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Afilias promises cash for LGBT cause with .lgbt sales

Kevin Murphy, June 30, 2015, Domain Registries

Afilias has promised to donate a slice of .lgbt registration fees to a LGBT organization for the next few months.
The company, which acts as registry for .lgbt, said it will give $20 to the It Gets Better Project for every name registered through October 11.
It Gets Better is a US-based non-profit devoted to supporting LGBT people through their often rough teenage years.
Afilias said the promotion is meant to celebrate the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in the US and Ireland.
The October 11 end date was picked because that is National Coming Out Day in the US.
.lgbt names currently retail for roughly $45 to $60 a year.

First example of .sucks cybersquatting?

Kevin Murphy, June 30, 2015, Domain Registries

The .sucks domain has been generally available for a little over a week now, and I’ve found what may be the first example of somebody attempting to sell one to a brand owner.
amherstcollege.sucks is one of only a handful on non-registry-owned .sucks domains to have a web site already indexed by Google.
The site solicits commentary about Amherst College — a liberal arts university in Massachusetts that owns a US trademark on “Amherst” — but does not yet publish any such criticism.
However, the phrases “AMHERSTCOLLEGE.SUCKS DOMAIN NAME + WEBSITE IS FOR SALE” and “IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN PURCHASING THIS DOMAIN AND WEBSITE CONTACT US” appear prominently on the bare-bones WordPress blog currently running at the site.
The Whois record shows “THIS DOMAIN IS FOR SALE” as the registrant organization.
Under the UDRP, offering a domain for sale is usually considered enough to meet the “bad faith” part of the three-prong cybersquatting test.
I doubt it’s the only example of a .sucks domain matching a brand currently listed for sale by a third-party registrant, but it is the first one showing up in Google.
It’s still early days; the other .sucks domains with sites and a Google presence are a mix of redirects, mirroring and placeholders.
Microsoft-owned microsoft.sucks is one of them. It redirects to a Bing search results page.
The $250-a-year .sucks gTLD, managed by Vox Populi registry, currently has fewer than 5,700 domains in its zone file. Growth has ground almost to a halt over the last few days.

AlpNames claims to be second-largest new gTLD registrar

Kevin Murphy, June 24, 2015, Domain Registrars

A little-known registrar with close ties to Famous Four Media says it is now the second-largest seller of new gTLD domains, after Go Daddy.
AlpNames said it has 500,000 new gTLD domains under management, overtaking Network Solutions into the number-two position.
Its number for February, the last month for which registry reports are available, has the registrar with a DUM of under 50,000.
The vast majority of the names it sells or gives away are in gTLDs in the Famous Four portfolio — namely .science, .party and .webcam.
It’s currently selling those for $0.49 each, a $0.24 markup on the current promotional registry fee.
Factoring out the ICANN transaction fee, AlpNames has a margin of just a few cents per name.
Previously, it has given away .science names for free.
AlpNames is Famous Four’s neighbor in Gibraltar and owns domains such as register.science, indicating a very close relationship between the two companies.

XYZ buys .security and .protection from Symantec

Kevin Murphy, June 24, 2015, Domain Registries

XYZ.com has added .security and .protection to its portfolio of new gTLDs under a private deal with security software maker Symantec.
Symantec originally applied for both as closed generics, but changed its plans when ICANN changed its tune about exclusive access gTLDs.
The company won .security in an auction against Donuts and Defender Security late last year; .protection was uncontested. It lost auctions for .cloud and .antivirus.
Symantec’s .symantec and .norton, both dot-brands, are currently in pre-delegation testing.
XYZ already owns .college, .rent and of course .xyz.
In other news, Afilias has acquired .promo, which was in PDT with applicant Play.Promo Oy, in a private auction.
UPDATE: A couple of hours after this post was published, XYZ announced it has also acquired .theatre, which will compete with Donuts’ .theater, from KBE gTLD Holding Inc.

ICANN bans closed generic gTLDs, for now

Kevin Murphy, June 24, 2015, Domain Policy

ICANN has slapped a de facto ban on so-called “closed generic” gTLDs, at least for the remaining 2012 round applicants.
The ICANN board’s New gTLD Program Committee passed a resolution Sunday that un-freezes the remaining new gTLD applications that envisage a namespace wholly controlled by the applicant.
The affected strings are .hotels, .dvr and .grocery, which are uncontested, as well as .food, .data and .phone, which are contested by one or two other applicants.
The NGPC said five strings are affected, but the ICANN web site currently shows these six.
The resolution allows the contested strings to head to dispute resolution or auction, but makes it clear that “exclusive generic gTLDs” will not be able to sign a registry contract.
Instead, they will either have to withdraw their applications (receiving a partial refund), drop their exclusivity plans, or have their applications carried over to the second new gTLD round.
The GNSO has been asked to develop a policy on closed generics for the second round, which is still probably years away.
It’s not clear whether other applicants would be able to apply for strings that are carried over, potentially making the close generic applicant fight two contention sets.
The NGPC decision comes over two years after the Governmental Advisory Committee advised that closed generics must serve “a public interest goal” or be rejected.
This weekend’s resolution sidesteps the “public interest” question altogether.

URS fight brewing at ICANN 53

Kevin Murphy, June 22, 2015, Domain Registries

Should the Uniform Rapid Suspension process spread from new gTLDs to incumbent gTLDs, possibly including .com?
That’s been the subject of some strong disagreements during the opening weekend of ICANN 53, which formally kicks off in Buenos Aires today.
During sessions of the Generic Names Supporting Organization and the ICANN board and staff, ICANN was accused of trying to circumvent policy-making processes by forcing URS into the .travel, .pro and .cat registry agreements, which are up for renewal.
ICANN executives denied doing any such thing, saying the three registries volunteered to have URS included in their new contracts, which are modeled on the standard new gTLD Registry Agreement.
“It’s just something we’ve suggested and they’ve taken up,” said Cyrus Namazi, ICANN’s vice president of domain name services.
If a registry wants to increase the number of rights protection mechanisms in its gTLD, why not let them, ICANN execs asked, pointing out that loads of new gTLDs have implemented extra RPMs voluntarily.
ICANN admits that it stands to benefit from operational efficiencies when its registry agreements are more uniform.
Opponents pointed out that there’s a difference between Donuts, say, having its bespoke, voluntary Domain Protected Marks List, and bilaterally putting the URS into an enforceable ICANN contract.
URS is not a formal Consensus Policy, they say, unlike UDRP. Consensus Policies apply to all gTLDs, whereas URS was created by ICANN for new gTLDs alone.
Arguably leading the fight against URS osmosis is Phil Corwin, counsel for Internet Commerce Association, which doesn’t want its clients’ vast portfolios of .com domains subject to URS.
He maintained over the weekend that his beef was with the process through which URS was making its way into proposed legacy gTLD contracts.
It shouldn’t be forced upon legacy gTLDs without a Consensus Policy, he said.
While the GNSO, ICANN staff and board spent about an hour talking about “process” over the weekend, it was left to director Chris Disspain to point out that that was basically a smokescreen for an argument about whether the URS should be used in other gTLDs.
He’s right, but the GNSO is split on this issue in unusual ways.
Corwin enjoys the support of the Business Constituency, of which he is a member, in terms of his process criticisms if not his criticisms of RPMs more generally.
ICA does also have backing from some registrars (which bear the support costs of dealing with customers affected by URS), from the pro-registrant Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group, and from groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The Intellectual Property Constituency thinks that the process is just fine — .travel et al can sign up to URS if they want to.
While the registries have not yet put forward a joint position, the IPC’s view has been more or less echoed by Donuts, which owns the largest portfolio of new gTLDs.
The public comment period for the .travel contract ended yesterday. Comments can be read here. Comment periods on .cat and .pro close July 7.

.sucks made millions from sunrise

Kevin Murphy, June 21, 2015, Domain Registries

Vox Populi could have made over $6 million from defensive registrations during its sunrise period.
The company’s first post-sunrise zone file was published today, and according to DI PRO it contains 3,394 domains, the vast majority of which were newly added today.
If all of these names were sunrise registrations, that would add up to an almost $6.8 million windfall for the registry.
However, I don’t think that’s a completely reliable figure. I believe that not all of the names are from sunrise.
The zone file seems to have been generated after .sucks general availability kicked off at a minute after midnight UTC this morning. ICANN publishes zone files around 5am UTC but the time it collects them from registries can vary between TLDs.
Poring over Whois records, I’ve found many examples of domains in the .sucks zone that have creation dates in the early minutes and hours of GA.
Many domains that are not obvious trademarks show creation times in the first 60 seconds of GA, suggesting they were pre-orders and sold for GA prices.
It’s also probable that some sunrise names are not showing up in the zone file yet due to a lack of name servers.
According to a source talking to DI last November, Vox Pop paid “over $3 million” for the right to run .sucks at auction.
It seems to have made its money back — and then some — purely from sunrise fees.
Sunrise names are charged at $1,999 a year by the registry. In GA, most names have a recommended retail price of $250. Strings considered valuable, many of them trademarks, carry a $2,500 “Market Premium” recommended price.

Famous Four following .sucks playbook with premium pricing for brands?

Kevin Murphy, June 21, 2015, Domain Registries

New gTLD registry Famous Four Media has slapped general availability prices of $500 and up on domain names matching famous brands.
The company plans to shortly introduce eight “premium” pricing tiers, ranging from $200 a year to $10,000 a year.
The first to launch, on July 8, will be its “brand protection tier”, which will carry a $498 registry fee.
Famous Four told its registrars that the tier “will provide an additional deterrent to cyber-squatters for well-known brands ensuring that domain names in this tier will not be eligible for price promotions”.
The gTLDs .date, .faith and .review will be first to use the tiered pricing structure.
It’s not entirely clear what brands will be a part of the $498 tier, or how the registry has compiled its list, but registrars have been given the ability to ask for their clients’ trademarks to be included.
I asked Famous Four for clarification a few days ago but have not yet had a response.
While other registries, such as Donuts, used tiered pricing for GA domains, I’m only aware of one other that puts premium prices on brands: .sucks.
Vox Populi has a trademark-heavy list of .sucks domains it calls Market Premium — formerly Sunrise Premium — that carry a $1,999-a-year registry fee.
Unlike Vox Pop, Famous Four does not appear to be planning a subsidy that would make brand-match domains available at much cheaper prices to third parties.
Famous Four’s gTLDs have seen huge growth in the last month or two, largely because it’s been selling domains at a loss.
.science, for example, has over 300,000 registrations — making it the third-largest new gTLD — because Famous Four’s registry fee has been discounted to just $0.25 from May to July.
The same discount applies to .party (over 195,000 names in its zone) and .webcam (over 60,000).
Those three gTLDs account for exactly half of the over 22,000 spam attacks that used new gTLD domains in March and April, according to Architelos’ latest abuse report.
With names available at such cheap prices, it would not be surprising if cybersquatters are abusing these gTLDs as much as the spammers.
Will intellectual property owners believe a $498+ reg fee is a useful deterrent to cybersquatting?
Or will they look upon this move as “predatory”, as they did with .sucks?

Donuts makes private deal with wine-makers

Kevin Murphy, June 21, 2015, Domain Registries

Donuts inked a private side-deal with wine-making regions in order to launch the .wine and .vin new gTLDs
The company signed both Registry Agreements with ICANN late last week, after the wine regions and the European Union stopped complaining.
The EU and regions had filed Cooperative Engagement Process objections with ICANN, saying that Donuts should be forced to protect “geographic indicators” such as Napa Valley and Champagne.
CEPs are often precursors to Independent Review Process complaints, but both were dropped after Donuts came to a private deal.
“The CEP filed by the Wine Regions was withdrawn because we came to a satisfactory private arrangement with the Registry concerned, Donuts,” David Taylor of Hogan Lovells, who represented the wine-making regions, told DI.
Details of the deal have not been disclosed, but Donuts does not appear to have committed to anything that could create compliance problems with ICANN in future.
“It has been a successful negotiation between private parties that avoids policy precedents,” Taylor said. “There are no special changes to these registry agreements (e.g., no new PICs)”
PICs are Public Interest Commitments, enforceable addenda to Registry Agreements that oblige the registry to adhere to extra rules.
So are GIs protected in .wine or not? For now, Taylor won’t say.
“My view is that this is not a victory for either side of the GI debate,” he said. “This is a victory for the wine community (consumers and producers) and ultimately the new gTLD program.”

New DNA social media site highlights “in the wild” domains

Kevin Murphy, June 18, 2015, Domain Services

The Domain Name Association has launched a new web site to show off domains, primarily new gTLD names, that have been spotted “in the wild”.
InTheWild.domains points to a Tumblr blog where members and others can share, for example, photos of billboards or promotional videos that prominently feature new domains.
“Tumblr offers the DNA a very efficient and flexible platform that will help the DNA social media team and you find and post more domains, rather on non-productive management tasks,” the DNA told members.
The site currently has a few dozen posts, such as a WePark.nyc billboard and a VSquared.rocks red carpet video.
Most listed domains are in 2012-round new gTLDs, but there’s a .info, a .us and a .co in there too. I don’t see any .com names.
The submission process appears to be open to everyone, but submissions are moderated by the DNA’s social media people.