Did a sexy Russian spy nerf the o.com auction?

It’s been over three years since Verisign won the right to auction off the domain name o.com for charity, and so far there’s no sign of a sale. Could a pro-Trump conspiracy theorist’s affair with a Russian spy be the reason?

The .com registry operator received permission from ICANN for a one-off auction — a unique exception to the decades-old convention that single-character .com domains are reserved — in March 2019, and that was the last we heard of it.

There’s been no announcement of an auction date, and neither ICANN nor Verisign have mentioned it since.

I asked Verisign a couple of weeks ago what the company’s plans were and at the weekend received the reply: “Thanks for reaching out and your interest is noted. Once there is an update, we will reach back out to you.”

I don’t think I’m getting into conspiracy theory territory to suggest that the reason for the lack of movement is that the domain’s most likely buyer, the man most likely behind Verisign asking ICANN’s permission in the first place, lost his job a few months after the auction was approved.

When in 2017 Verisign filed its request with ICANN it was widely believed to be primarily the result of a pressure campaign by Patrick Byrne, then-CEO of online retailer Overstock.com, that had gone on for over a decade.

Byrne had been nagging Verisign and ICANN to let him register the domain since at least 2004, as this published correspondence (pdf) illustrates.

Former senior ICANN staffer Kurt Pritz later recounted how Byrne “slid a check for $1,000,000 payable to ICANN across my desk” to persuade a then-broke ICANN to release the name, around the same time. The offer was rebuffed.

Byrne’s obsession with o.com continued, but in 2010 he seemed to throw in the towel briefly when Overstock paid relaunching Colombian ccTLD operator .CO Internet a whopping $350,000 for the domain o.co, which Overstock promptly rebranded around.

Overstock even purchased the naming rights to the Oakland Coliseum baseball stadium, which was known as the O.co Coliseum from 2011 to 2016.

But rebranding is always a risk, not least when it’s to an unfamiliar TLD, and Byrne admitted in 2012 that the move had been a huge mistake.

“O.co was my bad call,” Byrne said at the time, adding that “about eight out of 13 people who were trying to visit us through O.co, eight were typing O.com”.

So when Verisign got the nod to sell o.com, you might have expected Byrne to be champing at the bit.

But in August 2019, Byrne quit Overstock after it emerged he had been in a sexual relationship — according to him encouraged by shadowy FBI agents — with a Russian woman half his age convicted in the US of being a spy in 2018.

Byrne admitted the reportedly three-year relationship with Maria Butina, who after her release from US prison became a member of Russia’s parliament with Putin’s United Russia party, in August 2019. It’s a pretty wild story.

He quit his job at Overstock, the company he had founded, at the same time and a month later sold all his stock in the company.

Byrne has since gone on to be a full-time conspiracy theorist, including reportedly being one of several people who, in December 2020, had a bizarre White House meeting in which they attempted to explain to then-President Trump how the 2020 election had been stolen — the birth of the “Big Lie”.

That was reportedly the first time he had met Trump. There’s no evidence I’m aware of that he had the president’s ear while Verisign was asking his administration to lift the price freeze on .com domains, which it did in 2018.

Conspiracies aside, it’s undoubtedly true that Byrne’s resignation means Verisign has lost its most motivated bidder for o.com, so an auction would likely prove disappointing, unless Oprah Winfrey is feeling particularly frivolous.

O.com might be a one-off for Verisign

Verisign today was finally given approval to auction off o.com, the first single-character .com domain to hit the market since the early 1990s.
The ICANN board of directors voted to approve a contractual amendment that will lift the ban on single-character .coms in this instance, but it may not necessarily mean more will be sold in future.
The resolution passed in Japan states that the approval is “limited to the unique circumstances of this particular domain name, and the approval of the amendment does not establish a precedent that applies in other circumstances.”
So if Verisign decides it wants to sell off the remaining 22 one-letter .com domains in future, it’s going to have to go through the same lengthy approval process again, with no guarantee that ICANN will give it the nod.
Still, if the o.com proposal is hunky-dory this time around, I fail to see why ICANN would reject an identical proposal to sell a different domain.
As I explained in a blog post a week ago, Verisign will only get $7.85 a year for the domain, regardless of how many millions it raises.
The rest of the money will be distributed to non-profit causes by an independent third party.
While the auction has already cost Verisign far more money than it will make, it’s a nice PR win for the next time its .com price-raising powers are questioned.
Overstock.com, which has been lobbying ICANN and Verisign for the release of o.com for years is a virtually guaranteed bidder.
Former ICANN bigwig Kurt Pritz said recently that Overstock offered to pay ICANN $1 million to $2 million for the domain (somewhat shadily, it has to be said) over a decade ago.
Other O trademark owners that may show up include sporting goods vendor Oakley and future President of the United States Oprah Winfrey.
I hope bidders have to sign a no-suing covenant, as this is the kind of thing that could easily wind up in court.

Have your say on single-character .com domains

ICANN wants your opinion on its plan to allow Verisign to auction off o.com, with a potential impact on the future release of other single-character .com domain names.
The organization has published a proposed amendment to the .com registry contract and opened it for public comment.
The changes would enable Verisign to sell o.com, while keeping all other currently unallocated single-character names on its reserved list.
The company would not be able to benefit financially from the auction beyond its standard $7.85 reg fee — all funds would be held by an independent third-party entity and distributed to undisclosed non-profit causes.
The arrangement would also see the buyer pay a premium renewal fee of 5% of the initial outlay, doubling the purchase price over the course of 25 years.
They would not be able to resell the domain without selling the registrant company itself.
It’s a pretty convoluted system being proposed, given that there may well end up only being one bidder.
Overstock.com, the online retailer, has been pressuring ICANN and Verisign to release o.com for well over a decade, and the proposed auction seems to be a way to finally shut it up.
The company has a US trademark on O.com, so any other bidder for the name would probably be buying themselves a lawsuit.
The proposed auction system does not address trademark issues — there’s no sunrise period of trademark claims period.
One party already known to be upset about lack of rights protection is First Place Internet, a search engine company that has a US trademark on the number 1.
It told ICANN (pdf) back in January that the o.com deal would “set a dangerous precedent” for future single-character name releases.
The ICANN public comment period, which comes after ICANN received the all-clear from US competition regulators, closes June 20.
As a matter of disclosure, several years ago I briefly acted as a consultant to a third party in support of the Verisign and Overstock positions, but I have no current interest in the situation one way or the other.

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.