Even without Al Gore, don’t count Minds + Machines out of the .eco race

Minds + Machines may have lost the support of Al Gore for its .eco bid, but it should not necessarily be dismissed as a contender for the .eco top-level domain.
The Guardian today reported that the former US vice president’s Alliance for Climate Protection campaign has dropped its support for the M+M-backed Dot Eco LLC .eco bid.
It noted that the other public .eco applicant, Big Room, is backed by former Russian premier Mikhail Gorbachev, and it made some tenuous Cold War allusions accordingly:

The global power struggle, with echoes of the cold war, is over control of the new .eco internet domain which could be up and running by 2013.
…
But the Guardian has learned that Gore’s group has quietly dropped its plan, leaving the door open for Big Room to act as the registry for the new domain.

The reality is of course not quite as exciting, at least not to a general readership. Big Room in fact quickly distanced itself from the hyperbole in a blog post today.
Gore’s group did in fact stop supporting M+M’s .eco bid earlier this year. The site previously dedicated to the project, SupportDotEco.com, went dark for a while before being redirected to M+M in June.
It seems that the once-public M+M .eco project may now be a regular will-they-won’t-they bid.
So while The Guardian fairly reported that Gore is no longer in the running for .eco, that does not necessarily mean Big Room is a shoo-in either.
As I’ve previously commented, publicly announcing a gTLD application means absolutely nothing.
Big Room may secure .eco. M+M may. Any one of a number of potential candidates could win the contract.
Big Room, which has secured support from many organizations in the environmental community, intends to file its bid with as a self-designated “community” application.
Such a designation can enable applicants for contested gTLDs to avoid an auction, if they can score 14 out of a possible 16 points against the very strict criteria set by ICANN.
Big Room has spent a great deal of time building up support and setting proposed policies governing how .eco will be managed. It has some potentially innovative ideas about how to promote corporate responsibility using domain names.
“I hope people don’t try to hold the community hostage about this, I think our community been very transparent about their intentions,” said Big Room co-founder Trevor Bowden. “If this thing goes to auction, this community has no voice whatever. If they have no voice then the potential of .eco will be diminished.”
Minds + Machines, on the other hand, is on-record saying that it does not believe that .eco could possibly qualify as a community bid.
In July, CEO Antony Van Couvering published a piece on CircleID estimating that, with just nine points out of the 14 required to pass a Community Priority Evaluation, it would not.
It seems that “community” backing, even from an environmentalist as high-profile as Al Gore, may not be part of the M+M .eco application strategy.
With M+M parent Top Level Domain Holdings funded sufficiently to apply for gTLDs into double figures, I would not be at all surprised if .eco is among its target strings.
UPDATE (30/9/11): TLDH has confirmed that Dot Eco LLC will apply for .eco. The characteristically blunt press release also has a few choice words about gTLD applications backed by “celebrities”.

Overstock.com: a registry’s best friend

O.co, the company formerly known as Overstock.com, has bought the domain name o.info directly from registry manager Afilias for an undisclosed amount.
It’s the first single-character sale Afilias has announced since ICANN gave it the go-ahead to release one and two-letter names from reserved status in April 2010.
What makes it particularly interesting is that O.co has agreed to build a separate web site at o.info, using the domain for the purpose suggested by the TLD string.
The idea of allocating a valuable name to a big brand in exchange for a use commitment – the “founders program” model – is of course now a standard part of a TLD registry’s marketing toolkit.
It’s more unusual too see the same tactics used to promote a decade-old gTLD.
O.co CEO Patrick Byrne said in a statement:

We will use O.info as a website destination to consolidate useful consumer information. The .info domain is the logical destination for visitors to find product information, user manuals, buying guides, manufacturer and brand reviews, video demonstrations and recall notices.

The price has not been disclosed. It could easily be in the six-figures, extrapolating from the $350,000 the company dropped on o.co last year.
On the other hand, it could be lower.
I feel certain that .CO Internet would have handed over o.co for free if it had known how much great publicity it would bring; it’s possible Afilias may have sacrificed part of its windfall in the hope of reaping some marketing benefits too.
It has 25 more letters to sell, after all.

ICANN revolving door: invisible whiteboard lady jumps to Afilias

In yet another shocking example of the unregulated “revolving door” between ICANN and powerful companies in the domain name industry, a blurry lady using an invisible whiteboard appears to be working for ICANN and Afilias at the same time.
Proof can be found in these screenshots, taken today from afilias.info and newgtlds.icann.org.
The photographs appear to have been digitally altered to disguise the mystery double-agent’s appearance, but it’s clearly the same woman.
ICANN:

Afilias:

Call your lawyers! Write to the Department of Commerce! We have ourselves a scandal!
UPDATE: She works for CentralNic too!!!

Afilias links up with Right Of The Dot

Afilias and Right Of The Dot have announced a partnership to jointly assist new top-level domain applicants.
Right Of The Dot is Monte Cahn and Mike Berkens’ latest venture, a consulting firm focused primarily on helping new registries price their “premium” second-level domains.
Afilias runs the .info registry and provides registry services for many other TLDs, including .org.
The Afilias deal is the first major partnership Right Of The Dot has announced.

RegistryPro gets new CEO

RegistryPro, the .pro top-level domain manager, has appointed Karim Jiwani as its new CEO.
Jiwani seems to have been headhunted from Afilias, where he was senior director of business development. He has over 12 years experience in the business, according to a press release.
The .pro extension is one of those TLDs it’s easy to forget exists, but its recent press releases make it appear like a bit of a dark horse, on an unprecedented growth spurt.
According to its monthly ICANN registry reports, RegistryPro saw a staggering 142% growth in registrations between January 2010 and January 2011, recently passing through the 100,000 domains mark for the first time in its seven-year history.
However, on closer inspection, this uptick was largely due to a bulk registration of over 43,000 domains made via Hostway, RegistryPro’s parent company, last June.
The growth spurt appears to be a direct result of RegistryPro’s reservation of all remaining one, two and three-letter .pro domains, which it is selling off as premium names.
All possible combinations at three characters and under works out to roughly 43,000 domains.
With the new leadership, Hostway also seems to be positioning RegistryPro as a contender in market for providing back-end registry services for new gTLDs. Its CEO, Lucas Roh, said:

Our registry is poised to grow significantly in the coming years, as the awareness continues to grow for .PRO domains and our backend registry services for other TLD’s. We wanted someone that could expertly grow the registry and take it to the next level. Karim has proven experience in the domain industry and is well respected in the community. With his knowledge and passion, he is well equipped to take the company to the next level in providing registry services to registrars and other TLD’s.”

Afilias seems to be a breeding ground for registry CEOs lately. In February, the Public Interest Registry grabbed vice president Brian Cute to head up its .org business.

Rules for registry-registrar mergers proposed

ICANN has revealed how it intends to enable incumbent domain name registries to also become registrars, ending a decade of cross-ownership restrictions.
The industry shake-up could allow companies such as VeriSign, Neustar and Afilias to become accredited registrars in their own top-level domains later this year.
Hypothetically, before long you could be able to go directly to VeriSign for your .com domains, to Afilias and Public Interest Registry for .info and .org, or to Neustar for .biz.
The changes could potentially also kick off a wave of consolidation in the industry, with registry operators buying previously independent registrars.
ICANN’s proposed process is straightforward, requiring just a few amendments to the registries’ existing contracts, but it could also call for governmental competition reviews.
Registries will have to agree to abide by a Code of Conduct substantially the same as the one binding on wannabe registries applying later this year under the new gTLD program.
The Code is designed to stop registries giving their affiliated registrars unfair advantages, such as lower prices or preferential access to data, over other ICANN-accredited registrars.
Registries would also have the option to adopt the registry contract from the new gTLD Applicant Guidebook wholesale, although I expect in practice this is unlikely to happen.
ICANN would be able to refer vertical integration requests to national competition authorities if it determined that cross-ownership could cause “significant competition issues”.
VeriSign would be the most likely to be hit by such a review, but it’s also the only registry that does not appear to have been particularly hamstrung over the years by the forced separation rules.
The proposed process for registries to request the contract changes has been posted to the ICANN web site and is now open for public comment.

Over 1 million .mobi domains registered

The .mobi top-level domain now reportedly has more than a million registered domains.
HosterStats, which tracks the size of TLD zone files, reported today that .mobi currently has 1,002,232 domains.
This would make it only the sixth gTLD to break into seven figures, the third if you only include gTLDs created by ICANN.
The .mobi domain was approved in 2005 and launched by the registry, mTLD, in 2006. The company was acquired by Afilias in February 2010.
It would be far too pedantic to point out that Afilias still has over 5,000 .mobi domains reserved for auction, which would bring the total below a million, so I won’t.
In other news, .CO Internet has had to deny that the .co namespace has also broken through one million registrations, following reports to the contrary.
Barring a sudden spike in demand for .co domains, I’d guess that’s unlikely to happen until the second half of the year.

Registries could become registrars by summer

The big incumbent top-level domain registry operators could apply to also become registrars as early as June this year, according to a just-passed ICANN resolution.
Last November, ICANN decided to dump its longstanding policy of generally not allowing TLD registries to also own and operate registrars.
While the rule was designed primarily for TLDs won under the new gTLD program, it will also retroactively apply to operators of existing gTLDs.
Neustar (.biz) has already publicly stated its intention to vertically integrate, and is keen for ICANN to lift its current 15% registrar ownership restriction before the new gTLD program kicks off.
According to a resolution passed by ICANN’s board of directors on Thursday, Neustar is not the only registry operator to make such a request.
The board last week…

RESOLVED (2011.04.21.13), the Board directs the CEO to develop a process for existing gTLD registry operators to transition to the new form of Registry Agreement or to request amendments to their registry agreements to remove the cross-ownership restrictions. This process would be available to existing operators upon Board approval of the new gTLD Program.

ICANN currently plans to approve the gTLD program June 20 at its meeting in Singapore.
That gives CEO Rod Beckstrom and his team just two months to come up with a process for allowing the likes of VeriSign, Neustar and Afilias to either amend their contracts or move to the standard contract outlined in the new TLD program’s Applicant Guidebook.
I see a potential source of tension here.
The registry agreement template in the Guidebook has been described by some as an “adhesion contract” due to its heavy balance in ICANN’s favor.
Existing registries will very likely prefer to simply delete the cross-ownership restrictions in their current contracts and incorporate the new proposed Code of Conduct rules.
On the other hand, some have suggested that registries should be obliged to adopt the new Guidebook agreement in full, rather than amend their existing deals, in the interests of equitable treatment.
Registrars still signed up to ICANN’s 2001 Registrar Accreditation Agreement only get the option to upgrade wholesale to the 2009 agreement, it has been noted.

Afilias signs .bayern deal

PunktBayern has contracted with Afilias to provide its registry back-end and DNS resolution for the .bayern top-level domain, should its application succeed.
The applicant, also known as dotBayern, is one of at least two bidders for the TLD, which is the German word for Bavaria. The other, Bayern Connect, is working with Minds + Machines.
PunktBayern is led by managing director Lothar Kunz and is affiliated with United Domains and Dirk Krischenowski of the .berlin initiative.
As with all geographic TLDs, under ICANN rules the winning bidder will be required to show a letter of support or non-objection from the relevant government.

Afilias lawyers up for TLD applicants

Registry services provider Afilias has expanded its relationship with the law firm Crowell & Moring to support prospective new top-level domain applicants.
The two companies said this morning that they have entered into a memorandum of understanding under which Crowell will provide legal and business consultation to Afilias’s new TLD clients.
Afilias, along with VeriSign and Neustar, is expected to one of the major beneficiaries of the introduction of new TLDs, due to its experience managing the technical back-end for several existing TLDs.
Here at the .nxt conference in San Francisco this week, one oft-repeated message is that applicants can smooth their TLD application with ICANN by signing up an incumbent to provide the back-end.
Crowell is one of a small number of law firms with a specialist domain name consulting arm. It is affiliated with the IP Clearinghouse, which wants to play a key role in new TLD launches.