Donuts kicks down .place fences after attempt at innovation

Donuts has made its temporarily restricted gTLD .place unrestricted once again, two years after announcing it would be taking a stab at some technological innovation.

.place has been under lockdown for two years as Donuts planned to use it in “geofencing” applications developed by a startup it had invested in.

Geofencing is the practice of dividing the world up into three dimensional GPS-based chunks, placing those chunks into a registry, then selling them to businesses and others.

The idea was that each .place domain would be linked to a specific geofenced area. Mick could register mickscafe.place and assign the coordinates of his cafe to that domain.

In 2018, Donuts started telling registrars not to sell .place domains until its partner, Geo.Network, had launched its applications. It had invested an undisclosed sum in Geo.Network in 2016, when it was known as GeoFrenzy.

But these applications do not appear to have yet surfaced, and Donuts is now letting anyone register .place names for $10 a pop.

Since the 2018 freeze, the number of registered .place domains has tumbled from about 7,500 to about 3,800. Donuts says it has a 63% renewal rate and that 26% of its names are in active use.

The most-read stories of 2018

Happy 2019!

As we crawl, dark-eyed and slurring, from our festive hibernation, I thought now would be a good time to do a quick reminder of 2018, in the form of a top-10 list of the most-read stories published by DI over the last 12 months.

If not today, then when?

I’ve excluded, as usual, articles that seem to show up prominently in my traffic logs every single day simply because Google seems to think they’ve got porn in them.

Stéphane Van Gelder dies after motorcycle accident

Stéphane Van Gelder was a registrar industry pioneer and long-time ICANN community leader, and his untimely death in a vehicle accident in March came as a great shock to many. The fact that this post was the most-read of the year is not surprising. He is missed by many, and was subsequently posthumously awarded ICANN’s Multistakeholder Ethos Award.

Has the world’s biggest new gTLD registry gone bankrupt?

This speculative post from June came about after I discovered that a court-appointed administrator had taken over ownership of all TLDs in the Famous Four Media portfolio. It later turned out that FFM had in fact been removed by investors in true portfolio owner Domain Venture Partners, which created a new company, GRS Domains, to take over. The full details of this evidently bitter boardroom fight have yet to emerge.

Donuts freezes .place gTLD ahead of new geofencing rules

Perhaps a surprising entry on the list, this story detailed how Donuts had essentially taken .place off the market in preparation for a planned repurposing of the gTLD to tie into the emerging “geofencing” infrastructure. The freeze happened in May, and as far as I can tell .place is still in limbo as the technology back-end is finalized, which may account for this post’s popularity.

ICANN number two Atallah is new CEO of Donuts

Not long after Donuts was acquired by a private equity fund partly controlled by former ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade, I received a tip-off that his former number two, Global Domains Division president Akram Atallah, had been headhunted to be the registry’s new CEO. It was officially confirmed a few hours later, but not before the unwashed hordes (that’s you) had given the DI server something to think about. The perception of a revolving door between ICANN and industry raised eyebrows, including from the US government.

Google’s .app gTLD beats .porn to biggest sunrise yet

Google’s eagerly anticipated .app gTLD hit the market mid-year, and got off to a strong start with a sunrise period beaten only by defensive-heavy .porn. It’s very likely the strongest sunrise period of the 2012 round so far. The TLD has something like 350,000 domains under management today, which for new gTLDs is pretty much a success story.

GoDaddy and DomainTools scrap over Whois access

This story about GoDaddy and DomainTools fighting about whether the latter could get unmitigated access to the former’s Whois database was published in January, long before the full impact of GDPR on Whois privacy was known, and therefore now, with the benefit of hindsight, feels hopelessly naive.

How all 33 European ccTLDs are handling GDPR

Good grief, did I write a “listicle”? To mark the day GDPR came into full effect, I trawled through the web sites, news releases and policy documents of 33 European ccTLDs to see how each registry was planning to comply with the strict new privacy legislation, so you didn’t have to. The results were surprisingly diverse.

Google’s $25 million .app domain finally has a launch date

Remember how I said .app was “eagerly anticipated”? The fact that this post, merely noting the TLD’s launch timetable, hit the top 10 most-read stories for the year is perhaps proof of that.

Facebook clashes with registrars after massive private data request

Many big brands were unhappy with how ICANN and the industry turned off their unfettered Whois access following GDPR, none more so than Facebook, which has been piling pressure on ICANN to force registrars to acquiesce to its data requests. This July story revealed how it had started using a close intermediary called AppDetex to bombard registrars with over-broad disclosure requests. Registrars subsequently fought back, and AppDetex later gave me a demo of its early-stage software. The fight, no doubt, continues.

These 33 people will decide the future of Whois

Another GDPR listicle? In this July post I prepared brief bios of the volunteers selected to work on ICANN’s first Expedited Policy Development Process working group, which is challenged with coming up with a permanent policy solution to GDPR, amenable to all sections of the community. Needless to say, they’re still working on it…

That’s the top 10 most-read articles on DI in 2018. Honorable mentions go to Fight breaks out as Afilias eats Neustar’s Aussie baby, How a single Whois complaint got this registrar shitcanned and Some men at ICANN meetings really are assholes, simply because I like the headlines.

Happy new year to all DI readers. I don’t tell you this nearly regularly enough, but I really do love you all more than words could possibly describe.

Donuts freezes .place gTLD ahead of new geofencing rules

Donuts has taken its .place gTLD temporarily off the market as it repurposes the space as a restricted zone for “geofencing” related uses.
That’s right, the biggest gTLD portfolio play and historically staunch advocate of open gTLDs is actually planning to introduce eligibility requirements into a currently unrestricted TLD.
Details are light ahead of a formal announcement, but I’m told all new .place registrants will have to agree to use their domains for geofencing purposes.
This looks a bit like it could be a taste of the “innovation” we were all promised from the new gTLD program.
Geofencing refers to systems that divide the world up into fenced-off virtual parcels of land based on GPS coordinates, enabling location-based services.
It’s an area Donuts has been looking at for a while, having invested in early-stage geofencing company GeoFrenzy, since rebranded as Geo.Network, two years ago.
While Donuts puts its new .place model in place — ICANN and registrars have been given the heads-up — it should not be possible to register any new .place domains.
Major registrars such as GoDaddy, Namecheap, Uniregistry and Donuts-owned Name.com were not returning results for .place domains on their storefronts when I checked over the weekend.
Other registrars did still appear to be offering the names, but I did not attempt to register one to check whether the sale would complete.
I gather that the new eligibility requirements will not apply retroactively, so anyone who currently owns a .place name will get to keep it on an unrestricted basis.
There are around 7,000 active .place domains currently.

Donuts buys out rival .place gTLD applicant

Donuts has won the .place new gTLD contention set after paying off rival applicant 1589757 Alberta Ltd.
The deal, for an undisclosed sum, was another “cut and choose” affair, similar to deals made with Tucows last August, in which the Canadian company named its price to withdraw and Donuts chose to pay it rather than taking the money itself.
1589757 Alberta has withdrawn its application for .place already.
The deal means Donuts now has 165 new gTLDs that are either live, contracted or uncontested.

Two new gTLD apps pass EE

While the industry’s attention may be focused — rightly — on new gTLD sunrise periods and launch plans, a handful of applicants are still slogging their way through ICANN evaluation.
Two more applications passed Extended Evaluation this week — Locus Analytics’ dot-brand .locus and DotPlace’s .place.
Both had failed Initial Evaluation in 2013 due to a lack of provided financial statements.
While .locus is uncontested and can now proceed to contracting, testing and delegation, .place has also been applied for by Donuts so will presumably be auctioned off.