Angry Birds backing two Chinese-language gTLDs

The Finnish/Irish new gTLD applicant TLD Registry Ltd has signed two ICANN Registry Agreements, covering the Chinese strings .在线 (.online) and .中文网 (a phrase meaning “Chinese language website”).
The deals were signed yesterday, but the news is set to be formally announced in Beijing on Tuesday by the Finnish prime minister, Jyrki Katainen, who’s on a state visit to the country.
He’ll be joined by Peter Vesterbacka, chief marketing officer of Angry Birds maker Rovio Entertainment, which is supporting TLD Registry as the first announced member of its “founders program”.
The two new agreements mean ICANN has now contractual powers over more new gTLDs (19) than legacy ones (18).
TLD Registry CEO Arto Isokoski told DI this morning that 在线 and 中文网 are already extremely well-known and widely-used phrases on the Chinese internet.
“在线” is the direct translation of “online” and “中文网” is what Chinese web users instinctively type when they’re searching for the Chinese-language version of a foreign brand’s web site, he said.
“It surprises me as well that these were not contested,” Isokoski said. “These are the strings that Chinese users type in when they’re looking for web sites online.”
Both TLDs will be open to registrants anywhere in the world, though .中文网 seems to be particularly suited for brands from the ASCII parts of the world, looking to improve SEO in the country.
Isokoski said that the company hopes to take .在线 and .中文网 to market early next year. If the strings are delegated in early November, then general availability could start in mid-January, he said.
Depending on ICANN delays, the launch schedule may have to be moved back to February or March in order to avoid the “dead period” around Chinese New Year, which starts in late January, he said.
The most directly competitive gTLD would be .网址, an arguably superior string meaning roughly “website”, which is now out of contention and likely to sign its own contract soon.
Two other Chinese gTLDs, both owned by Donuts, have ICANN contracts already — .游戏 (games) and .企业 (business).
Isokoski said that TLD Registry hopes to have about 20 members of its founders program (included Rovio, which is Finnish but makes games wildly popular in China) and about 20 launch registrars.
Like other IDN gTLD registries, the company is hoping that its first-to-market advantage will give its marketing a lift due to the extra media interest.
TLD Registry is based in Ireland, near its back-end provider Afilias, but was founded by Finns. Afilias alum Pinky Brand is managing registrar relationships for the company.

Winners and losers in the new .com pricing regime

Today’s shock news that Verisign will be subject to a .com price freeze for the next six years will have broad implications.
The US Department of Commerce has told the company it will have to continue to sell .coms at $7.85 wholesale until 2018, barring exceptional circumstances.
Here’s my initial take on the winners and losers of this new arrangement.
Domain investors
Volume .com registrants are of course the big winners here. A couple of dollars a year for a single .com is pretty insignificant, but when you own tens or hundreds of thousands of names…
Mike Berkens of Most Wanted Domains calculated that he’s saved $170,000 $400,000 over the lifetime of the new .com deal, and he reckons fellow domainer Mike Mann will have saved closer to $800,000 $2 million.
Brand owners
The other big constituency of volume registrants are the brand owners who spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year maintaining defensive registrations — mostly in .com — that they don’t need.
Microsoft, for example, owns over 91,000 domain names, according to DomainTools. I’d hazard a guess that most of those are defensive and that most are in .com.
Registries
There’s potentially trouble on the horizon for new gTLD applicants and existing registry operators. Verisign is looking for new ways to grow, and it’s identified its patent portfolio as an under-exploited revenue stream.
The company says it has over 200 patents either granted or pending, so its pool of potential licensees could be quite large.
Its US portfolio includes patents such as 7,774,432, “Registering and using multilingual domain names”, which appear to be quite broad.
Verisign also owns a bunch of patents related to its security business, so companies in that field may also be targeted.
Registrars
Verisign’s registrars will no longer have to pass their cost increases on to consumers every year.
While this may help with renewal rates, it also means registrars won’t be able to sneak in their own margin increases whenever Verisign ups its annual fees.
IDN buyers
Another area Verisign plans to grow is in internationalized domain names, where it’s applied to ICANN for about a dozen non-Latin variants of .com and .net.
Those registry deals, assuming they’re approved by ICANN, will not be governed by the .com pricing restrictions. Now that Verisign’s growth is getting squeezed, we might expect higher prices for IDN .com variants.
ICANN
ICANN may have suffered a small reputational hit today, with Commerce demonstrating it has the balls to do what ICANN failed to do six years ago, but money-wise it’s doing okay.
The new .com contract changes the way Verisign pays ICANN fees, and Commerce does not appear to have made any changes to that structure. ICANN still stands to get about $8 million a year more from the deal.
The Department of Commerce
Unless you’re a Verisign shareholder, Commerce comes out of this deal looking pretty good. It played hard-ball and seems to have won a lot of credibility points as a result.

Who really uses IDNs? [Guest Post]

Are Internationalised Domain Names really useful, or just a way for an ASCII-focused internet governance community to feel better about itself?
Beyond all the hoopla about ICANN’s 2009 program to enable countries to operate their own non-Latin script internet suffixes (aka the “IDN ccTLD Fast Track”), what should really matter is the Internet user.
Yes, those sitting in ICANN meeting rooms at the time, listening to the hyperbole about how the internet was now going truly global probably felt like they were feeding the hungry and bringing peace to the world. But do people actually use IDNs?
I will admit that at the time, I was dubious. Of course, saying so in ICANN circles would have been akin to wearing a “Camembert is bad” t-shirt in the streets of Paris: poor form! But still, I couldn’t help ask myself if having a single one-language system unite the world was actually such a bad thing?
“How would you like it if the Internet had been invented in China and you had to use their alphabet,” was the usual rebuke I got if I ever dared to doubt out loud. And there really is no arguing with that. If the internet was Chinese, I’d want the Mandarin version of ICANN to roll out IDNs pretty sharpish.
Nonetheless, can the usefulness of IDNs still be questioned?
Facebook in Latin
Talking to a local internet expert whilst attending last week’s excellent Domain Forum in Sofia, Bulgaria, the answer would seem to be a surprising yes.
“Why would kids in this country use IDNs,” I was told when I suggested that, surely, Bulgaria must be excited about the prospect of natural language web addresses. “What worries the authorities here is the fact that kids are using Latin scripts so much on social media sites that they don’t even know how to write in Cyrillic anymore! So even if they could use IDN web and email addresses, why would they? They want to communicate like everyone else does on Facebook.”
In truth, Bulgaria’s view may be skewed by the horrible experience it’s had with ICANN’s IDN Fast Track. The country was refused its own IDN country code due to a perceived similarity with another TLD that no-one in Bulgaria really feels is warranted. But not all potential IDN users feel they are useless. Neighbors in Russia tell of a different IDN experience.
The Russian registry saw stunning initial take-up when it opened the IDN .РФ (.RF for Russian Federation) to general consumption on November 11, 2010. Registration volumes were explosive, with almost 600,000 names registered in the first month. Strong growth continued for a year, hitting a peak of 937,913 registered names in December 2011.
No profit
But the following month, that number fell off a cliff. Total registrations dropped to 844,153 in January 2012. “Initial registrations were driven in part by speculators,” explains ccTLD .RU’s Leonid Todorov. “But when people saw they couldn’t make huge profits on the domains, they started letting them go.”
Even so, .РФ remains a real success. Although November 2012 figures show a year on year decline of 8.63%, the TLD still sports a whopping 845,037 names.
At 66%, .РФ has a slightly lower renewal rate than ASCII Russian equivalent .ru (73%), probably because of those day-one speculators, but it remains widely used. Current delegation figures (i.e. the number of domain names that are actually used for email or websites) stand at a commendable 70% and have not stopped rising since .РФ opened in 2010 with a 45% delegation rate.
The Cyrillic Russian domain sees a vast predominance of personal use, with 77% percent of domains being registered by individuals. “Russians care deeply about their national identity,” says my Bulgarian friend when I suggest that IDNs do seem to matter in some Cyrillic-using countries. “To them, Dot RF is a matter of national pride.”
National pride
So IDNs may not really be all that different from ASCII domain names, with take-up depending on perceived use or value. Europe’s IDN experience seems to confirm this, as European registry EURid’s Giovanni Seppia explained in Sofia.
He revealed that since EURid introduced IDNs on December 11, 2009, registrations reached a peak of around 70,000 (a mere fraction of the 3.7 million names currently registered in the .eu space) before dropping off quite sharply.
Why? Well .eu IDNs may not hold much potential for real use or investment value for Europeans. Although web use is possible with IDNs, software primarily designed for an ASCII-only world does not always make it easy.
Email capability would be a real boost, but so far only the Chinese seem to have enabled it for their local script domains. The Chinese registry recently announced this, without giving details on how the use of all-Chinese character email addresses has been implemented or which email clients support IDNs.
Whatever the technology, countries which combine national pride and a character set far removed from our own probably see more desire for IDNs. With two years of hindsight, Russia obviously loves its IDN. And as other countries like China bring more elaborate IDN capabilities online, demand should grow and force even this IDN skeptic to recognize the new character(s) of the internet.
This is a guest post written by Stéphane Van Gelder, strategy director for NetNames. He has served as chair of the GNSO Council and is currently a member of ICANN’s Nominating Committee.

Chinese IDN sunrise starts Sunday for ASCII domains

CNNIC, the .cn registry, is going to open up its .中國 internationalized domain name to Latin-script strings next month, and sunrise kicks off this weekend.
Registered trademark owners will be able to apply for domains matching their marks from Sunday, according to registrars. The deadline to apply is October 11.
A second week-long sunrise, starting October 16, will enable owners of ASCII .cn or .com.cn domains to apply for the same string under .中國.
The .中國 IDN ccTLD means “.china” in Simplified Chinese. Previously only Chinese-script domain names could be registered.
CNNIC’s announcement is here, and Melbourne IT has more details here.

Malaysia to get new Arabic ccTLD

ICANN’s board of directors is set to approve مليسيا., the Arabic name for Malaysia, at a meeting next week.
Delegation of the internationalized country-code top-level domain is listed on the board’s consent agenda for next week’s meeting, meaning it’s likely to be a case of simply rubber-stamping the decision.
It will be the 40th IDN ccTLD to enter the root, not including test zones, under ICANN’s Fast Track program.
With the notable exception of Russia’s .РФ, IDN ccTLDs have been commercially underwhelming.
The redelegation of Rwanda’s .rw, currently delegated to NIC Congo/Interpoint SARL, is also on ICANN’s board consent agenda for the August 28 meeting.
There are no issues related to the new gTLD program on the agenda.

GAC demands appeal of IDN ccTLD bans

The Governmental Advisory Committee has slammed ICANN’s decisions to reject at least three non-Latin ccTLDs because they might pose security risks.
Remarkably, the GAC has also asked ICANN to “urgently reconsider” the rulings, which were made to mitigate the risk of phishing attacks and other types of domain name abuse.
In its official post-Prague communique, published over the weekend, the GAC tells ICANN that the way it decides whether to approve IDN ccTLDs has been “too conservative”.
While the letter does not single out any specific ccTLDs, I understand that the advice was formulated primarily at the behest of the European Union and Greece, which have both had IDN ccTLD applications rejected on the grounds of confusing similarity.
The Prague communique (pdf) states:

The GAC is of the view that decisions may have erred on the too-conservative side, in effect applying a more stringent test of confusability between Latin and non-Latin scripts than when undertaking a side by side comparison of Latin strings.

It goes on to ask ICANN to publish its criteria for evaluating the similarity of IDN ccTLDs, to create an appeals process, to publish its rationales for rejecting bids, and to revisit old decisions.
The communique states, as formal GAC Advice:

Recently refused IDNs, particularly those nominated by public or national authorities should be urgently re-considered in light of the above considerations.

This request instantly loses the GAC credibility points, in my view, casting it as little more than another special interest group focused on the goals of its members first and internet security second.
To be clear, the GAC is appealing ICANN decisions that were designed to prevent phishing.
Greece’s application for .ελ,was rejected by ICANN last year due to its visual similarity with .EA, a non-existent – but potential future – ccTLD.
While there’s not much on the public record about the European case, I understand Eurid’s bid for a Greek version of .eu was blocked because it looks too much like Estonia’s EE.
Bulgarian IDN supporters have also been very vocal the last couple of years in opposition to ICANN’s decision to forbid .бг due to its alleged resemblance to Brazil’s .br.
While decent arguments can and have been made that some of these rulings were a little on the silly side, it’s hard to argue that they were made without the best of intentions.
The GAC has promised to write to ICANN with “further reflections on the methodology that should be followed when evaluating two character IDNs”.
The GAC as a technical regulator? That letter should make for some interesting reading.

ICANN won’t say who rejected Bulgarian IDN

ICANN has declined to name the people responsible for rejecting .бг, the proposed Cyrllic country-code domain for Bulgaria.
Security consultant George Todoroff filed a Documentary Information Disclosure Policy request with ICANN a month ago, asking for the names of the six people on the DNS Stability Panel.
That’s the panel, managed by Interisle Consulting Group, that decided .бг looks too much like Brazil’s .br to be safely introduced to the internet.
But Todoroff found out today that his DIDP request was declined. ICANN said that it does not have records of the panelists’ names and that even if it did, it would not release them.
The information could contain trade secrets or commercially sensitive information and could compromise decision-making, ICANN said. These are all reasons to reject DIDP requests.
It’s pretty clear the Bulgarians are not going to quit pressing for .бг any time soon, despite being advised to give up by ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom recently.
The application for .бг was made under ICANN’s IDN ccTLD Fast Track program, which has approved a couple dozen non-Latin ccTLDs, and rejected one other.
Todoroff wrote an article for CircleID in November 2010 explaining why he thinks .бг is not dangerous.

Did Kazakhstan just screw up somebody’s new gTLD plans?

ICANN has approved a new country-code top-level domain for the nation of Kazakhstan.
The new .қаз, which is “kaz” is Cyrillic, will be delegated to the “Association of IT companies of Kazakhstan”, according to a resolution passed by ICANN’s board of directors this week.
But did this move just cause problems for a new gTLD applicant?
One cultural/geographic gTLD that was proposed back in 2009 is .kab, for the Kabylia region of Algeria and the Kabyle language and people.
It’s easy to see how kab/KAB and .қаз could be considered confusing during a string similarity review, though ICANN’s laughable Sword tool only gives them a visual similarity score of 49%.
The .kab application currently has a dead web site, so it’s quite possibly one of the many new gTLD projects that fizzled out during ICANN’s repeated delays launching the program.

Verisign to apply for a dozen new gTLDs

Verisign plans to apply to ICANN for about 12 new generic top-level domains, according to the executive in charge of registry services.
“We intend to do about 12. Most of those will be transliterations of .com,” senior vice president Pat Kane said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call yesterday.
This does not mark a significant change of strategy – the company has been open about its intention to apply for internationalized domain name variants of .com for over a year – but I believe it’s the first time it’s put a number on it.
It will be interesting to see which gTLDs – if any – Verisign will go for which are not .com IDNs.
My view is that it would make more sense for the company to apply for potentially high-volume .com competitors, such as .web or .blog. It has the capacity, the channel and the cash.
Smaller niche gTLDs may not be worth the distraction and risk, and would be better suited to dedicated registries that can concentrate on more focused marketing.
In any event, we’re going to see some major consolidation in the new gTLD space four or five years from now, and Verisign could well vacuum up cash-making registries at that time.
CEO Jim Bidzos also said on the call that Verisign has been retained to provide the registry for “several” dot-brand applications, but that it will not see any material revenue until 2013.
The major event for 2012, he noted, is the renewal of the .com Registry Agreement with ICANN, which expires at the end of November.
Verisign is already “engaging” with ICANN on this, Bidzos said.
This contract will be posted for public comment and sent to the US Department of Commerce for approval.
I’m expecting controversy, particularly if the contract continues to allow Verisign to increase prices.
It’s going to be harder for Verisign to argue that it needs the extra cash to invest in its infrastructure if it’s also leveraging that infrastructure to win lucrative dot-brand contracts.

Little interest in Russian gTLDs?

Despite being given the opportunity to launch top-level domains in Cyrillic script, only a handful of companies from Russia are expected to apply to ICANN for new gTLDs.
That’s according to Andrey Kolesnikov, CEO of Coordination Center for TLD RU, which runs the country’s .ru and .РФ registries.
“There won’t be many applications from Russia, only from about 10 companies,” he said at a recent press conference, while estimating at least 1,000 applications overall.
Just 10 applicants is a surprisingly low estimate, given the resurgence of interest in Russian domain names in 2011.
The year-old .РФ (.rf, for Russian Federation) domain has been a roaring success in volume terms. Launched in late 2010, it now has about a million registered domains.
CC itself is planning to apply for .ДЕТИ, which means “.children” in Russian.
RU-Center, the largest Russian registrar, intends to apply for the city-gTLDs .МОСКВА and .moscow.
Other IDN-friendly nations may be more enthusiastic about new gTLDs. ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom said last week that he heard that Indian companies could apply for as many as 100.