Jeff Neuman quits Neustar for Valideus

Neustar’s top domain name guy is moving to UK new gTLD consultancy Valideus.
Jeff Neuman, who’s been with Neustar for over 15 years, will become Valideus’ senior vice president for North America, starting this coming Monday, according to Valideus managing director Nick Wood.
I don’t know who’s replacing him at Neustar, where he’s been in charge of the company’s domain name business for the last couple of years, overseeing the company’s business as a registry back-end provider and registry for New York’s .nyc new gTLD.
Neuman was previously Neustar’s longstanding VP of policy, a role which also saw him heavily involved in ICANN’s GNSO Council and Neustar’s application for and launch of .biz, back in 2000.
He’s been quite a pivotal and sometimes outspoken figure over the years.
Valideus is the new gTLD service provider sister company to Com Laude, the brand-focused registrar. It provides application consulting and ongoing registry/registrar management for dot-brand gTLD applicants and registries, Amazon among them.
I gather that Neuman will remain based in the US, as his new job title implies.

NCC buys Open Registry for up to $22.6m — a gTLD registry now owns part of the TMCH

NCC Group has acquired registry back-end provider Open Registry in a deal that could be worth as much as £14.9 million ($22.6 million).
The deal means that NCC, which runs the new gTLD .trust via subsidiary Artemis Internet, now owns a back-end, a registrar and a piece of the Trademark Clearinghouse, in addition to its original core domain business of providing data escrow services to registries.
According to NCC, the acquisition is for a minimum of £7.9 million ($12 million), with the rest to be paid over three years if Open Registry meets performance targets.
Open Registry had revenue of €3.7 million ($4.3 million) in 2014, turning a profit of €15,000 ($17,300).
Its core business is as a back-end provider for new gTLD applicants. It has about 20 on its books, mostly European dot-brands and cities.
Part of the company’s business is CHIP, the Clearinghouse of Intellectual Property, which along with IBM and Deloitte runs the ICANN-sanctioned TMCH, which all new gTLD registries must use in their Sunrise and Trademark Claims launch periods.
It also owns a small registrar, Nexperteam, which has about 8,000 domains under management.
The Benelux company employs eight people.
Open Registry’s founding CEO Jean-Christophe Vignes joined Artemis as head of domain operations in 2013.

.top says Facebook shakedown was just a typo

Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technology, the .top registry, is blaming a typo for a Facebook executive’s claim that it wanted $30,000 or more for facebook.top.
Information provided to the ICANN GNSO Council by Facebook domain manager Susan Kawaguchi yesterday showed that .top wanted RMB 180,000 (currently $29,000) for a trademarked name that previously had been blocked due to ICANN’s name collisions policy.
But Mason Zhang, manager of the registry’s overseas channel division, told DI today that the price is actually RMB 18,000 ($2,900):

We were shocked when seeing that our register price for TMCH protected names like Facebook during Exclusive Registration Period is changed from “eighteen thousand” into what is written, the “one hundred and eighty thousand”.
I think that might be a type mistake from our side, and we checked and we are certain that the price is CNY EIGHTEEN THOUSAND.

The 18,000-yuan sunrise fee is published on the registry’s official web site, as I noted yesterday.
The registry email sent to Facebook is reproduced in this PDF.
I wondered yesterday whether a breakdown in communication may to be blame. Perhaps I was correct.
While $3,000 is still rather high for a defensive registration, it doesn’t stink of extortion quite as badly as $30,000.
Still, it’s moderately good news for Facebook and any other company worried they were going to have to shell out record-breaking prices to defensively register their brands.

New gTLD extortion? Registry asks Facebook for $35,000 to register its brand

More Chinese weirdness, or just plain old trademark owner extortion?
The registry for the new gTLD .top is asking Facebook to cough up $35,000 in order to defensively register one of its trademarks as a .top domain — probably facebook.top — according to a Facebook executive.
The registry’s demand — which some are cautiously likening to “extortion” — is linked to the release of name collision domains in .top, which is due to start happening today.
Nanjing, China-based registry Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technology runs the .top gTLD.
It has been in general availability since November 18 and currently has just shy of 40,000 names in its zone file, making it the 16th-largest new gTLD.
I haven’t checked whether they’re all legitimate buyer registrations, but given the shape the new gTLD industry is in right now I have my doubts.
From today, Jiangsu Bangning is running a month-long “Exclusive Registration Period”, according to ICANN records.
But Facebook domain manager Susan Kawaguchi today complained on an ICANN GNSO Council call that the registry had asked for $4,500 for a Sunrise period registration and now wants an extra RMB 180,000 ($30,000) because the desired domain is on its collisions block-list.
UPDATE: The registry says the price is just RMB 18,000. It blames a typo for the error.
I don’t know for sure what domain Facebook wants — I’ve reached out to Kawaguchi for clarification — but I rather suspect it’s facebook.top, which appeared on the list of 30,205 name collisions that Jiangsu Bangning was obliged by ICANN to block.
Name collisions are domains that were already receiving traffic prior to the launch of the new gTLD program. ICANN forces registries to block them for a minimum of 90 days in order to mitigate potential security risks.
According to the registry’s web site, Sunrise registrations cost RMB 18,000 per name per year. That’s about $3,000 a year for a defensive registration, a ridiculously high sum when compared to most new gTLDs.
There’s no mention on its site that I can find of the additional RMB 180,000 collision release fee, but Kawaguchi forwarded an email to the GNSO Council that strongly suggests that trademark owners with brands on the .top collisions list face the inexplicable extra $30,000.
Sunrise prices, just like regular general availability prices, are not controlled by ICANN in new gTLDs.
There are no rules I’m aware of governing pricing for collision names, nor am I aware of any registry costs that could justify a $30,000 fee to register one. A premium generic string may be worth that much, but asking that amount for a trademark smacks of extortion.
So, assuming this isn’t just a breakdown of communication, is the registry trying to screw Facebook in a targeted fashion, knowing it has deep pockets and a cybersquatting target painted on its back, or is it applying a $30,000 fee to every domain coming off its collisions list this week?
Facebook isn’t the only big tech company with its primary trademark on the list — Microsoft, Google, Twitter and Amazon also appear on it, along with many other famous brands.
Kawaguchi said she’s taken her complaint to ICANN Compliance.

Here’s how the new number two new gTLD got so big so quick

Attentive DI readers will recall my journalistic meltdown last week, when I tried to figure out how the Chinese new gTLD .网址 managed to hit #2 in the new gTLD zone file size league table, apparently shifting a quarter of a million names in a week.
Well, after conversations with well-placed sources here at NamesCon in Las Vegas this week, I’ve figured it out.
.网址 is the Chinese for “.url”.
Its rapid growth — hitting 352,000 names today — can be attributed primarily to two factors.
First, these weren’t regular sales. The registry, Knet, which acquired original applicant Hu Yi last year, operates a keyword-based navigation system in China that predates Chinese-script gTLDs.
The company has simply grandfathered its keyword customers into .网址, I’m told.
The keyword system allows Latin-script domains too, which explains the large number of western brands that appear in the .网址 zone.
The second reason for the huge bump is the fact that many of the domains are essentially duplicates.
Chinese script has “traditional” and “simplified” characters, and in many cases domains in .网址 are simply the traditional equivalents of the simplified versions.
I understand that these duplicates may account for something like 30% of the zone file.
I’ve been unable to figure out definitively why the .网址 Whois database appeared to be so borked.
As I noted last week, every domain in the .网址 space had a Knet email address listed in its registrant, admin and technical contact fields.
It seems that Knet was substituting the original email addresses with its own when Whois queries were made over port 43, rather than via its own web site.
Its own Whois site (which doesn’t work for me) returned the genuine email addresses, but third-party Whois services such as DomainTools and ICANN returned the bogus data.
Whether Knet did this by accident or design, I don’t know, but it would have almost certainly have been a violation of its contractual commitments under its ICANN Registry Agreement.
However, as of today, third-party Whois tools are now returning the genuine Whois records, so whatever the reason was, it appears to be no longer an issue.

Vegas.club sells for $100,000

.CLUB Domains said today it has sold the domain vegas.club for $100,000, and will help in its promotion as a members-only site for deals related to Las Vegas.
The deal was announced here at the NamesCon conference at the Tropicana hotel in Vegas.
The buyer is One Degree World Systems, a local company that develops booking sites for tourist destination cities worldwide.
I’m not sure the deal would be reportable as a straightforward domain-only sale, given that .CLUB said the companies have a “partnership” to develop the domain.
According to a company press release, the upcoming site will offer “members-only deals on nightclubs, hotels, shows, attractions and tours as well as concierge services, VIP status at local attractions, and white glove services like personal assistants on the ground, butler and nanny services and more.”
.CLUB had a similar relationship with its first big anchor tenant, the rapper 50 Cent, for the fan site 50inda.club.
It’s the second .club name the registry has sold for a six-figure sum. It sold coffee.club, also for $100,000, last year.
Right Of The Dot helped broker the vegas.club deal, the registry said.

The new massive number two new gTLD has me paralyzed with confusion

The Chinese-script gTLD .网址 powered to the number two spot in the new gTLD rankings by zone file size this week, but it’s doing some things very strangely.
.网址 is Chinese for “.site”, “.url” or “.webaddress”.
The registry is Hu Yi Global, ostensibly a Hong Kong-based registrar but, judging by IANA’s records, actually part of its Beijing-based back-end Knet.
I’m going to come out and admit it: even after a few hours research I still don’t know a heck of a lot about these guys. The language barrier has got me, and the data is just weird.
These are the things I can tell you:

• .网址 has 352,727 domains in its zone file today, up by about a quarter of a million names since the start of the week.
• The names all seem to be using knet.cn name servers
• I don’t think any of them resolve on the web. I tried loads and couldn’t find so much as a parking page. Google is only aware of about eight resolving .网址 pages.
• They all seem to have been registered via the same Chinese registrar, which goes by the name of ZDNS (also providing DNS for the TLD itself).
• They all seem to be registered with “nameinfo@knet.com” in the email address field for the registrant, admin and technical contacts in Whois, even when the registrants are different.
• That’s even true for dozens of famous trademarks I checked — whether it’s the Bank of China or Alexander McQueen, they’re all using nameinfo@knet.cn as their email address.
• I’ve been unable to find a Whois record with a completed Registrant Organization field.
• Nobody seems to be selling these things. ZDNS (officially Internet Domain Name System Beijing Engineering Research Center) is apparently the only registrar to sell any so far and its web site doesn’t say a damn thing about .网址. The registry’s official nic.网址 site doesn’t even have any information about how to buy one either.
• ZDNS hasn’t sold a single domain in any other gTLD.
• News reports in China, linked to from the registry’s web site, boast about how .网址 is the biggest IDN TLD out there.

So what’s going on here? Are we looking at a Chinese .xyz? A bunch of registry-reserved names? A seriously borked Whois?
Don’t expect any answers from DI today on this one. I’ve been staring at Chinese characters for hours and my brain is addled.
I give up. You tell me.

.reise is first live new gTLD to hit the auction block

German domain registry Dotreise has become the first company to reveal that it wants to sell off a new gTLD.
Innovative Auctions is to handle an auction on February 27 at which Dotreise will attempt to unload the unwanted string, it emerged this evening.
The word “reise” is German for “travel”.
The gTLD has failed to capture much interest since it launched. As of today, it has just 1,254 domains in its zone file, about 1,000 of which were registered in its first week of general availability last August.
At launch, it had just a handful of registrars. Only four registrars sold more than 100 names in August.
It’s currently a relatively big-ticket TLD, which may account for the low sales. It retails for about $170 to $180 at United-Domains, the registrar that has shifted the most .reise names to date.
That would put revenue for .reise at under a quarter of a million dollars a year, based on its current volume, I guess.
It competes with Donuts’ .reisen, which has pretty much the same meaning but has been available a month longer and retails for under $25 a year; .reisen has a slightly bigger zone file, at 3,839 domains.
According to Innovative, the company behind Applicant Auction, which helps settle new gTLD contention sets with auctions:

The .REISE TLA will be a simultaneous ascending clock auction, similar to the format of the Applicant Auction. There will be no buyer commission for this auction, so no additional fees – you just pay the winning price if you win.

It’s a one-day auction.
Innovative had planned to auction off multiple live gTLDs in October, but was hit by delays.

Fatal timeout? A dozen dot-brands procrastinating to death

Over a dozen new gTLD applications have been iced because the applicants couldn’t or wouldn’t talk to ICANN about signing contracts before their deadlines.
Volvo and PricewaterhouseCoopers are among the 13 dot-brand applicants whose $185,000+ investments could vanish in a puff of smoke because they can’t bring themselves to sign on the dotted line, I’ve discovered.
The following gTLD applications, filed by 10 different companies, are no longer active because of contracting problems:

.select, .compare, .axis, .origins, .changiairport, .nissay, .lamer, .clinique, .pwc, .volvo, .amp, .招聘 (Chinese “.recruitment”), .wilmar

They’re all uncontested applications. They’re also all, with the exception of .招聘, envisaged having single-registrant policies (dot-brands, in other words).
All had their apps flagged by ICANN as “Will Not Proceed” in the new gTLD process late last year, having failed to sign or start negotiating their Registry Agreements in time.
Under program rules, applicants originally had nine months from the day they were invited to contract with ICANN in which to sign their RAs.
After protests from dot-brand applicants planning to sign up for so-called “Spec 13” code of conduct exemptions, ICANN last June gave such applicants an extension until July 2015, as long as they hit a September 1 deadline to respond to ICANN’s overtures.
Applicants that did not request an extension had an October 29 deadline to sign their RAs.
According to an ICANN spokesperson, a failure to hit such “interim milestones” disqualifies applicants from signing RAs.
It’s not entirely clear from the Applicant Guidebook how applicants can extricate themselves from this limbo state without withdrawing their applications, but ICANN assures us it is possible.
“Will not Proceed is not a final status,” the spokesperson cautioned. “But they are currently not eligible to sign the RA with ICANN. But if that status changes, we’ll update it accordingly on the site.”
Withdrawals would qualify the applicants for a 35% refund on their application fees, he confirmed.

Afilias cancels $100m London IPO

Afilias has cancelled its planned London Stock Exchange IPO due to “market conditions”.
It seems to be a cancellation, rather than a postponement, according to a company spokesperson.
“The final decision to cancel the IPO was based on market conditions at the time,” she told DI today.
No additional information was available, but I suspect the company was not able to drum up sufficient interest, at its target price, from institutional investors in the two-week period between its IPO filing and its due date.
Afilias said on October 28 that it planned to raise approximately $100 million selling shares on London’s Alternative Investment Market.
The flotation was expected to take place November 12, but that date came and went with no action.
AIM is currently the home of rival TLD registries CentralNic and Minds + Machines, neither of which saw any particular share price problems during that two-week window.
Afilias had revenue of $77.6 million in 2013, making an operating profit of $30.4 million and $45 million in operating cash flow, largely from selling .info and .mobi domain names.
The company is the back-end provider for almost 50 live 2012-round new gTLDs and has a couple hundred more deals with applicants whose strings have not yet been delegated.