains registered in the TLDs’ respective first month have been renewed for a third year.
Radix, in a press release, compared the numbers favorably to .com and .net, which had a combined renewal rate of 74% in the second quarter according to Verisign’s published numbers.
It’s probably not a fully fair apples-to-apples comparison. Domains registered in the first month of GA are likely higher-quality names registered by in-the-know early adopters, and therefore less likely to be dropped, whereas .com and .net have decades of renewal cycles behind them.
Radix also said that 86% of domains registered during the three TLDs’ sunrise periods and Early Access Periods are still being renewed, with .tech at 92% and .site at 88%.

Eight more gTLDs get Chinese licenses

Radix and MMX have had four new gTLDs each approved for use in China.
MMX has had .work, .law, .beer and .购物 (Chinese for “shopping”) approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Radix gained approval for .fun, .online, .store and .tech.
The approvals mean that Chinese customers of Chinese registrars will be able to actually use domains in these TLDs rather than just registering them and leaving them barren.
It also means the respective registries have to apply more stringent controls on Chinese registrants.
They’re the first new gTLDs to get the nod from MIIT since April.
Only a couple dozen Latin-script new gTLDs have been given regulatory approval to operate fully in China.
MMX’s biggest success story to date, .vip, is almost entirely beholden to the Chinese market. Before today, it was also the only gTLD in its portfolio to pass the MIIT test.
The company said in a statement it has another four strings going through the approval process.
Radix already had .site on sale in China with government approval.

Google shifts 400,000 .site domains

Google has given away what is believed to be roughly 400,000 subdomains in Radix’s .site gTLD as part of a small business web site service.
Since its launch a couple of months ago, the Google My Business web site builder offering has been offering small businesses a free one-page site with a free third-level domain under business.site.
Google My Business also offers users the ability to upgrade to a paid-for second-level domain via its Google Domains in-house registrar.
Google the search engine indexes 403,000 business.site pages currently. Because each subdomain is limited to a single page, it is possible that the number of subdomains is not too far behind that number, Radix believes.
This means that business.site is likely almost as large as the .site gTLD itself, which currently has about 450,000 names in its zone file.
Given the rapid growth rate, it seems likely the subdomain will overtake the TLD in a matter of weeks.
According to Radix, business.site was purchased off of its registry reserved premium list. The sale price has not been disclosed.
It’s good publicity for the TLD, and merely the latest endorsement by Google of the new gTLD concept.
As well as being the registry for many new gTLDs, Google parent Alphabet uses a .xyz domain and its registrar uses a .google domain.

EFF recommends against new gTLDs

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has recommended that domain registrants concerned about intellectual property “bullies” steer clear of new gTLDs.
The view is expressed in a new EFF report today that is particularly critical of policies in place at new gTLD portfolio registries Donuts and Radix.
The report (pdf) also expresses strong support for .onion, the pseudo-TLD available only to users of the Tor browser and routing network, which the EFF is a long-term supporter of.
The report makes TLD recommendations for “security against trademark bullies”, “security against identity theft and marketing”, “security against overseas speech regulators” and “security against copyright bullies”.
It notes that no one TLD is “best” on all counts, so presents a table explaining which TLD registries — a broad mix of the most popular gTLD and ccTLD registries — have which relevant policies.
For those afraid of trademark “bullies”, the EFF recommends against 2012-round new gTLDs on the basis that they all have the Uniform Rapid Suspension service. It singles out Donuts for special concern due to its Domain Protected Marks List, which adds an extra layer of protection for trademark owners.
On copyright, the report singles out Donuts and Radix for their respective “trusted notifier” schemes, which give the movie and music industries a hotline to report large-scale piracy web sites.
These are both well-known EFF positions that the organization has expressed in previous publications.
On the other two issues, the report recommends examining ccTLDs for those which don’t have to kowtow to local government speech regulations or publicly accessible Whois policies.
In each of the four areas of concern, the report suggests taking a look at .onion, while acknowledging that the pseudo-gTLD would be a poor choice if you actually want people to be able to easily access your web site.
While the opinions expressed in the report may not be surprising, the research that has gone into comparing the policies of 40-odd TLD registries covering hundreds of TLDs appears on the face of it to be solid and possibly the report’s biggest draw.
You can read it here (pdf).

China approves more Donuts, Afilias gTLDs

Donuts and Afilias have had two batches of new gTLDs approved for use in China.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology approved five Afilias TLDs and six Donuts TLDs last month. This means customers of Chinese registrars will now be able to legally use those names in China.
Afilias was approved for .info, .mobi and .pro, which were delegated following the 2000 and 2003 new gTLD application rounds and .kim and .red from the 2012 round.
Donuts simultaneously was cleared for .ltd, .group, .游戏 (“game”), .企业 (“business”), .娱乐 (“entertainment) and .商店 (“store”).
The approvals more than double the number of new gTLDs in Latin script to get the nod from MIIT, in what now appears to be a monthly occurrence.
In February, .ink and four Chinese-script TLDs passed the regulatory process, following .site and .shop in January and .vip, .club and .xyz in December.
MIIT approval means the chance of usage by Chinese registrants should go up, but it also ties these Western registries to relatively Draconian government policies when it comes to Chinese registrations.

ICANN reveals $500 million gTLD buyback program

ICANN is to spend its half-billion dollar auction war chest on a buyback program for failing new gTLDs, DI can reveal.
Inspired by the “Cash for Clunkers” program that provided stimulus during the economic downturn in the US a decade ago, the new program will see ICANN offer $1 million per gTLD to any registry whose heart simply isn’t in it any more.
The scheme will work rather like a stock buyback, ICANN explained in a 489-page document (PDF).
Registries opting to sell back their gTLDs will see their strings abruptly removed from the DNS root and their contracts torn up and burned on a great big bonfire.
Any domains registered in these gTLDs will stop resolving to parking pages immediately.
“We believe this program offers the most equitable distribution of auction funds and the fairest way to ensure new gTLD program participants see a return on their investment,” ICANN chair Steve Crocker said in a statement.
Portfolio registries including Donuts, Uniregistry, MMX, Radix and XYZ.com are already believed to have expressed an interest in the scheme, and were already forming a disorderly queue outside ICANN’s Los Angeles headquarters last night.
While Verisign also qualifies for the program, much of the funding will be provided by the $130 million it spent at the .web auction.
The company said it welcomed the deal and plans to sell .web back to ICANN as soon as possible. It added that it will cover the $129 million loss by fueling its data center generators with ten-dollar bills, rather than twenties, for the first three weeks of April.
But registrant groups were outraged by the proposal, which will see millions of domain names erased from the internet.
Dr General President Colonel Lucky Mfwamba (Esq), chair of the New gTLD Registrants Association, said he expects the bottom to fall out of the penis enlargement market overnight.
And in China, thousands of domain investors flocked to forums to complain that the randomly generated domains they bought at $0.20 each and hoped to sell to other investors for $0.30 each are suddenly worthless.

Donuts took down 11 domains for Hollywood last year

Donuts caused 11 domain names in its new gTLD portfolio to be taken down in the first 12 months of its deal with the US movie industry.
The company disclosed yesterday that the Motion Picture Association of America requested the suspension of 12 domains under their bilateral “Trusted Notifier” agreement, which came into effect last February.
The news follows the decisions by Public Interest Registry and the Domain Name Association not to pursue a “Copyright ADRP” process that would have made such Trusted Notifier systems unnecessary.
Of the 12 alleged piracy domains, seven were suspended by the sponsoring registrar, one was addressed by the hosting provider, and Donuts terminated three at the registry level.
For the remaining domain, “questions arose about the nexus between the site’s operators and the content that warranted further investigation”, Donuts said.
“In the end, after consultation with the registrar and the registrant, we elected against further action,” it said.
Trusted Notifier is supposed to address only clear-cut cases of copyright infringement, where domains are being using solely to commit mass piracy. Donuts said:

Of the eleven on which action was taken, each represented a clear violation of law—the key tenet of a referral. In some cases, sites simply were mirrors of other sites that were subject to US legal action. All were clearly and solely dedicated to pervasive illegal streaming of television and movie content. In a reflection of the further damage these types of sites can impart on Internet users, malware was detected on one of the sites.

Donuts also dismissed claims that Trusted Notifier mechanisms represent a slippery slope that will ultimately grant censorship powers to Big Content.
The company said “a mere handful of names have been impacted, and only those that clearly were devoted to illegal activity. And to Donuts’ knowledge, in no case did the registrant contest the suspension or seek reinstatement of the domain.”
It is of course impossible to verify these statements, because Donuts does not publish the names of the domains affected by the program.
Trusted Notifier, which is also in place at competing portfolio registry Radix, was this week criticized in an academic paper from professor Annemarie Bridy of the University of Idaho College of Law and Stanford University.
The paper, “Notice and Takedown in the Domain Name System: ICANN’s Ambivalent Drift into Online Content Regulation”, she argues that while Trusted Notifier may not by an ICANN policy, the organization has nevertheless “abetted the development and implementation of a potentially large-scale program of privately ordered online content regulation”.

Five more new gTLDs, one in English, get the nod from China

Top Level Design’s .ink has become the sixth new gTLD in the Latin alphabet to be approved for sale in China.
It was one of four new gTLDs given regulatory approval to begin operating properly in the country late last week. The others were all in Chinese script.
From Finnish-founded TLD Registry, .中文网 (“Chinese web site”) and .在线 (“Chinese online”) gained approval.
From local outfit Guangzhou Yuwei Information Technology Co, .集团 (“group”) and .我爱你 (“I love you”) were given the nod.
It’s the third batch of new gTLDs to get Chinese government approval since .vip, .club and .xyz in December. In January, .site and .shop joined their ranks.
Under China’s Draconian domain name regulations, only domains registered via local registries and registrars may be used.
Registries from outside the country have had to set up a local corporate presence and agree to China’s censorship policies in order to be compliant.