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Tweets from Chehade’s keynote in Brussels today

Kevin Murphy, June 25, 2013, Domain Policy

ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade gave a keynote address at a meeting of European stakeholders in Brussels today.
While the meeting is evidently not accessible remotely, some interesting tweets and photos may give a flavor of the event and his remarks. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the quotes.

Famous Four wins two new gTLD contention sets

Kevin Murphy, June 25, 2013, Domain Registries

Four new gTLD applications were withdrawn overnight, resolving three contention sets.
Top Level Domain holdings has pulled its bids for .review and .science, in both cases leaving subsidiaries of portfolio applicant Famous Four Media as the only remaining applicant.
Meanwhile, Famous Four withdrew its .fit application, leaving TLDH as the only remaining applicant.
Buyouts? It seems possible. The .review application passed its Initial Evaluation a month ago, so the ICANN refund due to TLDH will have been dramatically reduced.
As a publicly traded company, TLDH is likely to issue a statement at some point explaining the current state of its applications.
But one of the side effects of ICANN’s preference for private deals is that we won’t always know when two or more companies privately resolve their contention sets.
There are at least two other contention sets where I have very good reasons to believe that deals have already been done, partially resolving the set, but nothing has yet been disclosed.
Also overnight, L’Oreal’s application for .garnier, a dot-brand, was withdrawn. It’s the fifth, and probably not the last, of L’Oreal’s 14 original new gTLD application to be dropped.
Governmental Advisory Committee advice has been leveled against .fit and .review, but not .science.
UPDATE: The original version of this story erroneously reported that TLDH, rather than Famous Four, had withdrawn its .fit application. This has now been corrected. Apologies for the error.

ICANN has 99 gTLD passes but .payu ain’t one

Kevin Murphy, June 21, 2013, Domain Registries

ICANN has delivered another 100 new gTLD Initial Evaluation results this evening, with 99 passes and one failure.
The failure is the application for .payu, a dot-brand filed by a Dutch e-payments company. It’s eligible for extended evaluation, having scored a 0 on its “financial statements” question.
These are the successful applications, many of which are receiving their results well after their original due dates:

.dnp .otsuka .okinawa .media .extraspace .tickets .bradesco .mtpc .infiniti .ooo .lilly .everbank .mom .latrobe .maif .town .free .tube .wales .ist .ong .auto .shopyourway .golf .viajes .doosan .tatar .yoga .mail .chk .pru .one .medical .limo .ovh .storage .infy .desi .secure .domains .computer .racing .zara .target .pictet .music .nba .bank .goodhands .ing .sling .meme .giving .jewelry .deals .nadex .credit .one .here .luxury .cern .salon .ninja .zip .vana .lancome .tires .recipes .film .teva .auto .istanbul .grocery .web .diet .baby .support .hotel .infosys .lol .beats .vons .moscow .inc .guge .car .forsale .hsbc .energy .man .team .book .family .green .aetna .movie .politie .home .group

There are now 819 passes, 9 failures and 1,019 applications still in Initial Evaluation. Next week, we’ll pass the halfway mark, with IE due to be completed in August.

New registrar contract could be approved next week

Kevin Murphy, June 21, 2013, Domain Registrars

ICANN’s board of directors is set to vote next week on the 2013 Registrar Accreditation agreement, but we hear some last-minute objections have emerged from registrars.
The new RAA has been about two years in the making. It will make registrars verify email addresses and do some rudimentary mailing address validation when new domains are registered.
It will also set in motion a process for ICANN oversight of proxy/privacy services and some aspects of the reseller business. In order to sell domain names in new gTLDs, registrars will have to sign up to the 2013 RAA.
ICANN has put approval of the contract on its board’s June 27 agenda.
But I gather that some registrars are unhappy about some last-minute changes ICANN has made to the draft deal.
For one, some linguistic tweaks to the text have given registrars an “advisory” role in seeking out technical ways to do the aforementioned address validation, which has caused some concern that ICANN may try to mandate expensive commercial solutions without their approval.
There also appears to be some concern that the new contract now requires registrars to make sure their resellers follow the same rules on proxy/privacy services, which wasn’t in previous drafts.

Hexonet scores dot-brand deal with Brights

Kevin Murphy, June 21, 2013, Domain Registrars

Hexonet has made a deal with new gTLD consultancy Brights Consulting to provide registrar technical services for all of Brights’ dot-brand clients.
All new gTLDs, even dot-brands, are obliged to use accredited registrars to register domain names. Under this deal, Brights will use Hexonet’s RegistrarOC service to make the process a little easier.
RegistrarOC is basically a way for companies accredited by ICANN as registrars to outsource the technical and compliance functions of running a registrar to Hexonet.
Brights will use its own accreditation and RegistrarOC to manage its clients’ portfolios of second-level domains in their respective dot-brands, Hexonet chief strategy officer Robbie Birkner said.
The exact number of dot-brands Brights is taking care of has not been disclosed, but I believe it’s in double figures. Most are based in Japan, same as Brights.

Two more new gTLD bids dropped

Kevin Murphy, June 21, 2013, Domain Registries

Uniregistry and LʹOréal, two of the highest profile new gTLD applicants, both withdrew applications today.
Uniregistry has pulled out of the .marketing race, leaving it a two-way battle between Tucows and Donuts. It’s the first application withdrawn by the company, which has applied for 54 gTLDs.
Its .marketing bid was due to get its Initial Evaluation results today. By withdrawing before this happens, the company gets a much bigger refund from ICANN.
LʹOréal, meanwhile, has withdrawn is fourth dot-brand, .maybelline, which is due its IE results next week. The company has 10 applications, a mixture of brands and closed generics, outstanding.

Next new gTLD auction set for August 13

Kevin Murphy, June 19, 2013, Domain Registries

Innovative Auctions today announced that its second new gTLD auction is scheduled for August 13 and that several companies have already signed up to participate.
The news follows the settlement of the first round of auctions, which saw $9.01 million shared between losing applicants and Innovative for the rights to six new gTLD strings.
“[A]ll of the participants from this auction who have additional strings in contention have signed on to use the process to resolve their remaining contentions,” Innovative said.
That would mean Afilias, Merchant Law Group and XYZ.com, which took part in this month’s auctions, are all likely to attempt to settle their outstanding contention sets with Innovative.
That’s another roughly 40 strings on top of Donuts’ already-committed monster portfolio.
Of course, the auctions will only be able to go ahead if all of the other applicants in each contention set also agree to participate, which in some cases will be a non-starter.
The money from the first auctions has already been distributed to the losing applicants, according to Innovative.

Tickets on sale for newdomains.org conference

Kevin Murphy, June 19, 2013, Domain Services

After a year’s hiatus, the newdomains.org conference organized by United-Domains is back this October.
Registration has now opened for the two-day event, which is entirely focused on the new gTLD market. The agenda is still forming and United is looking for speakers.
The conference will take place in Munich at the Sofitel Munich Bayerpost hotel from October 28 to 29. Unlike the 2011 event, I believe this time the official Oktoberfest jollities will be over.
Early bird registration comes to €583 ($780) when you include VAT. Prices go up to €821 July 15.
Afilias, Verisign, Donuts, PIR, InternetX, Sedo, Nic.at have already signed up to sponsor.
While in 2011 newdomains had to compete with .nxt for your new gTLD conference dollar, this time it’s competing with Momentum’s gTLD Strategy Congress, coming to London in September.
Like .nxt, the first newdomains.org suffered from coming before the Big Reveal and became a bit of a vendor echo chamber as a result, but was nevertheless a breath of fresh air compared to ICANN meetings.
By October we might have seen the first new gTLDs go live, so this year it will likely be a different story. DI will be in attendance.

Demand Media commits Designs.com to new gTLDs

Kevin Murphy, June 18, 2013, Domain Registries

Demand Media has announced a new web publishing service that it says is designed specifically for new gTLD registrants, at the category-killing domain Designs.com.
Designs.com will provide users with tools to quickly build web sites for their new domains, with no coding experience required, according to the site.
Conceptually, there’s nothing new about selling do-it-yourself web site building services alongside domain names of course; they’ve been around for over a decade.
But Demand says it’s tailoring the product to niche gTLDs, promoting certain features depending on the gTLD string in which the customer has bought. From a press release:

“A consumer using .FAN needs features related to sharing, ‘liking’ and growing a community, while a professional using .ARCHITECT needs features related to a strong visual portfolio and self-promotion,” explained Nick Nelson, general manager of Designs.com for Demand Media. “Until today, tools and templates have been designed for no-one in particular. New gTLDs are for specific audiences, so we must have tools that create a web presence with the same tailored approach, making the website and web address inseparable.”

It’s exactly the kind of marketing effort that new gTLDs are going to need if they’re going to be successful, particularly if they’re targeting greenfield opportunities such as small business owners.
Based on the little we know today, it almost sounds like innovation.
The Designs.com service will be made available via partnering registrars, according to the company. We can only assume that eNom and Name.com are a shoo-ins.
On the registry side, there’s nothing stopping the company adding the service to pretty much every new gTLD for which, as a registrar, it is accredited.
Demand has 26 active new gTLD applications and has rights to buy into about 100 of Donuts’ gTLDs, should they be approved by ICANN and win their contention sets.

Verisign steps up anti-gTLD campaign with attack on ICANN’s war chest

Kevin Murphy, June 17, 2013, Domain Registries

Verisign wants ICANN to publish a list of all the reasons it might be sued over the new gTLD program, claiming security and stability risks might be one of them.
In the latest salvo fired in its war against new gTLDs, the company now suggests that the $115 million “risk fund” surplus that ICANN has accumulated is for fending off lawsuits when it breaks the internet.
In a letter (pdf) sent Friday, Verisign asks ICANN to justify the existence of this war chest in light of the fact that it has managed to secure legal indemnities from pretty much everyone involved in the program.
It attempts to link the risk fund to the possible security risks of introducing new gTLDs to the internet, which Verisign has been haranguing ICANN about for the last few months.
“We believe ICANN should be forthcoming about the risks it is shifting and the need for the substantial risk reserve fund, in particular,” the letter, signed by general counsel Richard Goshorn, says.
It’s been well known for a few years that $60,000 of each $185,000 new gTLD application fee was to be allocated to a risk fund created to cover unexpected extra program costs.
The reserve was designed to cover things like underestimating the costs or time needed to evaluate applications, but also, crucially, the lawsuits that ICANN expected but has not yet received.
The cash pile is often to referred to, usually with black humor, as the “legal defense fund”.
Now Verisign seems to be saying that the legal risks are not limited to trademark disputes or the usual antitrust nonsense, but to the security risks ICANN is “transferring” to others.
As we’ve been reporting for the last few months, Verisign has suddenly decided that new gTLDs pose a risk to the internet, largely due to the potential for clashes between newly delegated strings and the unnofficial domains that many organizations already use on their intranets.
For a great discussion on the merits of this argument check out this DI article and comment thread.
With the latest letter, Verisign suggests that ICANN knows it might be sued for messing up corporate intranets, but is keeping that fact quiet.
Referring to a report it issued in March, when its security concerns first emerged, it says:

We believe that ICANN may have established and be maintaining the Risk Reserve in such a high amount in anticipation of significant claims relating to one or more risks identified in the Verisign Report.

If ICANN does get sued on these grounds, the defense cost will effectively have been covered by new gTLD applicants (and therefore their customers, assuming the costs are passed on), Verisign says.
It’s therefore asking for ICANN to disclose the reasons why its risk fund is so big, “in particular, the details regarding what ‘possible litigation’ factored into ICANN’s decisions”.
In other words, Verisign is asking ICANN to publish a list of reasons people might sue it, something I can’t imagine its general counsel agreeing to any time soon.
Is this an effort to shame ICANN into taking its security concerns more seriously, or just more FUD designed to disrupt the new gTLD program and protect its .com dominance?
Opinions, no doubt, will be split.