SpamHaus now publishing better TLD abuse data

SpamHaus has updated its “10 Most Abused Top Level Domains” list to provide a much more useful insight into abuse levels.
Rather than simply showing unexplained percentages of “badness” in each TLD, the spam-fighting organization’s daily report now exposes the hard numbers, in domain terms, underneath.
For example, on today’s list Famous Four Media’s .download is the most-abused TLD with 82% bad domains.
That percentage is based on SpamHaus categorizing 11,431 domains as abusive of the 13,945 .download domains that crossed its systems.
But the gTLD has 67,500 domains in its zone file, so the actual percentage of abusive domains could be as low as about 17%, much lower than SpamHaus’s 82%.
Whether you think the 82% metric is fair will depend on whether you think SpamHaus’s sample — about 20% of the full .download zone — is representative.
Some of the other TLDs on its list have even smaller sample sizes.
Minds + Machines’ .work is ranked #2 on the SpamHaus list with 73.3% badness, based on a SpamHaus-seen sample of 6,297 domains, something like 7% of the full .work zone.
Registries criticized SpamHaus for publishing misleading data when this list was first published in March, and I agreed with them.
Now that the group is publishing empirical data alongside its percentages, the conversation can now shift to something along the lines of:
“Is it okay that at least 17% of .download domains are abusive?”
To which the answer I believe is a clear: “Hell, no.”
The SpamHaus daily report can be found here.

Epic new gTLD fail? Gambling site named after new gTLD but doesn’t use it

Online gambling company bwin.party owns the domain name bwin.party but, bafflingly, hasn’t even turned it on.
The company runs PartyPoker and other betting sites and is in the business news today due to a takeover bid from rival 888.
Having just heard the story reported on the TV, I went to check out its web site — this was a significant company which had apparently rebranded to a new gTLD, and I hadn’t heard of it before.
But the domain name bwin.party doesn’t resolve, even though it’s an exact — exact, down to the lower case letters and the dot — match of the company name.
bwin.party actually uses bwinparty.com and bwin.com.
The domain is registered via Com Laude, so I assume it’s a defensive play.
.party is a new gTLD managed by Famous Four Media. It currently has over 134,000 names it its zone, growing by thousands of names per day, strongly suggesting it’s being sold for next to nothing at one or more registrars.

As .stream is won, ICANN’s auction list empties

.stream has become the latest new gTLD contention set to be settled prior to its ICANN auction, leaving ICANN’s auction schedule looking barren.
Famous Four Media beat Hughes Satellite Systems to the string, which was due to auction May 27.
The four strings scheduled for bidding April 29 — .living, .fun, .map and .search — were also recently settled.
All that remains on ICANN’s schedule is the controversial .game/.games contention set, which will employ a unique process designed for contention sets created by inconsistent singular/plural string confusion rulings.
The five .game applicants and one .games applicant (Donuts) are still due to hit the block May 20.
A couple dozen other gTLDs are still pending ICANN auction but do not have set dates due to various challenges and disputes.

Most new gTLDs use NameSentry after Famous Four signs with Architelos

Architelos yesterday announced that Famous Four Media has signed up to use its NameSentry security service across its portfolio of new gTLDs.
The company said that it now has 60% of launched new gTLDs on the platform, which gives registries a way to view potentially abusive domain names and automate remediation. That’s over 250 TLDs.
Famous Four only has five delegated gTLDs currently, but it has another 30 active applications. The bulk of NameSentry’s TLD base comes from early adopter Donuts, which has 157. Rightside, with its 33 new gTLDs, is also a customer.
Architelos said that .build, .ceo, .lat, .luxury, and .ooo have also recently signed up to the service.

Second last-resort gTLD auction raises $14.3m

ICANN has raised $14.3 million auctioning off three new gTLDs — .buy, .tech and .vip.
It was the second batch of “last resort” auctions, managed by ICANN and Power Auctions, in which the winning bids are placed in a special ICANN fund.
Notably, while Google participated in all three auctions, it failed to win any, setting a reassuring precedent for any smaller applicants that are set to face the deep-pocketed giant in future auctions.
.tech was the biggest-seller, fetching $6,760,000 after nine rounds of bidding.
The winner was Dot Tech LLC, which beat Google, Minds + Machines, Donuts, NU DOT CO, and Uniregistry.
.buy went to Amazon for $4,588,888, beating Google, Donuts and Famous Four Media. The bidding lasted seven rounds.
Finally, .vip sold to Minds + Machines for $3,000,888 after Google, Donuts, I-Registry and VIP Registry dropped out.
The prices are in the same ball-park as we’ve inferred from previous, private auctions managed by Applicant Auction (a company affiliated with Power Auctions).
That’s notable because the first last resort auction, for .信息, fetched just $600,000 when it sold to Amazon back in June.
As far as we can tell, last-resort auctions do not necessarily keep prices low, even though the losing bidders in this week’s auctions will have walked away empty-handed.
In private auctions, losers leave holding a share of the winner’s bid.
This week, most of the $14.3 million raised will go into a special ICANN fund.
Akram Atallah, president of ICANN’s Global Domains Division said in a statement:

The proceeds from these Auctions will be separated and reserved until the Board determines a plan for the appropriate use of the funds through consultation with the community. We continue to encourage parties to reach agreements amongst themselves to resolve contention.

The ICANN community has been chatting about possible uses for auction funds for years.
Ideas such as subsidizing new gTLD applicants from poorer nations in future rounds and investing in internet infrastructure in the developing world have been floated.

Famous Four wins .party gTLD contest

Famous Four Media has won the .party new gTLD contention set after coming to a private agreement with the only other applicant for the string, Oriental Trading Company.
Financial details of the arrangement were not disclosed.
Oriental Trading is a supplier of party goods that intended to run the gTLD as closed, single-registrant namespace.
But Famous Four expects the open .party registry to be used for parties in the social gathering and political senses of the word.
It now has 13 uncontested applications and 44 more outstanding.
In related news, Minds + Machines today announced that it intends to take at least three of its applications — .garden, .property, and .yoga — at a private auction April 22 managed by Applicant Auction.