Single-letter .com lawsuit thrown out of court

A domainer trying to lay claim to all remaining unregistered single-character .com and .net domain names has had his lawsuit against ICANN thrown out of court for a third time.

Bryan Tallman of VerandaGlobal.com (dba First Place Internet) reckons he is owed the rights to domains such as 1.com and a.net because he registered the matching second-level domains in the non-Latin versions of both gTLDs.

His original lawsuit, filed two years ago, stated that he paid Verisign, via registrar CSC Global, $25,285 for 1.닷넷 on the understanding that this would give him exclusive rights to 1.com and 1.net, which would be worth many millions of dollars.

.닷넷 is Verisign’s transliteration of .net in the Hangul script. Tallman registered dozens of other single-character Latin domains in internationalized domain name .com/.net transliterated gTLDs, thinking he could later get the .com/.net equivalents.

His argument was pretty flimsy, based primarily not on ICANN policy but on an ambiguously worded letter from Verisign to ICANN.

The first complaint was rejected by the Los Angeles Superior Court in March 2024. Tallman amended his complaint, but this was also thrown out this January. Tallman plodded on, regardless, with a third amended complaint.

This time, the judge has run out of patience. Last month, he threw out the lawsuit entirely, with no leave to amend, saying Tallman did not have standing to sue as he had failed to show that he had any contractual relationship with ICANN at all.

With a few grandfathered exceptions such as x.com, owned by Elon Musk, all single-character .com and .net domain names have been reserved from reservation since the 1990s for stability reasons that are probably no longer particularly applicable.

A move by Verisign to experimentally auction o.com to a motivated buyer fizzled out a few years ago, likely indirectly due to the likely buyer’s relationship to a sexy Russian spy.

Two more dot-brands leave Verisign for GoDaddy

Verisign’s ongoing shedding of its registry back-end services clients continued recently, with two dot-brands moving to GoDaddy Registry.

The two gTLDs are .norton, the anti-virus brand which now belongs to Gen Digital, and .capitalone, the dot-brand for the financial services firm Capital One. Both recently updated their IANA records to show GoDaddy is now the technical contact.

The loss of .norton is perhaps notable because of Verisign’s shared history with the brand. Verisign allowed Symantec, then-owner of the Norton brand, to use the Verisign brand to sell SSL certificates for a few years following a $1.3 billion deal in 2010.

But Verisign has spent the last few years deliberately unloading its registry services clients onto its competitors. Other beneficiaries of this wind-down have included Identity Digital and Nominet.

.com off to strong start in Q3

Verisign’s .com gTLD had a relatively strong showing in the first month of the third quarter, its zone file growing by over half a million domains.

The TLD had 155,946,391 names in its zone at the start of August, up 526,205 names or 0.34% on the start of July.

For comparison, the zone grew by 464,822 names in June, 795,533 in the whole of Q2 and 817,590 in the whole of Q1.

Other strong volume performers in July were cheapo new gTLDs .xyz and .top, which grew by 257,830 domains (5.63%) to 4,840,663 and 224,816 domains (5.2%) to 4,547,051 respectively.

In percentage terms, the biggest growers were .casa, up 82.83% or 14,974 domains to 33,051, .mobi, up 47.05% or 121,174 domains to 378,703 and .help, up 39.55% or 22,513 domains to 79,275.

In raw domain terms, the biggest losers in zone file growth in July were .lol (down 97,718 to 294,656), .sbs (down 42,169 to 839,977) and .bond (down 37,845 to 150,272).

Of the 1,194 TLDs for which I currently have monthly growth stats, about 250 shrank, about 420 grew, and the rest (largely dot-brands or unlaunched generics) were flat.

.com is back as Verisign discounts bear fruit

Verisign’s .com returned to growth in the first quarter after the company offered its registrars marketing programs that substantially discounted the retail price of domains.

The company ended the quarter with 169.8 million .com and .net domains under management, a 777,000-name increase on the end of 2024. It’s the first time it’s reported quarterly DUM growth in almost two years.

While the company did not break out the split between the two TLDs, my records show that .com’s zone file grew by about 800,000 names during the quarter, while .net’s shrank by about 100,000.

Verisign has now upgraded its guidance for DUM growth this year to between a 0.7% decrease and a 0.9% increase, the first time its guidance has had a top-end in positive territory in some time. In February, it guided at between negative 2.3% and negative 0.3%.

The major reason for the reversal of fortunes is the program of discounts that have seen some registrars sell .com domains to customers recently for less than half of the usual $10.26 wholesale price.

“It’s still early, but we do see signs of registrars shifting towards customer acquisition, and we also see more registrar engagement with our marketing programs,” CEO Jim Bidzos said on an earnings call with analysts tonight.

In previous quarters last year, the fact that registrars were focused on squeezing more revenue out of their customers, rather than driving new registrations, was blamed for .com losing DUM.

Bidzos said that sales were up across all three of its core geographic markets — the US, EMEA and Asia-Pacific. On previous calls, North America and China were noted for weaknesses.

If there’s any reason to believe that the guidance is cautious, it’s because of what Bidzos and analysts euphemistically referred to as “the macro”, or “macro-economic situation”.

At this particular point in history, that’s code for US President Donald Trump’s erratic behavior with regard to world trade and tariffs, that has spooked economies globally. It’s not at all clear yet how this crisis might affect the domains market.

Verisign reported net income of $199 million for the quarter, up from $194 million a year ago, on revenue up 4.7% at $402 million. Operating income was up from $259 million to $271 million

The company, which has to date mainly been rewarding investors with share buybacks, has now also started issuing quarterly cash dividends. This quarter, they’re all getting $0.77 per share.

Verisign gave Trump $100,000

Remember January 20, 2025, about a thousand years ago, when Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term as President of the United States?

Remember how the dais at the Capitol rotunda was stacked with tech bros including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook, each of whom had authorized million-dollar donations to the Trump inauguration fund?

You will not have seen Verisign CEO Jim Bidzos among the crowd of VIP supporters, but it turns out that’s probably only because his company didn’t cough up enough cash.

The .com registry operator donated $100,000 to the Trump Vance Inauguration Committee, records published Sunday by the Federal Election Commission show.

I’ve searched the disclosure (pdf) for other deep-pocketed domain industry companies and CEOs but couldn’t find any.

The Verisign donation is only a tenth of the size of donations made by Meta, Google and Cook, and is a drop in the ocean compared to the overall size of the fund, which reports put at an eye-watering $245.3 million.

The aforementioned tech bros were accused at the time of making the donations in order to curry favor with the new administration. Some, such as Meta, have since changed their policies to pander to Trump’s sensibilities.

Verisign’s most critical engagement with the US government comes via its Cooperative Agreement with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the Department of Commerce.

The Cooperative Agreement is the document that cements Verisign’s monopoly over .com and gives it its price-raising powers, currently set at 7% in four out of the six years of the contract’s duration.

The deal was renewed last year and is not due to be renewed under the current Trump administration (unless…). Prices had been frozen for six years under Obama, but Trump reinstated the 7% powers in 2018 during his first term.

But Verisign has also been engaged in talks with the NTIA about downstream pricing — at registrars and domain investors — that have a lot of people worried.

Renewing the agreement last November, the NTIA said that “prices at both the wholesale level and downstream, including prices charged by resellers and substantial markups by warehousers, need to be addressed”.

These talks appear to have stalled due to lack of leadership at NTIA, which is headed by a political appointee. Even 91 days after Trump was inaugurated, the agency does not yet have a confirmed chief.

Adam Cassady, formerly with the Federal Communications Commission, is currently acting assistant secretary, but Trump’s pick as his permanent replacement is Arielle Roth, policy director on the Senate’s commerce committee.

Roth came in for a grilling over suggestions she would use her powers over broadband policy to benefit Elon Musk’s Starlink, but seems to be a shoo-in for confirmation

In Verisign’s most recent earnings call, Bidzos noted that “unregulated retail price increases exceed our wholesale price increases”, adding “we look forward to engaging with our new regulators”.

So what does a hundred grand buy you nowadays? I guess we’ll find out soon.

Regulator going after suicide site that even Epik banned

UK communications regulator Ofcom has opened its first public investigation under the new Online Safety Act, targeting a notorious forum that has been linked to dozens of suicides globally.

The probe demands that the site in question provide evidence that it protects its UK users from illegal or harmful content — in this case “encouraging or assisting suicide”.

Failure to do so could lead to Ofcom fining the site’s owners millions, or seeking court orders to have other companies, such as advertisers or internet service providers, disrupt its business, Ofcom said.

The law is often talked about in the context of large social media companies such as Facebook and TikTok, which are often accused of algorithmically instilling suicide ideation in children, but it applies to any service that allows user-to-user content.

This apparently extends to web forums. Some non-controversial sites have already closed down rather than bear the expense of complying.

The Act doesn’t specifically mention domain registrars and registries as being covered by its provisions, but GoDaddy, for example, certainly seems to think it does. It even reckons its domain search feature might be covered.

Ofcom isn’t naming the suicide site, so I won’t either, but it’s not hard to identify by connecting a few dots.

It uses a domain in Verisign’s .net, currently registered with Cloudflare’s registrar. Both registry and registrar are US companies.

The site in question lost its original .com name in 2021 when Epik — yes, even the controversial, free-speech-loving old Epik under Rob Monster — reportedly thought it was too hot to handle.

The site’s administrators have today called the probe “blatant overreach” and accused Ofcom of a “censorship agenda”. They’re currently begging users for cryptocurrency donations.

Media investigations have linked the site to more than 50 suicide deaths. In some cases, the site’s users reportedly goaded their victims, including some children, to take their own lives.

The admins, knowing the site is a target, have previously said they have back-up domains that they could switch to within minutes if they get shut down.

As .com shrinks, China adds another 1.2 million domains

The Chinese are still registering huge numbers of domain names, just apparently not in .com, new numbers suggest.

The country’s .cn ccTLD grew by more than 1.2 million domains in the second half of 2024 even as .com shrank and new gTLDs grew, according to the latest stats from local registry CNNIC.

The registry said it had 20,823,037 .cn names at the end of the year, which is 1,261,030 more than it reported for the mid-year point and 721,546 more than it had at the end of 2023.

CNNIC publishes its statistical reports twice a year and the numbers often fluctuate wildly. It’s not usual for .cn to gain or lose millions in the space of six months.

It peaked at over 23 million names in June 2020 and has gone as low as 15 million a year later.

The CNNIC report also says that the number of .com domains registered in the country at the end of the year was 7,047,974, down by 877,515 on the 7,925,489 it had at the end of 2023.

Verisign has partly blamed weakness in China for .com’s decline in several recent quarters.

CNNIC also said that the number of new gTLD domains registered in China at the end of 2024 was 3,640,877, up a whopping 1,574,304 on the 2,066,573 it had at the start of the year.

So that’s roughly 2.3 million net new names across .cn and new gTLDs in 2024, as .com lost almost 900,000.

I humbly suggest price is the driving factor here.

If you want to speculatively or nefariously register junk domains you can reasonably expect to find a new gTLD selling for a buck or two on any given day, but Verisign has been increasing its .com prices every year since the pandemic passed.

Verisign has recently started offering promotional discounts to its registrars, an attempt to return to DUM growth, and it looks like it might be working.

.com could return to growth this quarter

Verisign might have some better news for investors and analysts when it delivers its first-quarter financial results — it looks like .com might have turned a corner and returned to growth.

The TLD has added over 540,000 domains to its zone file between the start of the year and February 20, a little over halfway through the quarter, according to the numbers Verisign posts on its web site.

While Q1 has historically been seasonally strong, in the same period of 2024 .com was down by over 63,000 names. Over the whole of 2024, .com’s zone lost 3.7 million domains.

The company recently introduced some registrar marketing programs that CEO Jim Bidzos earlier this month said he was encouraged by. Several registrars have been spotted selling .com first-years for as much as 50% off the regular wholesale price.

Two big registrars — GoDaddy and Squarespace — kicked off expensive ongoing campaigns advertising their web site building services at the February 9 Super Bowl broadcast in the US.

Since the broadcast, .com is up by 186,000 names.

Verisign is currently predicting its domain name base across .com and .net will shrink by between 2.3% and 0.3% for the full year.

Super Bowl a bit of a dud for .com?

Having two of its largest registrars advertising during Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast doesn’t seem to have given Verisign’s declining .com flagship much of a boost.

According to numbers published on the company’s web site, .com has grown by about 30,000 domains in the last two days.

While that’s certainly not to be sniffed it, it’s well within the parameters of a normal day’s operation for .com. The TLD’s zone file shrinks more days than it grows nowadays, but five-figure daily upticks are not uncommon.

GoDaddy and Squarespace both took out 30-second spots during the Super Bowl. Both featured high-profile actors and had high production values, but neither mentioned domain names once.

GoDaddy’s focused on its Airo tool and Squarespace’s… goodness knows what that was all about.

Verisign CEO Jim Bidzos last week told analysts that the two commercials were a sign that its registrar partners are starting to focus more on customer acquisition, which should help .com return to growth.

More gloom predicted for .com

Verisign is predicting more shrinkage at .com and .net in 2025, despite a few notes of optimism from its CEO.

The company said last night that its two flagship gTLDs shrunk by a combined 3.7 million domains in 2024, a 2.1% decrease, as I flagged up a couple weeks ago, and that its growth this year will be between negative 2.3% and negative 0.3%.

The quarterly loss was around 500,000 domains. Verisign ended the quarter with 169 million domains under management.

CEO Jim Bidzos again told analysts that the shrinkage was partly due to weakness in China and partly due to American registrars concentrating on profit margins over customer acquisition.

Growth was positive in the EMEA region, he said, without quantifying it.

Bidzos said that marketing programs the company recently launched show early signs of adoption by registrars, and that he expects registrars to refocus on customer acquisition as part of a cyclical trend.

He pointed to the fact that two registrars — presumably GoDaddy and Squarespace — have taken out pricey Super Bowl TV ads this weekend as an encouraging sign.

He said that Verisign is “considering looking at” applying for new gTLDs next year and is “looking at the potential for applications”.

The company reported Q4 net income of $191 million, down from $265 million a year earlier, on revenue that was up 3.9% at $395 million.

For the full year, Verisign had net income of $786 million versus $818 million in 2023, on revenue that was up 4.3% at $1.56 billion.