Registrars CAN charge for Whois, ICANN grudgingly admits

ICANN is powerless to prevent registrars from charging for access to non-public Whois data, the Org has reluctantly admitted.

In a recent advisory, ICANN said it is “concerned” that registrars including Tucows have been charging fees to process requests for data that would otherwise be redacted in the free public Whois.

But it said there’s nothing in the Registrar Accreditation Agreement, specifically the Temporary Specification governing Whois in the post-GDPR world, that bans such services:

While the RAA explicitly requires access to public registration data directory services to be provided free of charge, the Temporary Specification does not specifically address the issue of whether or not a registrar may charge a fee for considering requests for access to redacted registration data.

So basic Whois results, with all the juicy info redacted, has to be free, but registrars can bill organizations who ask for the veil to be lifted. ICANN wrote:

ICANN org is concerned that registrars’ imposition of fees for consideration of requests for access to nonpublic gTLD registration data may pose an access barrier. Access to registration data serves the public interest and contributes to the security and stability of the Internet

The advisory calls out Tucows’ Tiered Access Compliance and Operations system, TACO, as the primary example of a registrar charging for data, but notes that others are too.

Not long after the advisory was published, Tucows posted an article in which it explained that the fees are necessary to cover the cost of the “thousands” of automated requests it has received in the last four years.

Charging fees for compliance with other forms of legal process is not uncommon in the industry, and the vast majority of requests for registration data (approximately 90%) continue to come from commercial litigation interests and relate to suspected intellectual property infringement.

Facebook, now Meta, was at first, and may still well be, a frequent bulk filer.

Tucows said that it “frequently” waives its fees upon request for “single-use requestors and private parties”.

Tucows to reanimate Tucows brand as sales flatten

Tucows has become the latest domain name company to confirm it’s experiencing the post-pandemic blues, and said that it plans to revitalize the Tucows brand.

Reporting basically flat-to-down domain numbers on Thursday night, the company said that it plans to “more closely connect the Tucows parent and the registrar brands” in the coming months.

“For more than two decades, Tucows has been synonymous with domain registration. In the coming months, you will see a stronger connection of the Tucows brand with our registrar properties, with each anchored by the rich heritage of the Tucows name,” Dave Woroch, CEO of Tucows Domains, said in prepared remarks.

It’s not clear what this will entail in practice. The company’s main brands are Hover in retail and OpenSRS and Enom in wholesale, and you’d be hard pressed to find a mention of Tucows on any of their storefronts.

First-quarter domain revenue was “essentially unchanged” from the same period a year ago, at $61.5 million compared to $61.2 million.

Retail domains revenue was down to $9.1 million from $9.2 million. While wholesale revenue was $52.5 million versus $52 million, the increase was driven by value-added services rather than domain revenue, which was basically flat.

The renewal rate was a healthy 81%.

Woroch said that domain transactions “are now settling back in at pre-pandemic levels” after the lockdown bumps experienced over the last two years. He pointed to Verisign’s recent comments to suggest these are industry trends.

Including Tucows non-domains businesses, revenue was up 14% to $81.1 million and there was an overall net loss of $3.0 million compared to a profit of $2.1 million.

Tucows splurges $30 million on Ascio

Tucows has spent almost $30 million on rival channel-focused registrar Ascio Technologies.
The company announced this morning that the $29.44 million deal will add about 1.8 million domains to its portfolio of managed names, along with an extra 500 resellers.
Ascio was generating $4 million of annual EBITDA before the deal closed, Tucows said in a press release, adding:

The Ascio reseller base fits squarely with Tucows’ core customer profile — ISPs, web hosting companies and website builders serving quality businesses that reward outstanding customer service with long-term loyalty.

Ascio has been owned by CSC Digital Brand Services since 2016, when it was acquired as part of a bundle of registrars in the NetNames group.
As a channel play, it was not really a fit with CSC’s core brand-protection market. It is of course a fit with Tucows, which owns OpenSRS.
The deal, which closed yesterday, has reduced choice in the space, which may not sit well with some resellers.

Surprise! Most private Whois look-ups come from Facebook

Facebook is behind almost two-thirds of requests for private Whois data, according to stats published by Tucows this week.
Tucows said that it has received 2,100 requests for Whois data since it started redacting records in the public database when the General Data Protection Regulation came into effect last May.
But 65% of these requests came from Facebook and its proxy, AppDetex, that has been hammering many registrars with Whois requests for months.
AppDetex is an ICANN-accredited brand-protection registrar, which counts Facebook as its primary client. It’s developed a workflow tool that allows it, or its clients, to semi-automatically send out Whois requests to registrars.
It sent at least 9,000 such requests between June and October, and has twice sent data to ICANN complaining about registrars not responding adequately to its requests.
Tucows has arguably been the registrar most vocally opposed to AppDetex’s campaign, accusing it of artificially inflating the number of Whois requests sent to registrars for political reasons.
An ICANN policy working group will soon begin to discuss whether companies such as Facebook, as well as security and law enforcement interests, should be able to get credentials enabling them to access private Whois data.
Tucows notes that it sees spikes in Whois requests coinciding with ICANN meetings.
Tucows said its data shows that 92% of the disclosure requests it has received so far come from “commercial interests”, mostly either trademark or copyright owners.
Of this 92%, 85% were identified as trademark interests, and 76% of those were Facebook.
Law enforcement accounted for 2% of requests, and security researchers 1%, Tucows said.

After price hike, now Tucows drops support for Uniregistry TLDs

Tucows is to drop OpenSRS support for nine Uniregistry gTLDs after the registry announced severe price increases.
The registrar told OpenSRS resellers that it will no longer support .audio, .juegos, .diet, .hiphop, .flowers, .guitars, .hosting, .property and .blackfriday from September 8, the date the increases kick in.
It’s the second major registrar, after GoDaddy, to drop support for Uniregistry TLDs in the wake of the pricing news.
“The decision to discontinue support for these select TLDs was made to protect you and your customers from unknowingly overpaying in a price range well beyond $100 per year,” OpenSRS told its resellers.
It will continue to support seven other Uniregistry gTLDs, including .click and .link, which are seeing more modest price increases and will remain at $50 and under.
While Tucows is a top 10 registrar in most affected TLDs, its domains under management across the nine appears to be under 3,000.
These domains will expire at their scheduled expiry date and OpenSRS will not allow their renewal after the September 8 cut-off. Customers will be able to renew at current prices for one to 10 years, however.
Tucows encouraged its roughly 40,000 resellers to offer to migrate their customers to other TLDs.
Uniregistry revealed its price increases in March, saying moving to a premium-pricing model was necessary to make the gTLDs profitable given the lack of volume.
Pricing for .juegos and .hosting is to go up from under $20 retail to $300. The other seven affected gTLDs will increase from the $10 to $25 range to $100 per year.
After GoDaddy pulled support for Uniregistry TLDs, the registry modified its plan to enable all existing registrations to renew at current prices.
That clearly was not enough for Tucows, which has sent a pretty clear message that it’s not prepared to be the public face of such significant price hikes.

Tucows pays $6.5 million for Melbourne IT’s channel

Canadian registrar Tucows has acquired the reseller network of Australian rival Melbourne IT for up to $6.5 million.
The company said the deal will “add hundreds of resellers and approximately 1.6 million domains under management to Tucows’ OpenSRS wholesale domain business.”
Melbourne IT said that the low-margin business was a “drag” on the performance of its core business as a retail registrar focused on small and medium sized businesses.
The price, the Aussie company said, will be between AUD 8.1 million and AUD 8.5 million, depending on exchange rates. That’s as much as $6.5 million.
Tucows did not disclose the price, saying it was “immaterial”.

Europeans digging new gTLD more than Americans?

Are European registrants more likely to register new gTLD domain names than those in the US and elsewhere?
That’s the view of Tucows, which sees more new gTLD action from its European OpenSRS resellers than it does from others.
In a blog post last week, OpenSRS blogger Gustavo Arruda noted that Americans are still stuck in a .com mindset:

Our European resellers are leading the charge. We expected the European market to be more open to new gTLDs and that prediction proved correct. It’s a market used to ccTLDs so having a couple hundred more new gTLDs was not a big deal.
North American resellers are lagging behind. It continues to be a very .COM-centric market that is still skeptical about too much choice.
South American and Asian resellers complain about the English-centric nature of new gTLDs. A lot of the new gTLDs we have launched do not make sense in these markets so adoption has been slow.

The post came as OpenSRS recorded its 100,000th new gTLD domain sale.
One reason for the Euro-slant in the market could be the relatively good performance of city gTLDs, most of which are European, and which are easily grasped concepts for buyers familiar with ccTLDs.
Hover, Tucows’ retail registrar, is geo-targeting which TLDs it offers visitors. As DI is based in London, I get offered .london domains prominently when searching for domains there.
The only US geo-gTLDs available to date are .vegas and .nyc.

OpenSRS now offering .jobs and .aero

Tucows has started offering .jobs and .aero domain names through its OpenSRS reseller channel.
According to a blog posting, resellers will have to opt in to offering these gTLDs. Prices are $125/year for .jobs and $50/year for .aero.
It’s potentially good news for both registries, particularly .jobs. Both are restricted, sponsored gTLDs, but .jobs has a much less strict set of entry requirements than .aero.
The OpenSRS network has about 11,000 resellers, according to the company, which is largely responsible for Tucows being the third-largest ICANN-accredited registrar by domain volume.

.co enters pricey global sunrise

Trademark holders can from today apply for their brands as .co domain names, even if they do not do business in Colombia.
The second stage of .CO Internet’s sunrise period allows owners of non-Colombian trademarks to apply for their domains through one of 10 chosen launch registrars.
Prices vary from $225 with OpenSRS to $335 through Dotster, with most deals comprising non-refundable application fees plus first-year registration. Go Daddy is charging $299.99 and Network Solutions is charging $279.99.
With the possible exception of .xxx, I’ve got a suspicion that this could be one of the last “generic” TLD launches with such expensive sunrise periods.
It’s quite possible there could be pricing pressure if ICANN quickly approves a few hundred new gTLDs next year. If each charges ~$300 for a pre-launch, it could cause some some registrants to rethink their defensive registration strategies.
The .co sunrise ends June 10. General availability begins July 20.