Registrars say Amazon is “closing” open gTLD

A group comprising some of the largest domain registrars has claimed Amazon is attempting to close off a new gTLD that it previously indicated would be unrestricted.
The 12-strong group, which includes Go Daddy, Network Solutions and Tucows, also claims that the company’s proposal for a “Registration Authentication Platform” is anti-competitive.
The complaints follow Amazon’s filing of a Registry Services Evaluation Process request with ICANN in March.
The RSEP speaks in broad terms about rejigging the conventional domain registration path so that all .moi sales are funneled through Amazon’s registry site, where registrants will have their eligibility verified and then be offered a set of add-on “technology tools” before being bounced back to their chosen registrar.
Amazon hasn’t said who will be eligible to register .moi domains, nor has it explained what technology tools it plans to offer. I expect the tools will include things such as hosting and security, where many registrars currently make money.
Unsurprisingly, many registrars are not happy about these vague proposals.
In a comment (pdf) to the RSEP filed yesterday, they said:

Ultimately, the use of pre-registration verification and “optional” value added services will negatively impact competition. By tying both practices in a TLD, a TLD Operator can create a “captive audience” via the pre-registration verification and then offering optional services. This will effectively bypass the existing registration and purchase process, putting TLD Operator in a privileged position. The TLD is set up to capture customers earned via the Registrars marketing efforts to promote its own tools and services.

It’s not unusual for “sponsored” or “restricted” gTLDs to implement registry-side verification, they admitted, but said that .moi is meant to be “open”.
They wrote:

While this practice is not explicitly prohibited under gTLDs, we believe that post-delegation inclusion of these practices should only be allowed in compelling circumstances because they are, in effect, retroactively “closing” what was applied for and approved to be operated as an open, generic TLD.

Amazon’s application for .moi, like all of its new gTLD applications, is not entirely clear on what the company’s plans are. There’s vague talk about eligibility, but no details and nothing substantial to suggest a tightly restricted zone.
The signatories to the registrar comment represent the majority of registered domain names. They are: Astutium, Blacknight Internet Solutions, Domain.com, EuroDNS, GoDaddy.com, OpenproviderNetEarth One, Key-Systems, Netistrar, Network Solutions, Nordreg, Realtime Register, Tucows Domains.
One registrar, Com Laude, whose sister company Valideus handles Amazon’s gTLD applications, wrote a comment (pdf) expressing the opposite view.
Com Laude says that it’s not unusual for registries to require registry-side verification. It points to .bank, .pharmacy and .travel as examples.
The company also claims that the 12 registrars are in essence complaining about the idea of vertical integration — where registries and registrars are under common ownership — which is already in place at companies such as Uniregistry and Rightside.
Com Laude’s Jeff Neuman wrote:

We do not believe that it is unacceptable for a company like Amazon to do what these other companies have been doing for some time. To apply different standards to Amazon Registry than it does for each of the other vertically integrated entities would single them out for disparate treatment – especially when there is no factual basis to believe that Amazon Registry has not adhered to its vertical integration-related obligations under the Registry Agreement.

What’s going on here, I suspect, is a bit of a proxy war.
Neither Amazon nor the registrars care a great deal about .moi, I think. The gTLD is merely a canary for Amazon’s 30-odd yet-to-be-launched gTLDs. The company has the rights to potentially more attractive strings, including .book, .song and .tunes.
Amazon originally wanted to make these strings “closed generics”, or what ICANN calls “exclusive access” gTLDs, where only Amazon could register names.
It has since disavowed such plans, but still hasn’t said who will be able to register names in its portfolio or how they will prove eligibility.
.moi was not originally identified as a closed generic by ICANN, but it could represent a model for what Amazon plans to do with the rest of its stable.

IWF finds child abuse imagery on new gTLD domains

The Internet Watch Foundation said it found child abuse imagery on new gTLD domain names for the first time in 2015.
The UK-based organization, tasked with identifying and blocking child abuse imagery online, today released its 2015 annual report.
The report says that it found 68,092 unique URLs with this illegal content in the year, spread over 1,991 domains. It says:

Five top level domains (.com .net .ru .org .se) accounted for 91 per cent of all webpages identified as containing child sexual abuse images and videos.

However, it also says that child abuse was found on new gTLDs for the first time.
While the report doesn’t make much of this trend, it should be worrying.
The IWF said it took action on 436 new gTLD domains in 2015, many of which “appeared to have been registered specifically for that purpose”.
While new gTLD names appear to be responsible for a very small percentage of flagged URLs, they seem to be 21% of the total number of domains on which child abuse imagery was found.
This discrepancy may be explained by the fact that 78% of the total abuse URLs were found on free-to-use image hosting sites, probably concentrated in .com.
The IWF added that 138 of the new gTLD domains hosted “disguised” abuse sites. These are sites where illegal content is only shown when visitors arrive from a specific referrer link.
The IWF offers a “Domain Alerts” service to its members, which allows registries and registrars to quickly take down domains confirmed as containing illegal material.
Judging by its member list, not many domain name companies are members.
Members include Go Daddy, ICM Registry, .London Domains, Rightside, Afilias and Nominet.

.sucks “gag order” dropped, approved

Vox Populi, the .sucks registry, has had controversial changes to its registrar contract approved after it softened language some had compared to a “gag order”.
ICANN approved changes to the .suck Registry-Registrar Agreement last week, after receiving no further complaints from registrar stakeholders.
Registrars had been upset by a proposed change that they said would prevent brand-protection registrars from publicly criticizing .sucks:

The purpose of this Agreement is to permit and promote the registration of domain names in the Vox Populi TLDs and to allow Registrar to offer the registration of the Vox Populi TLDs in partnership with Vox Populi. Neither party shall take action to frustrate or impair the purpose of this Agreement.

But Vox has now “clarified” the language to remove the requirement that registrars “promote” .sucks names. The new RRA will say “offer” instead.
Registrars had also complained that the new RRA would have allowed Vox to unilaterally impose new contractual terms with only 15 days notice.
Vox has amended that proposal too, to clarify that changes would come into effect 15 days after ICANN has given its approval.
Vox CEO John Berard told ICANN in a March 18 letter:

VoxPop’s intent was never to alter any material aspect of the Registry Registrar Agreement. Our intent was to clarify legal obligations that already exist in the Agreement, and conform the timeframes for any future amendments with those specified in our ICANN registry contract.

Facebook bought a registrar

Facebook has acquired a domain name registrar, according to its point person in ICANN.
Facebook domain manager Susan Kawaguchi said on tonight’s GNSO Council teleconference, as a matter of disclosure, that Facebook recently acquired a registrar.
Multiple sources say the registrar is RegistrarSEC LLC.
DI records show that RegistrarSEC took over the ICANN registrar accreditation of Focus IP Inc, doing business as AppDetex, on March 26.
RegistrarSEC is led by one of the long-gone founders of brand protection registrar MarkMonitor, Faisal Shah, and Chris Bura, founder of Alldomains.com.
Facebook is one of MarkMonitor’s most prominent clients.
RegistrarSEC is not a conventional registrar. It had just 11 registrations under its IANA ID at the end of 2015.
But its parent was founded in 2013 as primarily a provider of brand protection services focused on the mobile app space.
My guess is that Facebook is interested in RegistrarSEC’s parent’s intellectual property, rather than its registrar.

Did the DotConnectAfrica judge make a big dumb mistake?

The court ruling that granted DotConnectAfrica a preliminary injunction preventing ICANN delegating .africa seems to be based to a large extent on a huge error by the judge.
In explaining why he was allowing DCA v ICANN to proceed, despite DCA’s signing away its right to sue when it filed its new gTLD application, California district judge Gary Klausner seems to have confused DCA with rival .africa applicant ZACR.
In his Tuesday ruling, Klausner said that evidence supports the claim that ICANN was determined to flunk DCA’s application no matter what.
The key evidence, according to the judge, is that the Initial Evaluation of DCA’s application found that it did have enough support from African governments to pass its Geographic Names Review, but that ICANN subsequently reversed that view in Extended Evaluation.
He wrote:

DCA claims that “the process ICANN put Plaintiff through was a sham with a predetermined ending – ICANN’s denial of Plaintiff’s application so that ICANN could steer the gTLD to ZACR.”
…
In support, DCA offers the following evidence. ICANN’s initial evaluation report in July 2013 stated that DCA’s endorsement letters “met all relevant criteria in Section 2.2.1.4.3 of the Applicant Guidebook.” (Bekele Decl. ¶ 40, Ex. 27, ECF No. 17.) After the IRP Decision, ICANN performed a second evaluation on the same information originally submitted by DCA. In the second evaluation, however, ICANN found that the endorsement letters did not meet the same criteria applied in the first evaluation

He later writes:

Despite ICANN’s contention, the evidence presents serious questions pointing in favor of DCA’s argument. First, a March 2013 email from ICC to ICANN stated that ICANN needs to clarify AUC’s endorsements since AUC properly endorsed both DCA and ZACR. (Bekele Decl. ¶ 30, Ex. 19, ECF No. 17.) Subsequently, ICANN’s July 2013 initial evaluation report found that the endorsement letters have “met all relevant criteria in Section 2.2.1.4.3 of the Applicant Guidebook.” (Bekele Decl. ¶ 40, Ex. 27, ECF No. 17.) Because ICANN found DCA’s application passed the geographic names evaluation in the July 2013 initial evaluation report, the Court finds serious questions in DCA’s favor as to whether DCA’s application should have proceeded to the delegation stage following the IRP Decision.

The document “Bekele Decl. ¶ 40, Ex. 27” referred to is exhibit 27 of DCA CEO Sophia Bekele’s March 1 declaration, filed in support of its preliminary injunction motion.
The problem is that that exhibit is not the Initial Evaluation report for DCA’s .africa bid, it’s the IE report for rival ZACR (aka UniForum).
Read it here (pdf).
DCA’s own application never received a scored IE report. At least, one was never published.
It only got this (pdf), which states simply “Overall Initial Evaluation Summary: Incomplete”. That document is dated July 3, 2013, almost two weeks before the ZACR report.
Bekele’s declaration even states that exhibit 27 is the IE report for the ZACR application.
It’s not clear to this non-lawyer how important this pretty basic error is to Klausner’s thinking, but as a layman it looks pretty crucial.
It certainly seems like something that needs to be addressed, given that the apparent misunderstanding plays into both the decision to allow the lawsuit to proceed and the decision that DCA’s complaint may have merit.
Several other exhibits cited in the ruling — including emails from the InterConnect Communications evaluators who carried out the Geographic Names Review — have been redacted by the court.
It’s possible there are smoking guns contained within these censored documents that were more influential on the ruling.
It’s also notable that ICANN is continuing to redact the court documents it publishes on its web site, beyond those filed under seal and censored by the court.

Afilias goes it alone with .green as DotGreen bows out

DotGreen Community has withdrawn from its partnership with Afilias, leaving the registry operating the .green gTLD solo.
The new management means that renewal prices for sunrise names will be slashed, and the size of the premium names list will be reduced.
DotGreen was originally a .green gTLD applicant, but it withdrew its application before the auction, which Afilias subsequently won.
It made a deal with Afilias to run sales and marketing for the domains, with Afilias handling all the technical stuff. The plan was to use profits to help environmental causes.
But Afilias told its registrars in an email this week:

Unfortunately, DotGreen Community has informed us that it is no longer able to discharge these responsibilities, and has turned the sales and marketing responsibilities back over to Afilias.

The gTLD has a new logo and a new website at get.green.
Afilias said it will no longer charge a extra $50 for renewals of sunrise period names.
It also plans to revise its premium names list by November, and will probably reduce the size of the list, releasing names at regular registry prices.
.green domains haven’t exactly been flying off the shelves with DotGreen running marketing.
It went into general availability in March last year but only has about 2,200 names in its zone file.

It’s open season on ICANN as judge rules new gTLD applicants CAN sue

DotConnectAfrica has won a California court ruling that will allow it to continue suing ICANN over its twice-rejected .africa gTLD application.
District judge Gary Klausner ruled yesterday that the litigation waiver all applicants had to sign when they applied may be unenforceable.
“The Court finds substantial questions as to the Release, weighing toward its unenforceability,” he wrote (pdf).
California law says that such waivers cannot stop people being sued for fraud, and fraud is what DCA is alleging, he explained.

DCA alleges that ICANN intended to deny DCA’s application after the IRP proceeding under any pretext and without a legitimate reason.
…
The evidence suggests that ICANN intended to deny DCA’s application based on pretext. Defendants have not introduced any controverting facts. As such, the Court finds serious questions regarding the enforceability of the Release due to California Civil Code § 1668.

The judge granted DCA’s request for a preliminary injunction that will prevent it from delegating .africa to successful applicant ZACR.
ZACR has the backing of the African Union Commission and, per ICANN rules, over 60% of the governments in Africa.
DCA applied for .africa with no government support, but with an AUC letter of support than had already been retracted. The company claims that the AUC was not allowed to withdraw its endorsement under ICANN rules.
But it doesn’t seem to matter what the governments of Africa want. Klausner wrote:

On balance, the Court finds it more prejudicial to the African community, and the international community in general, if the delegation of .Africa is made prior to a determination on the fairness of the process by which it was delegated.

Sorry Africa, no gTLD for you yet!
The case continues…

No, .kids isn’t a community either

DotKids Foundation has comprehensively lost is .kids Community Priority Evaluation.
The company’s CPE results came out at the weekend (pdf), showing a score of 6 out of the 16 available points, a long way short of the 14-point passing score.
Like other “community” new gTLD bids before it, .kids failed because the Economist Intelligence Unit panel decided that the application was an attempt to create a community rather than represent an existing one. It wrote:

The Panel determined that this application refers to a “community” construed to obtain a sought-after generic word as a gTLD string, and that the application is attempting to organize the various groups mentioned in the documentation through a gTLD.

The application scored a big fat 0/4 on the question of whether the community exists and, as a knock-on effect, another 0/4 on whether the .kids string represents the community.
It picked up 3/4 for its registration policies and 3/4 on community endorsement.
The CPE failure means DotKids will have to face rival Amazon at auction, where one imagines the not-for-profit foundation will have a hard time winning.
ICANN’s CPE pipeline currently only has one active application, where Merck KGaA is fighting to avoid an auction with rival Merck Registry Holdings, Inc.
The latter .merck, and Vistaprint’s .webs application, have both also been invited to CPE.

Minds + Machines dumps back-end and registrar in Nominet, Uniregistry deals

Minds + Machines is to get out of the registrar and back-end registry services markets in separate deals with Nominet and Uniregistry.
The cost-saving shake-up will lead to about 10 job losses, or about 25% to 30% of its current headcount, CEO Toby Hall told DI this morning.
Under the Nominet deal, M+M will outsource the back-end registry functions for 28 new gTLDs, currently managed in-house, to the .uk ccTLD manager.
The deal covers all the gTLDs for which M+M is the contracted party (such as .law, .cooking and .fashion), as well as the four it runs in partnership (eg .london) and the five where it currently acts as back-end for a third party registry (eg .broadway).
The company also plans to dump its “unprofitable” registrar entirely, migrating its existing customers to Uniregistry’s Uniregistrar business.
About 49,000 domains will be affected by this move, Hall said.
Uniregistry will pay M+M a commission over the lifetime of the accounts.
Focusing on the registry business was the plan from the moment Hall took over M+M, following a shareholder coup that kicked out founding CEO Antony Van Couvering in January.
Hall told DI:

It [previously] had a very ambitious plan. It wanted to be vertically integrated, but the considered view is there are people out there who are far better able to run parts of the exercise than ourselves, both on the RSP piece and likewise the registrar piece. The strategy from day one was to rapidly evolve into becoming a business-to-business marketing-led registry business and radically overhauling our cost structure at the same time.

The company is currently in a financial quiet period and will not yet disclose the amount of savings it expects to reap, Hall said. He added:

Reducing cost isn’t a strategy for growth, and as a business that will be where we will be judged. Growing our portfolio, growing our domains under management, growing our revenue within those domains. That’s what the business has to be focused on. We see within the industry that the highest value is in the [TLD] ownership part.

The job losses are expected to be largely on the technical side of the house.
The RSP outsourcing means that Nominet significantly boosts its stable of managed TLDs. While it’s in the top five back-ends in terms of DUM (due to the 11 million in .uk) its portfolio of clients there is relatively small, largely limited to a handful of dot-brands.
Nominet CEO Russell Haworth said in a statement:

This partnership takes us into the top tier of registry operators globally by volume of TLDs and compliments the brands we currently manage, such as .BBC, .Bentley and .Comcast. It also underlines our long-term strategy to provide a more diversified range of services to gTLDs and registrars.”

With the Uniregistry registrar deal, Hall said that competing with its own channel “was just not right for us”.
It might be worth noting that Uniregistry is actually a vertically integrated triple-play along the lines of M+M, also, managing its own back-end, registry and registrar businesses.
Hall said that the M+M registrar had sold mainly to domain investors with little interest in buying value-added services such as email and hosting, which is often where much of the profit lies.
Both deals are subject to ICANN approvals, and client approval in case of the back-end transition, will be phased in over many months, and are expected to be finalized by the end of the year.
UPDATE: M+M said later this morning that it is changing its official company domain to mmx.co from mindsandmachines.com.

Rightside offers $10 renewals on premium names

Rightside is to run a promotion that will discount renewals on premium names down to .com prices.
From May 16 to June 30, if you buy any of the domains that Rightside has marked as premium — except the super-premium “Platinum” names — the wholesale renewal fee will be just $10.
Registrars will mark this up according to their own pricing models.
Normally, the price you pay at the checkout is the price you pay every year after that.
The deal is overtly targeted at domainers.
Rightside said: “At these reduced prices, you’ll have more time to find the right buyer for any domains you register, and incur lower fees to transfer to them once you do. If you’re looking to add high-quality domains to your portfolio, this will be the time to do it.”
The reduced renewals only apply to names registered during the six-week window, but they do pass on to subsequent registrants if the domain is sold.
Rightside is calling it a “first-of-its-kind” promo, but in reality it’s just a temporary regression to the once-standard industry model.
Remember, prior to the 2012-round gTLDs, only exceptions like .tv charged premium rates for renewals.
Premium renewals are now very commonplace, but are by no means the rule, in the new gTLD industry.
For Rightside, the offer means the company may experience a brief cash windfall as domainers, who generally hate premium renewals, take a chance on the registry’s names.
There’s also a potential marketing benefit to be gained from having more domainers on board as unpaid salespeople.
But it does rather suggest the premiums are not flying off the shelves at the rate Rightside wants.
The company recently disclosed that in the first few months of the year it made revenue of $674,610 selling 1,820 premium names, leading to an average price of $372. Twelve five-figure names had been sold.
Over its portfolio of 39 gTLDs, Rightside has flagged over 964,000 as premium, or about 25,000 per TLD.