Now Nokia scraps a dot-brand

Finnish tech company Nokia has become the latest company to get rid of a dot-brand gTLD.

It’s asked ICANN to terminate the contract for the IDN .诺基亚 ( .xn--jlq61u9w7b), which is the Chinese transliteration of “Nokia”.

Like .nokia itself, the TLD is not currently in use. Nokia has not asked ICANN to terminate .nokia (or, at least, ICANN has not published such a notice).

Other companies that chose to terminate their Chinese IDNs include Richemont and Volkswagen. In Richemont’s case it was followed by all its other gTLDs.

Bugatti dumps dot-brand under new owners

Bugatti, which makes incredibly expensive limited-edition sports cars, is dropping its dot-brand.

The French company asked ICANN to release it from its .bugatti registry contract about a month ago, according to ICANN documents.

Bugatti entered new ownership last November, under a joint venture between Rimac and Porsche, and recently reportedly underwent a branding overhaul.

It seems the dot-brand had no place under the new marketing strategy.

Its previous owner had been Volkswagen, which still has a (unused) dot-brand, despite dumping its Chinese-script equivalent. But Porsche had been an opponent of the new gTLD program back in 2011.

.bugatti had actually been used, albeit lightly. A couple of live, non-redirecting sites still remain.

Over 100 dot-brands have terminated their contracts to date.

Early “dot-brand” adopter wants to scrap its gTLD

One of the first adopters of the dot-brand gTLD concept, which has an active portfolio of resolving domains, has asked ICANN to tear up its registry contract.

The Australian Cancer Research Foundation said it no longer wishes to operate .cancerresearch, which it has used since 2014.

It’s a bit of a strange, possibly unique, situation, which may explain why its termination request, submitted in April, is only now being published by ICANN.

Technically, .cancerresearch was more like a closed generic than a dot-brand. It did not have a trademark on the string or the Specification 13 exceptions in its registry contract, which would make it a dot-brand.

Instead, ACRF had the TLD delegated, registered a bunch of resolving names to itself, and never officially launched. There was never even a sunrise period.

Pretty significant loophole in the rules for the 2012 application round if you ask me.

But ICANN is treating .cancerresearch as if it was a dot-brand anyway. Because nobody except ACRF ever owned any domains there, there’s no need to transition to a new registry to protect registrants.

This also means nobody else will be able to apply for the same string for two years, assuming an application window opens in that period.

ACRF still has live non-redirecting web sites on domains such as lung.cancerresearch, breast.cancerresearch and donate.cancerresearch.

It’s the first gTLD termination request since last October.

Unstoppable valued at over $1 billion after huge new investment

Unstoppable Domains has received a huge new funding round that the company says means it now has a valuation in excess of $1 billion.

The $65 million Series A round was led by Pantera Capital, with a whopping 17 other venture capital firms taking part, according to the company.

Unstoppable is an alt-root player, offering blockchain-based domains in nine TLDs such as .nft, .blockchain, .crypto and .wallet.

Much of its work to date has been on persuading crypto currency users to use Unstoppable domains to replace the otherwise cumbersome and confusing addresses of their crypto wallets, but the names can also be used to address web sites if you use the right browser software.

Unlike the regular domain name industry, where much of the investment attractiveness comes from the possibility of high-margin recurring renewal revenue, Unstoppable sells its names for a one-time fee. It presumably has other revenue sources in mind for long-term growth.

The traditional domain name industry, ICANN, and potential new gTLD applicants should pay attention.

If, as seems likely, some of the TLD strings Unstoppable is using in its alt-root are applied for in the next new gTLD round, a well-funded competitor that has already proven itself litigious when it comes to name collisions could prove a formidable opponent.

Of course, some potential applicants might see a well-funded alt-root player as an invitation to apply for colliding strings in the hope of a quick pay-off at private auction.

ICANN staffer to referee closed generics fight

An ICANN policy staffer seems set to chair discussions between governments and the gTLD community over how to regulate “closed generic” domains in the next round of new gTLD applications.

ICANN has put forward its own conflict resolution specialist Melissa Peters Allgood to facilitate the talks, and the Governmental Advisory Committee and GNSO Council have apparently concurred, according to recent correspondence.

“We are of the view that Ms. Allgood’s experience, qualifications, and neutrality in the matter meets the suggested criteria from the GAC and the GNSO Council,” ICANN chair Maarten Botterman told his GAC and GNSO counterparts.

The talks will attempt to reach a consensus on how closed generics can be permitted, but limited to applications that “serve a public interest goal”.

A closed generic is a dictionary-word gTLD that the applicant hopes to operate as a dot-brand even though it does not own a matching trademark. Think Nike operating .sneakers and excluding Adidas and Reebok from registering names there.

While the GNSO community was unable to come to consensus on whether they should be permitted in subsequent rounds, the nine-year-old “public interest goal” GAC advice is still applicable.

The GAC and GNSO have agreed that the talks will exclude the propositions that closed generics should be unrestricted or banned outright.

Once both parties have formally agreed to Allgood’s appointment, and to the size and makeup of the discussion group, Allgood will prepare more paperwork outlining the problem at hand before talks start to happen, according to Botterman.

New gTLD prep work delayed until December

ICANN has confirmed that the current phase of preparation for the next round of new gTLDs will last six weeks longer than previously expected.

The new deadline for the delivery of the Operational Design Assessment for the project is December 12, almost certainly pushing out board consideration of the document out into 2023.

The extension follows the GNSO’s approval of a new Whois Disclosure System, which will suck Org resources from the new gTLDs ODP as work on both continues in parallel.

ICANN chair Maarten Botterman confirmed the delay yesterday, and the precise length was disclosed by staff in a blog post today. It says in part:

While we’re sharing our best estimate of the impact that the WHOIS Disclosure System design paper work could have on the SubPro ODA in the interest of transparency, rest assured that we are simultaneously moving forward on the ODA and actively seeking ways to streamline and minimize the impact as much as possible.

The updated timetable has been published here.

Community tells ICANN to walk and chew gum at the same time

Whois or new gTLDs? Whois or new gTLDs? Whois or new gTLDs?

It’s the question ICANN has been pestering the community with since early May. ICANN can’t work on developing the proposed Whois Disclosure System (formerly known as SSAD) without delaying work on the next round of new gTLDs, Org said, so the community was given a Sophie’s Choice of which of its babies to sacrifice on the altar of failed resource planning.

And now it has its answer: why the heck can’t you do both, and why the heck are you asking us anyway?

GNSO Council chair Philippe Fouquart has written to Maarten Botterman, his counterpart on the ICANN board of directors, to request that Org figure out how to do both Whois and new gTLDs at the same time, and to existing deadlines:

While Council members might differ on which project should take precedence, there is unanimous agreement that the Subsequent Procedures ODP and SSAD development are among the most important tasks before ICANN. Therefore, we urge that every effort should be undertaken by ICANN Org to complete the work in parallel and to meet currently published milestones.

Fouquart goes on (pdf) to puzzle as to why ICANN decided to “inappropriately include the broad community in the minutiae of ICANN operations planning”.

ICANN had told the GNSO that if it wanted the Whois work to kick off, it would add “at least” six weeks of delay to the new gTLDs Operational Design Phase, which is scheduled to wrap up in October.

Naturally enough, folks such as IP lawyers were very keen that ICANN start to do something — anything — to roll back the damage caused by GDPR, while domain-selling companies are anxious that they get more inventory for their virtual shelves.

The public record has always been a bit sketchy on where the resource bottleneck actually is, in an organization with half a billion bucks in the bank, a $140 million operating budget, and around 400 staff.

Maintaining Whois and the expansion of the root zone are, after all, two of the main things ICANN was founded to do, being unable to do both at once could be seen as embarrassing.

But now it has its answer, as unhelpful as it is.

And it only took two months.

New gTLD in trouble as largest registrar gets suspended

The .gdn gTLD registry, Navigation-information systems, is facing more trouble from ICANN Compliance, but this time it’s because its largest registrar has got itself suspended for non-payment of fees.

ICANN has suspended the accreditation of Dubai-based registrar Intracom for failing to cure an April breach notice demanding money, not implementing an RDAP service, not escrowing its data, and generally giving Compliance staff the runaround for the last eight months.

Intracom is NIS’ biggest partner, responsible for over 10,000 of its 11,000 registered domain names. It doesn’t appear to have many domains in other gTLDs.

The company will not be allowed to sell gTLD domains or accept inbound transfers from July 6 to October 4.

NIS has been hit with its own breach notices twice in the last year, most recently the day after Intracom’s own notice, for failing to keep its Whois service up, but it cured the breaches before ICANN escalated.

ICANN picks comms firm for new gTLDs outreach

The next round of new gTLDs is getting real.

ICANN has selected a communications firm to promote the next round ahead of its launch, and authorized a wedge of cash to pay for it, according to a resolution of the board of directors.

The resolution does not name the firm or the exact amount of money earmarked, because a deal has yet to be signed, but it is worth over $500,000.

In the 2012 round, I believe ICANN worked with long-time PR agency Edelman.

The agency will be responsible for planning the outreach campaign and then executing it over three months ahead of the application window opening, whenever that may be.

The resolution states that ICANN will contract the firm for 50 “instances”, where an instance is a country or industry.

The 2011/2012 outreach campaign came under criticism for not doing enough to entice applications from the global south and emerging economies, something which current ICANN management has said they hope to rectify next time around.

Unstoppable targets another city gTLD with free domains

Alt-root provider Unstoppable Domains has inked another partnership with a city that already has its own gTLD in the authoritative root.

The blockchain domains company said it has linked up with the City of Miami’s Venture Miami project, which encourages tech investment in Miami, to offer $50 in Unstoppable’s alternative domains to anyone attending Miami Dade College or showing up at an event there over the weekend.

For nine out of 10 of Unstoppable’s extensions, that’s enough to buy at least one domain. The company does not charge renewal fees.

It’s the second city recently that Unstoppable has partnered with, following its offer of free domains to all female residents of Abu Dhabi a couple of weeks ago.

In both of these cases, the cities in question already have their own gTLD in the authoritative, functioning, ICANN root. Unstoppable’s extensions, which are largely themed around crytopcurrency, mostly do not function without browser plug-ins.

While .abudhabi has only about a thousand registered domains, .miami, which was acquired from MMX by GoDaddy last year and has the city as a partner, has been more popular, with close to 16,000 names in its zone file currently.

Whether this can be dismissed as more “web3” hype or alt-root snake oil or not, Unstoppable seems to have secured a couple of pretty interesting marketing coups, and it will be interesting to see which city gets targeted next.