dotFree’s “free” domain names explained

As I reported a couple of days ago, a Czech company called The dotFree Group wants to apply to ICANN for a .free top-level domain, and will offer domain names for free.
Now for the small print – not all .free domain names will be free, and there will be strict limitations on how many free domains any given individual is able to register.
Here is an email interview I conducted with dotFree chief executive Dominique Piatti, which I think covers the basics of the business model and contains a few surprises.
I’ve corrected a few typos, but other than that it’s unedited.

DI: Applying for a new TLD will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and running it over the longer term will cost more. How does dotFree plan to cover the cost of running a free TLD?
Piatti: We are working with Venture Capital companies together from Eastern Europe and have an estimated turnover of EUR 1.25 million for 2011. In addition to this we are generating substantial revenue with our current projects www.cz.cc (which is a free second-level domain name registry) and with the Domain Registrar Script which is currently in version 1.3.5 (www.registrar-script.cz.cc).
DI: .free could be a desirable TLD for domain investors. Will there be any limitations on how many .free domains an individual is allowed to register? What would prevent a single person registering hundreds of thousands of .free domains?
Piatti: Yes, currently we plan that each individual is allow to have 1 .free domain at no costs within their account. If a user plans to have more domain names he can upgrade to VIP status (eg. $5/year and you can hold up to 20 domains in your account) similar like we have it successfully tested with www.cz.cc over the past 12 months. We have an advanced fraud detection tool developed which identifies double accounts owned by the same person.
DI: Do you anticipate a .free aftermarket? Would somebody be able to register, for example, “poker.free” for free and then sell it to somebody else for hundreds of thousands of dollars?
Piatti: Yes, we launch .free the same way as any other TLD in the market with the difference that every individual can have a .free domain at no costs. We will launch similar to the most recent TLD’s like .co and .me with premium domains, auctions etc. Also, aftermarket sales are possible therefore.
DI: Would “premium” domains also be free, or would you charge for them like you do with premium .cz.cc names?
Piatti: All our premium domains will cost around $5/year and will not be free. There are around 200,000 premium domains planned.
DI: Do you anticipate selling .free domains via registrars like Go Daddy and eNom, or would you expect to sell direct to the end user?
Piatti: Both. In our business plan we have the ICANN accredited registrars as distribution channels listed but we will also distribute those .free domain names directly over our own website.
DI: Would there be a “landrush” period? Would you auction premium names or would it be first-come-first-served?
Piatti: The launch will be very similar to .co and .me with everything it takes to make .free a highly successful gTLD.

Porno union will try to shaft .xxx

The fight between ICM Registry and the Free Speech Coalition over the proposed .xxx top-level domain is not over yet.
The porn trade group has a plan to block ICM’s passage through the ICANN process, and has already stepped up efforts to rally the adult entertainment industry to its cause.
Last weekend at the AVN Show in Florida, FSC chair Diane Duke reportedly said:

ICM is saying this is a done deal… but it is not a done deal. We [the FSC] have a strategy to block the application. I have spoken with people from ICANN, and they agreed that this is not a done deal.

Asked whether lawsuits would be required, Duke reportedly answered: “There are other avenues to block this.”
These comments and others suggest that the FSC intends to use ICANN processes to, at the very least, delay .xxx’s delegation.
A public comment period will be launched soon on the proposed ICM-ICANN registry contract. This will likely be oversubscribed by FSC supporters.
If the contract ends up being bounced to ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee for consideration, there’s another opportunity for FSC lobbying.
Then, crucially, if ICANN votes to approve .xxx, the FSC could attempt to temporarily block the actual delegation to the DNS root by filing a Reconsideration Request.
Under my reading of the Reconsideration procedure, the actual delegation of the TLD could be delayed by anything between 30 and 120 days. Possibly longer.
The FSC would need to show at the very least that it would be harmed by .xxx’s introduction. If successful, the best case scenario for the FSC would see the resolution approving .xxx bounced back to the ICANN board for a second vote.
Beyond that, there’s always an Independent Review Panel. For that, the FSC would need to show that the .xxx approval breached ICANN’s bylaws or articles of incorporation, which seems to me to be a more challenging proposition. Also very expensive.
Another interesting quote from the AVN article – reportedly Allan Gelbard, lawyer to John “Buttman” Stagliano, said that the adult industry may be unduly worrying because:

anti-trust and trademark legal challenges would be brought immediately following the final approval by the ICANN board

Make of that what you will.
There’s also a new anti-.xxx blog, written by Theresa “Dark Lady” Reed, containing a new “satirical” video spoofing ICM.
To be honest, the funniest thing about it for me was the decision to cast a handsome, shiny-toothed American anchorman type as British ICM president Stuart Lawley.

Want thousands of free .jobs domains? Now’s your chance

Employ Media wants to hear from companies interested in registering .jobs domain names in bulk, at the start of its recently approved landrush process.
The company has set up a web site to handle expressions of interest of “high level business concepts on how these domain names could be developed either individually or in bulk”.
Before now, .jobs domains have been limited to the name of the company registering them. IBM, for example, uses ibm.jobs to bounce to its HR pages.
Employ Media applied to ICANN to liberalize the namespace, allowing the registration of the names of professions and places, and was successful over the objections of many existing jobs boards.
From the press release:

“We believe accepting EOI’s will facilitate dialog with potential RFP applicants. We’re particularly interested in hearing ideas comprising a bulk number of domains,” states Tom Embrescia, Chairman of Employ Media. “Up to now, we’ve only allowed company names such as www.Applebees.jobs and www.UnionPacific.jobs. Now we are looking for ideas for how companies can easily and uniformly distribute their jobs and related information to user-intuitive sites such as www.Chicago.jobs, www.sales.jobs, and www.restaurant.jobs.”

Right now, the company is only looking for 150-word outlines of business ideas. The RFP period will begin shortly after the EOI period closes on August 24 (less than two weeks from now).
Employ Media already has plans in place with the DirectEmployers Association to launch universe.jobs, a free jobs portal using thousands of premium .jobs domains as entry points.
It remains to be seen how concrete these plans are, although the two outfits have already run a “beta test” of the scheme, so I’m guessing they’re quite firm.
If you fancy your chances, the RFP site is RFP.jobs.
There are at least two filthy domain hacks I intend to apply for. All I need to do is think of a way I can pretend they benefit the global HR community, which is an unfortunate prerequisite.

DotFree wants to give away .free domains

A Czech company has become the latest to say it will apply for a new top-level domain, but it’s got a unique twist – domain registration will be free.
The dotFree Group, based near Prague, says it will apply for .free and offer the domains free of charge.

.FREE is going to be a generic Top Level Domain, which is going to be available for free, as the name itself says. Individuals, companies, organizations, groups, etc. are going to be able to register their .FREE website under a desirable name.

Can: open. Worms: everywhere.

• How many registrars will actually want to carry this TLD?
• How will dotFree fund its ICANN application fee and ongoing running costs?
• Will there be a landrush? How will that work?
• Will there be an after-market? With a no-risk investment, .free would be a domainer’s paradise.
• How will the registry prevent rampant abuse by spammers?
• Are these guys serious?

I’ve got a call in, so maybe we’ll find out more soon.
The dotFree Group already offers free domain names at the third level under cz.cc, and sells a pricey script so anyone can become a “registrar”.
The company sounds like it already has the infrastructure to support a small TLD.There are apparently 50,000 .cz.cc domains registered today, which already makes it bigger than some gTLDs.
(Hat tip: @dotRadio)

McAfee calls for ICANN spam crackdown

The security company McAfee has claimed that ICANN needs to try harder in the fight against spam by cracking down on rogue registrars.
In a report released today, the company makes the bold assertion that ICANN “holds the trump card to the spam problem” and that it should step up its compliance efforts.

Although ICANN cannot stop spam itself and does not link spammers to the Internet, it does accredit the registrars that sell the domains that cybercriminals use to fill our inboxes with advertisements and malware

McAfee notes that ICANN has previously de-accredited spammer-friendly registrars such as the notorious EstDomains, but that it needs to do more.

ICANN needs to continue this trend against registrars that knowingly provide domain services to cybercriminals. The organization also needs to harden its policies that define under what circumstances an accreditation can be revoked, so that it can take quicker action against rogue registrars.

The claims come in a report entitled “Security Takes The Offensive”, available here.
The report does not lay all the blame for spam at ICANN’s door, of course. The author also goes after ISPs and the SMTP protocol itself.
The report does not point out that there are 250-odd TLDs over which ICANN has no registrar accreditation powers whatsoever.
Despite my best efforts with Google, I’ve been unable to find a single instance of McAfee publicly participating in ICANN policy-making, so I have to wonder how serious it is.
At least guys like KnuJon are not afraid to show up at meetings and stir things up a bit.

Governments want morality veto on new TLDs

ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee wants to be able to kill off new top-level domain applications on cultural and religious grounds.
The GAC has finally broken its radio silence on the “morality and public order” or “MOPO” issue that was such a hot topic at the Brussels meeting in June.
A letter to ICANN (pdf), sent by Canadian GAC chair Heather Dryden, leaves little room for doubt where the GAC stands.

The GAC firmly believes that the absence of any controversial strings in the current universe of top-level domains (TLDs) to date contributes directly to the security and stability of the domain name and addressing system (DNS) and the universal resolvability of the system.
As a matter of principle… the GAC believes that the object of stability, security, and universal resolvability must be preserved in the course of expanding the DNS with the addition of new top-level domains.

This is actually quite powerful stuff.
The GAC is basically saying that no new TLDs should be introduced that would be unacceptable to the lowest common denominator world government.
Think Uganda, asked to make a call on .gay.
Think about any oppressed ethnic group without a territory that wants to apply for its own TLD.
The GAC wants ICANN to create a process for governments and others to object to TLD applications on religious, cultural, linguistic, national and geographical grounds.
It could even result in .xxx being objected to, even though it’s technically part of the 2005 round of new TLDs – the GAC wants the objection process to apply to “all pending and future TLDs”.

.XXX to run the ICANN gauntlet yet again

Bring on the Christians!
The contract between ICANN and ICM Registry to run the .xxx adults-only top-level domain is to be submitted for an ICANN public comment period, again.
ICANN’s board resolved yesterday to publish the proposed registry agreement for comment for at least 30 days.
But it has not yet decided whether to refer the deal to its Governmental Advisory Committee, which remains ICM’s major potential pitfall on its route to the root.
As long as the public comment period kicks off quite soon, the ICANN board could be in a position to make that call at its weekend retreat, September 24.
The .xxx application has generated more public comment over the years than all other ICANN public comment periods combined.
Its last such period, earlier this year, saw thousands of comments, most of them filed in response to outreach by right-wing American Christian groups.
Objections are also regularly received from members of the Free Speech Coalition, a porn trade group.
I expect this forum will be no different. It will be interesting to see what tactics are rolled out this time, given previous failures.
Here’s the meat of the latest resolution:

RESOLVED (2010.08.05.21), upon receipt of ICM’s application documentation, ICANN Staff is authorized to post ICM’s supporting documents and proposed registry agreement for the .XXX sTLD for public comment for a period of no less than 30 days.
RESOLVED (2010.08.05.22), upon completion of public comment period, ICANN Staff shall provide the Board with a summary of the public comments and shall make a recommendation to the Board as to whether the proposed registry agreement for the .XXX sTLD is consistent with GAC advice.
RESOLVED (2010.08.05.23), once the Board has received the above public comment summary and recommendation from the ICANN Staff regarding the proposed registry agreement for the .XXX sTLD, the Board shall at its next possible meeting, consider this recommendation, and determine, consistent with the ICANN Bylaws, whether a GAC consultation shall be required.

.jobs gets its landrush windfall

Is .jobs the newest generic top-level domain?
ICANN has approved changes to Employ Media’s .jobs registry contract, meaning the company is now free to start auctioning off premium generic .jobs domain names to the highest bidder.
The decision paves the way for the company to implement its deal with the DirectEmployers Association, under which the DEA plans to use thousands of geo.jobs and industry.jobs domains as portals to a massive free jobs board.
Currently, .jobs domains are only available in the format companyname.jobs, and there have been only about 15,000 registrations. The new contract removes that restriction.
Under the changes, whatever domains are left after the DEA takes its chunk could be auctioned, and then .jobs could be opened up to essentially any registration.
The .jobs contract still restricts who can register domains, however, to so-called Qualified Applicants.
That’s defined like this (my emphasis):

A qualified applicant (“Qualified Applicant”) is a person who is (a) a member of SHRM; or (b) engaged in human resource management practices that meet any of the following criteria: (i) possess salaried‐level human resource management experience; (ii) are certified by the Human Resource Certification Institute; or (iii) are supportive of the SHRM Code of Ethical and Professional Standards in Human Resource Management, as amended from time to time (the “Code”).

Looks like a check-out check-box to me.
ICANN’s resolution was made over the strong objections of many jobs web sites and the International Association of Employment Web Sites.

Palestine gets its own Arabic domain names

ICANN has awarded five more non-ASCII top-level domains under its internationalized domain name fast-track process for country-code TLD managers.
Palestine, Tunisia and Jordan will all shortly receive delegations for Arabic-script versions of their existing ccTLDs. They join previous recipients including Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Palestine gets فلسطين, Tunisia gets تونس and Jordan gets الاردن.
These apparently translate as “Falasteen”, “Tunis” and “al-Ordan”, respectively, and are presumably more useful to Arabic speakers than .ps, .tn and .jo.
Because they’re all Arabic, the dots appear to the right of the TLD, rather than the left.
The Occupied Palestinian Territory is, of course, a fringe case when it comes to ccTLDs.
But long ago, IANA made it a matter of policy that it would make no decision about which country or territory deserves its own ccTLD.
If it’s on the ISO 3166-1 list, which is overseen by the UN, it’s in. Palestine was added to that list in 1999, and was awarded .ps by ICANN/IANA in 2000.
The .ps registry is sponsored by the Palestinian National Authority’s telecoms ministry.
ICANN has also resolved to delegate Thailand the IDN ccTLD .ไทย and Sri Lanka both .ලංකා and .இலங்கை.
Interestingly, these two TLDs were approved as part of yesterday’s board meeting’s consent agenda.
The three Arabic names were approved separately, preceded by this:

RESOLVED (2010.08.05.13), the Board IANA Committee is directed, in coordination with ICANN’s CEO, to create improvements to the processes and new guidelines for implementation of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track process.

Judgment day for .xxx and .jobs

ICANN’s board of directors will today meet to decide the fate of the .xxx and .jobs top-level domains.
ICM Registry will find out whether its contract to run .xxx will have to face a potentially lengthy review by ICANN’s notoriously slow-footed Governmental Advisory Committee.
Employ Media will find out whether it will be allowed to relax its registration rules to allow non-company-name .jobs domains.
If the board decides no further GAC intervention is needed, ICM will be on a fast track to having its TLD considered for delegation in Cartagena this December.
If Employ Media’s proposal is rejected, it faces more years in the wilderness of managing a registration base in the low tens of thousands.
I have a track record of lousy predictions, but I’m going to go out on a limb again and make a low-confidence prediction that both registries are going to get what they want.
I’m not sure if it’s been noted before, but there are some strong similarities between the two TLDs and their proposals.
In the case of .xxx, some of the main opponents of the domain have been the adult industry itself. With the .jobs liberalization, the loudest outcry has come from jobs boards.
Both are essentially cases of a registry proposing something that makes good business sense for itself, but which is not necessarily what a significant portion of its would-be constituents want.
In the case of ICM, lack of support from the porn business was what originally killed off the application (at least, that was the official line), a decision that ICANN was recently forced to reverse if not recant.
In the case of .jobs, ICANN’s recent summary and analysis of the well-attended public comment period, which the board will be given prior to voting, may be a telling.
Most of the opposition to the .jobs deal was organized by the International Association of Employment Web Sites, which itself sent a long letter spelling out precisely why it thinks the scheme is bogus.
Of the 2,600 words IAEWS submitted, ICANN’s summary and analysis document quotes just two sentences, one of which is this:

“Neither human resources professionals employed in corporate human resources (‘HR’) departments nor executive search/staffing firms [which are part of the .JOBS community] are eligible for membership in IAEWS.”

The quote is pulled from the introduction of the IAEWS letter, rather than the substance of its objection, and the text in square brackets is ICANN’s own insertion.
I can’t think of any reason that text is worth quoting other than in order to dilute the significance of the IAEWS’ arguments against the .jobs liberalization.
Indeed, the document uses more wordage to describe the nature of the IAEWS letter-writing campaign than it does the content of its letters, which can’t look good for the IAEWS.
Employ Media’s response to the IAEWS letter is quoted at greater length, particularly the bit where it compares its own plans to the new gTLD program.

While they claim that the addition of occupation, industry and geographical identifiers at the second level within the .JOBS sTLD will lead to increased confusion within the marketplace, it is hard to reconcile this argument to ICANN’s extensive public policy work and implementation plan in connection with the new gTLD process. The same fundamental economic basis for going forward with the whole new gTLD initiative also applies to this .JOBS RSEP request; these issues should not be re debated and should not delay or deny approval of the .JOBS RSEP request.

If you’re an ICANN board member, aware of how much of ICANN’s credibility is tied up with the new TLD program, can you really argue with that?
Of course, board and staff don’t always agree, so I may be way off the plot here, but it seems to me that .jobs is likely to very soon become a considerably more open namespace.