FarmVille domain seized from Chinese squatter

Zynga has claimed control of the domain name farmville.co.uk from a Chinese cyberquatter.
The summary decision under Nominet’s Dispute Resolution Service was made July 14, and posted to the Nominet web site today, but the Whois still shows the previous owner.
According to Whois records, the domain was registered July 1, 2009, just a couple of weeks after the popular FarmVille game launched on Facebook.
The domain currently resolves to a Sedo placeholder page.
If this proves anything, it’s that owners of rapidly growing web applications need to keep an eye on their brands in non-core TLDs, because cybersquatters are too.

Short .uk domain landrush opens

Nominet opened the landrush phase of its one and two-character .uk domain names within the last hour.
The landrush will see the remaining 2,640 super-short domains that have not already been claimed by trademark holders start to become available.
It costs £10 ($16) to apply, plus the cost of the registration. All contested domains will head to auction, the proceeds of which will be donated to the Nominet Trust.
The available domains are all in the .co.uk, .me.uk, .net.uk and .org.uk spaces. Restrictions may apply – for example .me.uk domains are reserved for individuals.
The landrush will run until June 15. Uncontested domains will be allocated June 23, at which point all unclaimed domains will be released into the available pool. The auctions will kick off July 20.

NTIA calls for ICANN to “walk the walk”

A US National Telecommunications and Information Administration official today said ICANN needs to prove it can “walk the walk” when it comes to accountability and transparency.
Speaking on a panel at the inaugural Nominet .uk Policy Forum here in London today, NTIA associate administrator Fiona Alexander said it was time for ICANN to “up its game”
On a panel about regulatory systems for the internet, Alexander reiterated US support for the ICANN model, but said that ICANN board too often acts without the consensus of its stakeholders.
Quoting from speeches made by her boss, assistant secretary Larry Strickling, she said the US supports the December recommendations of ICANN’s Accountability and Transparency Review Team.
“The ICANN board has until June to implement these recommendations,” she said.
It wasn’t clear whether that was a slip of the tongue, or an indication that the NTIA plans to hold ICANN’s feet to the fire over its implementation timetable.
The Affirmation of Commitments calls for ICANN to “take action” on the ATRT report by June 30, but ICANN is planning a longer-term roll-out
It has some good reasons for tardiness. Adopting the ATRT-recommended changes to its relationship with the Governmental Advisory Committee, for example, will require more bandwidth than ICANN and the GAC have to offer before the June deadline.
“Governments are only going to want to get more involved, not less,” Alexander said.
The Obama administration has a lot of political capital tied up in the idea of “multistakeholderism” – it’s a model it proposes for other fora – but its would-be poster child, ICANN, has a habit of frequently looking more like a red-headed poster step-child.
“It’s time to up your game,” Alexander said of ICANN, “because this really is the model that we need to work.”

Six short .uk domains sold for $40,000

Nominet has auctioned off six one and two-letter .uk domain names for a total of almost £24,000 ($40,000).
The domains were all sold to trademark holders, for an average of £4,000 ($6,500) each, according to the auction house, NFPAS Auctions.
The domain e.co.uk went to E! Entertainment Television, while u.co.uk was sold to Ubrands.
Of the contested two-letter domains, aa.co.uk was won by American Airlines, presumably beating out other qualified bidders such as the Automobile Association.
Oddly, aa.org.uk went to Andrews & Arnold, an ISP, which already owns aa.net.uk.
Finally, lv.co.uk went to the insurance company Liverpool Victoria, which already owns lv.com, and cc.co.uk went to Country Casuals, a women’s clothing retailer.
A second auction among brand owners, expected to be similarly small, will be held a month from now. The proceeds of both go to the Nominet Trust.
With only a couple hundred single and double character .uk names currently accounted for, hundreds remain for the next stage of the release: landrush.
Nominet plans to announce the details of that phase on Monday.

Nominet gives away 79 more super-short .uk names

Nominet has handed out more single and double-character .uk domain names to holders of intellectual property rights.
The 79 assignments include 4.co.uk, a.co.uk, c.co.uk, j.co.uk and u.co.uk, as well as dozens of two-letter combinations such as bt.org.uk and bq.co.uk.
The domains were given out as the latest stage of Nominet’s roll-out of short domains, to “unregistered rights holders”. Another 99 were assigned to registered rights holders in February.
Where the organization has received more than one application for a domain, it will go to auction, with the proceeds aiding the charitable Nominet Trust.
Nominet says only a “small number” of domains are heading to auction. Whatever remains will be released in a landrush, details of which will be announced on Monday.
Of the domains released so far, o.co.uk, which I previously speculated would go to Overstock, the retailer that recently rebranded as o.co, has not yet been claimed.

Domainer loses 3.org.uk

Domain investor Scott Jones, who managed to secure the domain name 3.org.uk in Nominet’s recent short domain names sunrise period, has lost it due to a trademark claim.
Nominet said in a statement this afternoon:

The domain name 3.org.uk was registered at the end of the Registered Rights Sunrise phase. Following registration, an objection was raised concerning the IP rights provided by the applicant for that domain. This objection has been upheld by CMS, our IP validation rights agency and the domain name has now been made available for registration during the Unregistered Rights Sunrise phase.

I think it’s a safe bet that the objection was filed by 3, the stupidly named British mobile phone company, which does business at three.co.uk.
As I blogged a few weeks ago, Nominet assigned 99 one and two-character .co.uk domain names to trademark holders under the first of two sunrise allocation phases.
Because 3.co.uk was not on that list (pdf), I’m going to assume it was applied for by one than one party. Contested domains from the sunrise are due to go to auction March 15.

99 super-short .uk domains registered

Nominet, the .uk registry, has allocated 99 one and two-letter .uk domain names to trademark holders including the Financial Times and Manchester United.
Most of the companies successfully applying for short .co.uk, .org.uk and .net.uk domains under Nominet’s recently closed sunrise period are household names.
Most also chose to acquire both .org.uk and .co.uk variants of their trademark. Only ten of the single-letter and two of the single-number options were claimed. Yahoo managed to get y.co.uk.
Overstock.com, which is currently branding itself as o.co, did not receive o.co.uk, despite having a trademark on the term, possibly for the reasons I outlined here.
One of the big winners appears to be a domainer. Scott Jones acquired 3.org.uk, s.co.uk, s.org.uk, pc.co.uk and pc.org.uk.
Nominet said: “A small number of contested domains will be involved in an auction phase to determine the successful registrant.”
The first sunrise was for owners of UK registered trademarks. The next round, set to kick off February 14, is for owners of “unregistered” rights.
The full list of domains registered can be downloaded here.

Did Twitter pay $47,000 for Twitter.co.uk?

The domain name twitter.co.uk, which was until recently listed for sale with a £30,000 ($47,000) price tag, is now owned by Twitter.
The domain now redirects visitors to twitter.com, and Whois records last updated a week ago show that it is now registered to the San Francisco-based company.
Until recently, twitter.co.uk led to a page calling itself a “thorn in the side of American imperialism” and containing a lengthy rant about the microblogging service, which The Guardian reported on in 2009.
It also, since April 2010, carried this notice:

This domain is for sale at offers over £30k. This valuation is based on the fact that I devoted 9 months of my life working on my own t.w.i.t.t.e.r. project in 2005. I have offered the domain to Twitter Inc, giving them “first refusal”, and as they turned me down I am now offering it to anyone else who may be interested. Obviously there are limits as to what you would be allowed to do with the domain and you should familiarise yourself with Nominet’s policies and, in particular, its Dispute Resolution Service (DRS)

The previous owner registered the domain in early 2005 for his own legitmate purposes, well before Twitter itself launched, so it was by no means a case of cybersquatting.
The domain would, of course, have been considered untouchable for any sensible domainer.
Nominet, the .uk registry, currently has no record of Twitter ever bringing a complaint to its DRS, so it seems likely that Twitter had to put its hand in its pocket to acquire the domain.
The change seems to have been first noticed by a Twitter user at the weekend. AcornDomains has a discussion.
(Hat tip: @MathewCoUk)

UK domain chief awarded OBE

Lesley Cowley, chief executive of .uk registry Nominet, has been awarded the OBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List, the company has just announced.
She joins singer Annie Lennox, astronaut Piers Sellers, actor Burt Kwuok and hundreds of others in receiving the award this year.
For non-Brits, the OBE, short for Officer of the Order of the British Empire, is a fairly prestigious award dedicated to recognizing public service.
Cowley’s is “for services to the Internet and e.Commerce”.
Some sort of nod was inevitable, given Nominet’s key role in keeping the UK internet running, but I’m slightly surprised it has come so early in her career.
Don’t worry, you won’t have to call her “ma’am” if you see her at the next ICANN meeting, but she will be able to order new business cards with “OBE” after her name.
The full list of New Years Honours recipients can be downloaded from Direct.gov.uk.

Cops seize 1,800 domains in 2010

Nominet helped the UK’s Metropolitan Police seize 1,800 .uk domains during 2010, many of them just prior to Christmas, according to the Met.
The domains all allegedly hosted “bogus” sites that were “either fraudulent or advertising counterfeit goods which failed to materialise”, the Met said.
While a statement from the Police Central e-Crime Unit said it had worked with “registrars” to shut down the domains, it also credited Nominet a role:

The sites are run by organised criminal networks and thought to generate millions of pounds which can then be used to fund further illicit activity.
The preventative action was carried out in partnership with Nominet – the public body for UK domain name registrations – and involved a concentrated effort around the festive period; a time when we traditionally see an upsurge in this type of crime as fraudsters take advantage of the increased number of online consumers.

It’s not the first time the UK police, with Nominet’s aid, have swooped to shut down such domains.
In December 2009, a similar announcement from the PCeU, which said that 1,219 domains had been turned off, was greeted less than warmly by some.
Web hosting companies reportedly often ask for a court order before shutting down sites. When VeriSign helped US law enforcement seize 80+ domains in November, it did so subject to a court order.
It seems domains in the UK may not be subject to such judicial oversight.
Nominet chief executive Lesley Cowley, discussing the December 2009 seizures in a recent interview, would only tell me that the police had “instructed” Nominet to shut down the domains.
According to The Register’s coverage, Nominet used the lack of authentic Whois data as legal cover for those seizures.
But there is a new Nominet policy development process under way, initiated by the UK Serious and Organised Crime Agency, which seeks to amend the standard .uk registrant agreement to give a stronger contractual basis for seizing domains when they appear to break UK law.