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Single-letter .com case back in court

Kevin Murphy, May 1, 2024, Domain Policy

The domainer trying to get his hands on all the remaining single-character .com and .net domain names has re-filed his lawsuit against ICANN.

Bryan Tallman of VerandaGlobal.com (dba First Place Internet) has filed an amended complaint in a California court, after the judge threw out his initial complaint in March. He alleges deceptive trade practices and breach of contract, among other things.

His claim is that he has sole rights to all unregistered single-character .com and .net domains, such as 1.com and a.net, because he’s registered the matching domains in Verisign’s internationalized domain name transliterations, such as the Hebrew קום. or the Korean/Hangul .닷컴.

He paid Verisign, via registrar CSC Global, $25,285 for 1.닷넷 back in 2017 and reckons he was also buying the exclusive rights to 1.com and 1.net. The same arguments applies to the dozens of other ASCII.IDN domains he registered, according to the complaint.

The argument rests almost entirely on a letter (pdf) from Verisign to ICANN in 2013, in which the registry sets out some of its plans for its IDN gTLDs.

The letter is imprecisely worded, to the point where if you squint a bit, drop some acid, and hit your head against the wall a few times, you might be persuaded that Verisign is saying it would be willing to sell the rights to 1.com for 25 grand.

The complaint says this letter is “ICANN policy”, and the rest of its arguments are pretty much based on that incorrect premise.

ICANN has already filed a demurrer, asking the court to throw out the complaint again, largely on the grounds that the letter is not “policy” and ICANN doesn’t have a contract with any of the plaintiffs that it could be accused of breaching anyway.

The latest filings can be found here.

Palestine to release all one-character .ps domains, at a price

Kevin Murphy, December 23, 2019, Domain Registries

In a couple of weeks, you’ll be able to register single-character domains under the Palestinian ccTLD, .ps.
Local registry PNINA, the Palestinian Nation Internet Naming Authority, says that on January 6 at 0800 UTC it will add these names to its premium list, making them available via approved registrars.
Wholesale prices for the first year appear to be $2,000 across the board, with a $500-a-year renewal fee. Registrants can expect to pay more at the registrar check-out.
There are no local presence eligibility requirements under PNINA policy.
While investing in ccTLDs always carries some risk and uncertainty, one imagines that .ps may be riskier than most over the long term. It’s been on the ISO 3166 list of two-letter country codes for 20 years and has been in the root since 2000, but Palestine is not a full member of the United Nations.