Dirty tricks claimed in .music fight

A .music hopeful has tried to add over 300 pages of documents to its new gTLD application, apparently in an effort to leapfrog competitors, and its rival community applicant is far from happy.
DotMusic Limited submitted the change request (pdf) in order to add some Public Interest Commitments to its .music bid.
Rival .Music LLC now claims that it is “outrageous and unfair for ICANN to allow this applicant to abuse the PIC process in this way” and has filed a Request for Reconsideration.
Of the eight .music bidders, these two companies are the only formal “community” applicants.
Under the rules of the new gTLD program, community applicants can avoid having to fight an auction if they win a strict Community Priority Evaluation.
To avoid confusion: DotMusic Limited is the applicant led by Constantine Roussos; .Music LLC (aka Far Further) is led by John Styll.
Far Further fought a CPE last year but lost in spectacular fashion, scoring just 3 out of the 16 available points, a long way shy of the 14 points required for a pass.
The Roussos applicant has now submitted eight new proposed Public Interest Commitments — things it promises to do to protect registrants and rights holders — as an addendum to its application.
That’s pretty standard stuff.
What’s unusual are the 308 pages of additional “clarifications” that seek to explain how the proposed PICs relate to its original application.
They’re not changes to the application, technically speaking, but they are a way to get hundreds of extra pages of content into the public record ahead of DotMusic’s own CPE.
According to Styll, this latest gambit is nothing more than an attempt to score more CPE points. He told ICANN:

the 308 additional pages of “clarifications” contain wording that clearly utilizes learnings from previous CPE results (including our own), in violation of ICANN policy

Complicating matters, it turns out that Far Further tried to make some substantive changes to its application back in May 2014, but had the request declined by ICANN “in order to be fair to other applicants”.
That was prior to ICANN’s publication of guidelines governing change request, Styll says.
Because of this alleged discrepancy between how the two competing change requests were handled, Far Further wants a second crack at the CPE for its own application.
Its RfR (pdf) asks ICANN to reverse its May 2014 decision, allow its change request, throw out the original results of its CPE and refer the CPE to a new Economist Intelligence Unit panel for a full reevaluation.
Failing that, it wants ICANN to throw out the 308 pages of “clarifications” submitted by DotMusic.
Both applicants have the written support of dozens of music industry groups.
There’s some crossover, but Far Further’s backers appear to me to be a little more “establishment” than DotMusic’s, including the likes of the Recording Industry Association of America.
The other, non-community applicants are Amazon, Google, Donuts, Radix, Famous Four Media and Entertainment Names.
With Google and Amazon in the mix, if it goes to auction, .music could easily be an eight-figure auction along the lines of .app, which sold to Google for $25 million.
In my view, winning a CPE is the only way DotMusic has a chance of getting its hands on .music, short of combining with another applicant.

Warren Buffett party firm beats Google to .fun

An 80-year-old seller of party supplies, owned by Warren Buffett, has won the rights to the new gTLD .fun, after the other two applicants withdrew.
Oriental Trading Company plans to operate the gTLD as a “restricted” space where only the company and its partners can register, according to its application.
Quite why this isn’t on hold as a “closed generic”, I don’t know.
The application states .fun will be:

an authoritative Internet space for OTC, its affiliates and partners where OTC can develop an unlimited number of domain names dedicated and relevant to “fun” and to provide Internet users with content, services and products they need, while being assured of brand authenticity.

The other two applicants were Google and Dot Strategy. Both applications have now been withdrawn.
OTC sells balloons, party hats, banners and such. It was acquired by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway in 2012 after filing for bankruptcy protection.
In other withdrawal news, games maker Konami today became the latest company to dump its plans for a dot-brand, in this case .konami.

ICANN in “fact-finding” mode over potential .sucks breach

ICANN is playing its cards close to its chest when pressed on what it thinks Vox Populi may have done wrong with its .sucks launch pricing and policies.
The organization told DI in a statement that it is currently “fact-finding”, and will not speculate on what parts of the Registry Agreement may have been breached.
ICANN on Thursday reported Vox Pop to the US and Canadian trade regulators, asking them to judge whether the registry’s $2,000 sunrise fee broke any laws.
Its Intellectual Property Constituency reckons the launch, which also places thousands of trademarks on permanent, high-priced “Sunrise Premium” list amounts to nothing more than a “shakedown” of brand owners.
Vox Pop CEO John Berard told DI last week that the referral to the US Federal Trade Commission, despite that fact that the company and its owners are Canadian, amounted to “appeasement” of the IPC.
In response, ICANN told DI in a statement:

The registry is offering domain name registrations to registrants located in jurisdictions around the world. It¹s possible that a registry’s activities could violate the law in the registry’s own jurisdiction; it is also possible that a registry’s activities could violate the law in the jurisdiction of a registrar or registrant where the registry offers domain name registrations. In this case, the IPC letter was signed by an attorney based in New York City, and ICANN thought it appropriate to ask both U.S. and Canadian authorities to consider the IPC allegations.

ICANN seems to be saying on the one hand that registries are beholden to the laws of wherever their registrants are based and on the other hand that the jurisdiction of the IPC’s current president, Greg Shatan, somehow has a bearing on what laws gTLD registries are obliged to obey.
I await correction from more knowledgeable readers, but I don’t think either of those statements is accurate.
If the latter is true, then perhaps the IPC should in future elect its leaders from only the countries with the most trademark-friendly regimes.
In ICANN’s letters to the FTC and IPC, the organization said it was “evaluating other remedies”. From the context, it seems that ICANN is thinking it could initiate some kind of compliance action against .sucks regardless of the what governmental regulators say.
Asked to explain this, ICANN told DI:

We¹re currently doing some fact-finding and analysis to assess whether there has been any breach by the registry of its obligations, and, based on the results of that analysis, we will try to determine what remedies, if any, may be available. Obviously, it will depend on all the facts and circumstances. Beyond that, since we haven¹t finished that evaluation process it would be inappropriate to speculate about possible remedies.

That’s not saying much, but it leaves the door open for ICANN Compliance to do something even if the FTC and Office of Consumer Affairs deem that no laws have been broken.
One possible “breach” that has been floated relates to the differential pricing created by the Sunrise Premium list. However, my take on this is that, under the new gTLD contracts, it’s not massively different to other kinds of premium pricing program.
Differential pricing protections only apply to renewal fees. If the registrant is told at the point of sale that their renewal fees will be high, that enables registries to put different fees on different domains.
There have also been theories put forward about ICANN’s motivation for referring .sucks to regulators.
The idea that ICANN can defer to the FTC and others on legal matter is not entirely new. In cases where registries intend to merge, ICANN is allowed under its contracts to refer the deals to regulators before approving them.
But this is the first time ICANN has referred new gTLD pricing to competition authorities.
Is it a case of ICANN ass-covering?
ICANN is taking unique fees worth up to $1 million extra from Vox Populi and, as I wrote two weeks ago, the optics of this are bad for ICANN, which could look like it is profiteering from .sucks.
ICANN has explained that the extra fees related to entities that were owned by Vox Pop parent Momentous, the Canadian registrar that had many subsidiaries go out of business owing ICANN a tonne of cash.
By punting the IPC’s complaint to regulators, ICANN could deflect criticism that it is not doing enough to protect rights holders and registrants while avoiding having to make a tricky decision itself.
Regardless, the FTC referral and the fact that ICANN is charging Vox Pop special fees sends a strong message that ICANN does not trust the registry one bit.

Three registrars suspended by ICANN

ICANN has enforced the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement against three more registrars, suspending their ability to sell gTLD domain names.
Canadian registrar Namevault, along with Signdomains and Times Internet of India, cannot sell domains or accept inbound transfers from April 21 to July 20, according to ICANN compliance notices.
Namevault’s suspension came after it got its third compliance strike in a year, this time relating to its failure to provide records about domain stronglikebull.com, which was at Namevault from 2008 but is now at Go Daddy.
Times Internet has failed to implement a Whois service, despite being first warned about its failings last September, ICANN says.
Signdomains was originally issued a breach notice due to its failure to pay over $3,000 in accreditation fees. It also does not display pricing information on its web site, according to ICANN. Neither breach has been rectified.
The three registrars have not many more than 10,000 names under management between them, according to latest registry reports.
They’re the first three registrars to have their RAAs suspended in 2015. Three other registrars have been terminated since the beginning of the year.

AIDS.sucks at $1.5 million and other .sucks premium weirdness

The new .sucks gTLD has some interesting pricing for its reserved premium names. Notably aids.sucks, which currently carries a $1.5 million first-year fee at one registrar.
As far as I can tell, 101domain is the only registrar that is currently publishing its prices for .sucks premium names.
I had a bit of a play around with its web site, to see if I could discover which strings the registry has flagged as premium and which appear to be blocked by the registry.
aids.sucks was the most expensive domain I found, by some margin, at $1.5 million.
The presumably puts it within the pocketbook of, say, a pharmaceuticals company, but probably not a support group.
101domain confirmed that the published price was not an error and is based on the registry’s pricing, but said it was considering lowering it.
That price, and all the other prices cited in this article, are retail prices that would include the registrar’s mark-up.
The next-highest price I could find was $450,000 for sex.sucks.
The string “sex” is usually highly priced on registries’ reserved lists. It’s a slightly different story for .sucks, however, because registry policy states that all pornography is banned. The registrant would have to find a different use.
porn.sucks does not appear to carry a premium fee.
I could not find any other physical diseases carrying premium fees, and it seems that cancer.sucks is not available to register.
However, anxiety.sucks is $4,500, depression.sucks is $12,000, and suicide.sucks is available for $16,500.
It’s worth noting at this point that .sucks is not alone in putting premium prices on domains such as these — suicide.club and aids.club both carry $5,500 fees, for example.
Sports domains baseball.sucks, football.sucks, soccer.sucks, basketball.sucks and hockey.sucks all carry $75,000 fees.
On the vices: poker.sucks is also $75,000, gambling.sucks is $42,000, beer.sucks is $27,000 and alcohol.sucks is $4,500. Other strings, such as casino.sucks, do not appear to be premiums.
This patchy premium coverage goes for entertainment too. While television.sucks ($88,500) and music.sucks ($15,000) are premiums, internet.sucks and radio.sucks are not.
In relationships, gay.sucks is listed at $27,000 (lesbian.sucks does not appear to be premium) and dating.sucks is $15,000.
I tried a few common racial slurs and found them to be unavailable. Vox Pop has a policy against cyber-bullying, which may account for that.
racism.sucks costs $52,500, however.
Religious terms blocked?
Some religious terms are considered premium, while others are not available to register.
.sucks is currently in its sunrise period, so unavailable names have presumably been blocked by the registry for some reason.
I found that christianity.sucks carries a premium price tag of $75,000, while church.sucks is $30,000 and christian.sucks is $34,500.
catholic.sucks is not available, nor are jesus.sucks, christ.sucks and moses.sucks.
But catholicism.sucks, protestant.sucks, methodist.sucks baptist.sucks, can be bought for the regular reg fee.
hindu.sucks, hinduism.sucks, buddhist.sucks and buddhism.sucks are all for sale at the usual price.
judaism.sucks and jews.sucks are available at the regular reg fee, but jew.sucks is not available.
islam.sucks, muslim.sucks and muslims.sucks are not currently available. Nor is muhammed.sucks. But mohammed.sucks and muhammad.sucks are available.
I wonder what we can fairly infer from these apparent discrepancies.
Registry defensives?
As you might expect, the name of the registry is reserved — that happens in pretty much ever gTLD.
It remains to be seen whether Vox Pop will eat its own dog food and allow third-party criticism on its site.
It turns out johnberard.sucks (Vox Populi CEO) is not available. Neither are the names of Rob Hall, CEO of Vox Pop parent Momentous, and Uniregistry CEO Frank Schilling, who is involved in the TLD is some currently undisclosed capacity.
rob.sucks, john.sucks and frank.sucks are all not available to register.
As controls, I checked out other common male first names and the full names of other major registry/registrar CEOs and found them all available.
It will be interesting to see if any of these names are ever developed into criticism web sites by their owners.

That mystery $1 million .sucks fee explained, and it’s probably not what you thought

Vox Populi has agreed to pay ICANN up to $1 million in extra fees in order to pay off the debts of affiliated deadbeat registrars, I can reveal.
The formerly mysterious fees, which comprise a $100,000 start-up payment and $1 for each of its first 900,000 .sucks transactions, were discovered by ICANN’s Intellectual Property Constituency, as I reported Friday.
I speculated that the payments may have related to ICANN padding out its legal defense fund, rather like it did with .xxx a few years ago, but it turns out that guess was dead wrong.
ICANN has told DI:

Some affiliates of Momentous, the majority owners of Vox Populi Registry, had previously defaulted on substantial payments to ICANN. Given this previous experience, ICANN negotiated special contract provisions in the Vox Populi Registry Agreement to provide additional financial assurances. Those provisions were added solely for that reason and were not related to the nature of this specific TLD.

I gather that the affiliated companies in question were shell registrars that went out of business a while ago.
Momentous company Pool.com used large numbers of empty registrar accreditations in order to drop-catch expiring domain names. Fairly standard practice in the drop-catching game.
But many of these entities were shut down, owing ICANN a whole bunch of cash in unpaid registrar fees.
ICANN has now chosen to recoup the money by extracting it from the .sucks registry, which according to its new gTLD application is majority-owned by Momentous.
The .sucks contract calls the $100,000 a “registry access fee” and the $1-a-name charge as “registry administration fee”.
For avoidance of doubt, this post is not an April Fool joke.

Will Vox Populi eat its own .sucks dog food?

Vox Populi has yet to decide whether it will put its mouth where its money is and open up its own brand for the .sucks treatment.
In a radio interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Day 6 show broadcast on Friday, registry CEO John Berard was asked whether the company would register voxpopuli.sucks and allow it to be used as a third-party criticism site.
Vox Populi is positioning .sucks as a space where big brands and others register names in order to solicit useful commentary, criticism and conversation from their customers.
So the correct answer to the question would have been: “Yes, of course we will do that.”
But Berard was more ambiguous in his response:

HOST: What will you do with the voxpopuli.sucks web site? Will you put it up or will you hold it?
BERARD: My instinct would be to put it up.
HOST: But there’s a possibility that you won’t?
BERARD: It’s a business decision we’ll have to make and I think it’s probably the smarter business decision to put it up.

In my view, the company would be mad to sit on voxpopuli.sucks and related names.
By eating its own dog food, it would send the message that it actually believes its own marketing line.
I’m frankly surprised that Vox Pop has not already enthusiastically confirmed it will open itself up to the same kind of treatment as its sunrise period customers.
The full 15-minute CBC piece, which includes four minutes of yours truly busting his radio cherry and five of domain investor Rick Schwartz bitching about how “corrupt” ICANN is, can be streamed here.
The .sucks sunrise period begins today, with a controversial recommended retail price of $2,500 per year.

Chehade tries to explain domain “hogging” comments

ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade has distanced himself from comments in which he seemed to equate domain investing with “cybersquatting”.
In January, Chehade said in a Huffington Post interview that new gTLDs would help prevent domain “hogging”, which was widely interpreted as his taking a dim view of domaining.

When asked about his remarks last month, he did not backtrack.
Now he has backtracked, responding to an angry letter from the Internet Commerce Association, which represents many of the largest domainers.
In March 24 letter (pdf) published over the weekend, Chehade said that he interpreted the HuffPo interviewer’s question to refer to the practice of registries holding back premium domains, rather than secondary market activity:

I regret that the ICA interpreted some of my comments in the interview as expressing a “disdainful view” of domain investing. As you might have gathered from the reporter’s questions, some people have asked whether the new gTLD program might have created an opportunity for “land grabb[ing]” by industry insiders. It was not my impression that the question being asked referred to established practices in the secondary market; rather, I believe the reporter was inquiring about some of the very practices by registries you cited in your letter. My response — that alternatives are available in different gTLDs — was intended to try to allay the concern that the program was creating artificial scarcity of domains, not to criticize participants in the marketplace.

Was this a fair interpretation of the interviewer’s question? Is this just a misunderstanding?
Watch the two-minute video above to make up your own mind.
Addressing the ICA’s concerns that he had equated domain investing with cyberquatting, Chehade wrote:

We are in complete agreement that there is a very important legal distinction between registering generically-termed domain names and cybersquatting.

“Halt perverted .sucks shakedown now!” demands IPC

Intellectual property interests have asked ICANN to put an immediate stop to the roll-out of the .sucks new gTLD.
A letter to Global Domains Division president Akram Atallah, sent by the Intellectual Property Constituency this evening and seen by DI, calls the registry’s plans, which include an “exorbitant” $2,500 sunrise fee, a “shakedown scheme”.
It’s also emerged that Vox Populi, the .sucks registry, has agreed to pay ICANN up to a million dollars in mysterious fees that apply to no other new gTLD registry.
The IPC letter states.

the Intellectual Property Constituency is formally asking ICANN to halt the rollout of the .SUCKS new gTLD operated by Vox Populi Registry Inc. (“Vox Populi”), so that the community can examine the validity of Vox Populi’s recently announced plans to: (1) to categorize TMCH-registered marks as “premium names,” (2) charge exorbitant sums to brand owners who seek to secure a registration in .SUCKS, and (3) conspire with an (alleged) third party to “subsidize” a complaint site should brand owners fail to cooperate in Vox Populi’s shakedown scheme.

Vox Populi intends to take .sucks to sunrise on Monday, so the IPC wants ICANN to take immediate action.
The high price of registration, the IPC believes, will discourage trademark owners from using the sunrise period to defensively register their marks.
Meanwhile, the registry’s plan to make the domains available for $10 under a “Consumer Advocate Subsidy”, will encourage cybersquatting, the IPC says.

by discouraging trademark owners from using a key RPM, we believe that the registry operator’s actions in establishing this predatory scheme are complicit in, and encourage bad faith registrations by third parties at the second level of the .SUCKS gTLD, and thus drastically increase the likelihood of trademark infringement, all for commercial gain

The letter goes on to say that Vox Populi may be in violation of its registry contract and the Post-Delegation Dispute Resolution Policy, which was created to prevent registries turning a blind eye to mass cybersquatting.
There’s also a vague threat of legal action for contributory trademark infringement.
The IPC has particular beef with the registry’s Sunrise Premium program. This is a list of strings — mostly trademarks — that have been defensively registered in earlier sunrise periods.
Sunrise Premium names will always cost $2,500, even after sunrise, when registered by the trademark owner.
The IPC says:

Vox Populi is targeting and punishing brand owners who have availed themselves of the RPMs or shown that they are susceptible to purchasing defensive registrations… This will have a chilling effect on TMCH registrations and consequently discredit all of the New gTLD Program RPMs in the eyes of brand owners, whose buy-in and adoption of new gTLDs is widely acknowledged to be critical to the success of the new gTLD program.

Finally, and perhaps more disturbingly, the IPC has discovered that the .sucks registry agreement calls for Vox Populi to pay ICANN up to a million dollars in extra fees.
As well as the usual $25,000-a-year fee and $0.25 per-transaction fee, .sucks has already paid ICANN a $100,000 “registry access fee” and has promised to pay a $1 “registry administration fee” per transaction on its first 900,000 domains.
Its contract states:

Registry Operator shall also pay ICANN (i) a one-time fixed registry access fee of US$100,000 as of the Effective Date of this Agreement, and (ii) a registry administration fee of US$1.00 for each of the first 900,000 Transactions. For the avoidance of doubt, the registry administration fee shall not be subject to the limitations of the Transaction Threshold.

This makes ICANN look absolutely terrible.
What the hell is a “registry access fee”? What’s a “registry administration fee”?
One guess would be that it’s ICANN stocking up its legal defense fund, suspecting the kerfuffle .sucks is going to cause.
But by taking the Vox Pop shilling, ICANN has opened itself up to accusations that it’s complicit in the “shakedown”.
If it does not block .sucks (which was probably the most likely outcome even without mysterious fees) the IPC and other .sucks critics will be able to point to the $1 million as a “bribe”.
The behavior is not without precedent, however.
There’s a reason ICM Registry pays ICANN a $2 fee for every .xxx registration, rather than the much lower fees charged to other gTLD registries.
Read the IPC letter here.

Governments go on a kill-crazy rampage with new two-letter domain veto

ICANN has confirmed to new gTLD registries that governments now get to unilaterally block two-letter domains that match their home ccTLDs.
The organization has essentially given nations a veto — already enthusiastically exercised — over domains including il.army, it.pizza and fr.domains.
I’m not making this up. The Italian government has banned anyone from registering it.pizza.
Governments have already started invoking their new-found right, with dozens of domains already heading to the block-list.
The veto was revealed in a letter from Akram Atallah, president of ICANN’s Global Domains Division, to the Registries Stakeholder Group yesterday.
It has not been published yet, but I’ve had its contents confirmed by a few registries and I understand the RySG mailing list is buzzing about it today.
In it, Atallah says that two-letter strings that do not receive objections from the government with the matching ccTLD will be released within seven to 10 days of comment periods closing.
However, strings that do receive objections will remain blocked.

For labels that receive objections from relevant governments, the labels will remain reserved. Should the registry operator and the objecting government reach an agreement regarding the release of the label, the registry operator shall notify ICANN that it has reached agreement, and ICANN will approve the release request and issue an authorization. The label will no longer be a reserved name.
…
until there is Consensus Policy or a Board Resolution on this matter, ICANN can only follow the process outlined above. ICANN encourages further community discussions to resolve this matter, and until then, negotiation between the objector and the registry operator as a means to release this class of labels from the reserved names list.

New gTLD registries believe, as they explained in a recent letter (pdf), that neither ccTLD operators nor their governments own these two-character strings. They believe ICANN is creating new rights.
So far, two-character domains have been banned by default in all new gTLDs. It was kind of a placeholder policy in order to get the new gTLD program launched a few years ago.
ICANN did enable the release of letter-number, number-letter and number-number strings in December, but made letter-letter combinations subject to government comments.
Following a GAC outcry last month, the comment periods were extended.
All comments were to be “fully considered”, but it wasn’t clear what that meant until the RySG asked and Atallah replied yesterday.
Some governments are already using the comment period to exercise their new veto.
The European Commission, for example, has objected to eu.credit, eu.creditcard, eu.auction, eu.casino, eu.bingo and eu.law.
The basis for the EU objections is in most of the cases: “The new TLD at hand corresponds to a regulated market in many EU countries. Its release might generate confusion and possible abuses at the end users level.”
It’s a wonder that the EU doesn’t seem to care about those strings in its own .eu ccTLD, where they’re all registered by people that I suspect may lack credentials.
Does credit.eu look to you like the registrant is a credentialed member of a regulated financial services industry? If he was, he may be able to afford a better web site.
The Commission also objects to eu.community, because:

the terms “EU Community” or “European Community” are widely used

That is true, which makes me wonder why the EU is allowing community.eu to languish parked at Sedo. You’d have to ask the Commission.
Israel, meanwhile, objects to il.casino, il.bingo, il.law, il.chat, il.bible, il.country, il.airforce, il.navy and il.army
The Vietnamese ccTLD registry has objected to several vn. domains, but it’s not clear to me whether it has veto authority.
Italy has objected to it.pizza, it.bingo and it.casino. Really, Italy? You’re objecting to “it.pizza”?
Côte d’Ivoire objects to all ci. domains.
Spain objects to es.casino, es.bingo and es.abogado.
Again, I invite you to check out bingo.es and casino.es and make a judgement as to whether the registrants are licensed gambling establishments.
Taiwan has vetoed the release of .tw in all city gTLDs (such as tw.london, tw.berlin etc) over a “concern that the release of above-mentioned domain names may cause the degradation of statehood”.
France has objected to “fr” in .archi, .army, .airforce, .bank, .bet, .bio, .casino, .cloud, .dentist, .doctor, .domains, .finance, .lawyer, .navy and .sarl.
Again again, several of these domains are just parked if you flip the words to the other side of the dot.
As a reminder, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade said recently:

Come on guys, do not apply rules that you’re not using today to these new folks simply because it’s easy, because you can come and raise flags here at ICANN. Let’s be fair.