Bye-bye .boomer! Blockchain players abandon new gTLD plans

A dozen organizations that were planning to apply to ICANN for a new gTLD next year have abandoned their ambitions.

Unstoppable Domains said recently that 12 partners offering blockchain-based alt-TLDs have confirmed they no longer expect to apply for a matching gTLD when the Next Round opens next year.

The affected blockchain extensions are: .bald, .basenji (formerly .benji), .bay, .boomer, .calicoin, .caw, .cgai, .donut, .mery, .mumu, .nibi and .pendle.

Because some buyers may have hoped to grab the matching DNS domain if and when the matching gTLD got delegated, Unstoppable said it will offer refunds to anyone who registered a name in any of these extensions.

It’s also added “Applying to ICANN 2026” and “Not applying to ICANN 2026” tags to search results on its storefront.

The refunds don’t apply to alt-TLDs that could never have applied to ICANN because the string breaks the rules in some way (for example being numeric or too short).

Comment Tagged: blockchain, ICANN, new gTLDs, unstoppable

Decades-old US registrar gets a spanking

ICANN Compliance has filed a wide-ranging breach notice against an American registrar that’s been accredited for over 20 years.

Cincinnati-based Netdorm, which does business as DnsExit.com, has been handed a long list of alleged contract violations and an October 16 deadline to fix things or risk termination.

As we’ve seen regularly recently, the registrar’s apparent failures to carry out the technical migrations from Whois to RDAP and from NCC Group to DENIC for escrow services are the biggest of ICANN’s concerns.

Netdorm is also past-due on its fees and has a long checklist of administrative and transparency failures, according to the Compliance breach notice.

Despite being accredited since 2004, the company has been chugging along with fewer than 6,000 gTLD domains under management for many years. It gives away third-level subdomains for free and claims to run over a million of them.

Comment Tagged: breach, compliance, dnsexit, ICANN, netdorm

love.you sold in apparent five-figure deal

The domain name love.you has been sold by Amazon Registry for what was probably more than $30,000, during what so far has been a bit of a disappointing launch for the .you gTLD.

love.you is the only domain currently showing up in .you’s zone file that has a creation date after 1300 UTC on September 25, the moment Amazon opened its latest Early Access Periods.

It was registered about half an hour after the EAP opened last Thursday.

The first-day EAP application fee was $10,000. If love.you was listed as a top-tier premium domain, which seems likely, that would have added an extra $20,000 to the sale price, and that’s before registrar 101domain applied its retail markup.

It’s the only EAP registration in .you so far, judging by the zone. Amazon is currently also running EAPs for .talk and .fast, but zone files suggest it hasn’t made any sales in those gTLDs yet.

The three TLDs are having unusually long EAPs — 11 days versus the usual five — with wholesale prices ranging from $10,000 on day one to $100 on day 11, before premium fees are applied.

Full general availability at standard pricing will begin October 6, with prices likely to be about $20 to $30 a year.

Comment Tagged: .fast, .talk, .you, amazon, eap, new gTLDs

Bogus harassment complaints could get you an ICANN ban

ICANN has made it a lot easier for its community members to file spurious harassment complaints against each other, but has also made it clear it will not put up with such complaints.

A new version of the Community Anti-Harassment Policy has been approved and is now in effect, with some new text arguably creating a chilling social minefield where a simple cultural faux pas could lead to formal disciplinary action.

But it also warns against “submitting vexatious and/or spurious complaints”, saying such complainants could wind up with the same penalties as those found to have actually engaged in harassment.

Punishments include everything from a demand for a verbal apology to a lifetime ban from the ICANN community.

The core definition of harassment has been updated to add the word “discriminatory”. It is now: “Harassment is unwelcome, non-consensual, hostile, discriminatory, and/or intimidating conduct.”

The policy continues to state, unchanged: “Conduct does not have to intend to harm, be directed at a specific target, or involve repeated incidents in order for it to be deemed harassment.”

The list of examples of prohibited conduct has been clarified and updated, with some surprising changes.

The new policy (pdf), an update to the original 2017 policy (pdf) prohibits “physical assault, or threats” for — bafflingly — the first time. It gives the Ombuds the ability help the recipient of any criminal action coordinate with local police if necessary.

It also now bans “offensive comments”, with “offensive” defined as “any language, actions, or imagery that cause hurt, discomfort, or distress to an individual or group, particularly when demeaning, disrespectful, or discriminatory”.

The new policy also makes it clear that its jurisdiction extends outside the windowless walls of ICANN meeting venues, in particular to “dinners or social gatherings in connection with an ICANN Public Meeting”.

It now also bans “micro-aggressive or passive-aggressive remarks that reinforce stereotypes”. This could be worrying, given that ICANN, in typically humorless Californian fashion, considers things like weak handshakes or smiles “microaggressions”.

But the new policy does have a safeguard against overzealous culture warriors filing nonsense complaints for nefarious reasons. It says:

this Policy is not itself to be used for the purposes of retaliation. Persons who abuse this Policy by submitting vexatious and/or spurious complaints or reports shall be dealt with in an appropriate fashion…

A vexatious complaint is one made maliciously, knowingly false, or with the intent to harass, intimidate, or retaliate against another individual.

In all cases, complaints under the policy are handled by the Ombuds, who will attempt to resolve the situation informally between the parties concerned before escalating to any formal punitive actions.

Confidentiality is expected at all stages, but the policy says ICANN Org will be informed if ICANN staff are involved.

Comment Tagged: harassment, ICANN

ICANN slaps open-mic ban on conflicted lawyers

Lawyers who refuse to disclose the identities of their clients should no longer be able to take the mic at ICANN’s regular Public Forum sessions, under a new ban.

The Org’s board has approved a new code of conduct covering people who get involved in policy-making processes or contribute to public discussions, which essentially tells them to reveal their paymasters or go away.

The new code says that “withholding relevant information about the interests involved” could “impair the legitimacy of ICANN’s processes” and that when “disclosure cannot be made, the participant must not participate in ICANN processes or make interventions at ICANN sessions on that issue.”

The new rules mean that if a lawyer working on new gTLD policy is secretly on the payroll of a potential new gTLD applicant, or if a client is working on a patent that could be affected by policy, they should either disclose that relationship or recuse themselves.

The policy has been under development for about a year and a half, following advice from ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee. It was open for public discussion and comment and some suggested changes have been adopted.

Opponents said that sometimes lawyers in private practice are ethically prohibited from revealing their clients’ names, but this was pooh-poohed by others who pointed out that jurisdictions such as the US require similar disclosures from lobbyists.

ICANN already had a code of conduct for volunteers, but it included a carve-out for people claiming professional ethical immunity.

Anyone found to have violated the new code of conduct could find themselves banned from participating in ICANN policy-making processes.

Comment Tagged: code of conduct, conflicts, ICANN, sois

Final GTFO warning for 19 failed new gTLD bids

ICANN is to give eviction notices to the applicants behind 19 failed new gTLD applications from the 2012 round, including Google, Amazon and Identity Digital. The affected strings include .hotel, .shop and .islam.

Fifteen companies are to be told to withdraw their applications within 90 days or forfeit their right to a partial refund of their application fees, under a Termination Procedure approved by ICANN earlier this month.

The affected applications include those for strings that have since been delegated to other applicants, strings that were rejected due to objections from governments, and those that failed because of clashes with ICANN rules.

They also include .corp, .mail and .home, applied for by Google, Amazon, and GMO Registry, which have been banned due to the high risk of name collisions with commonly used behind-the-firewall namespaces.

Eight further applications — for .webs, .web and .gcc — are deemed to have failed but will not immediately get their 90-day warning because they are still involved in legal proceedings.

The absolute minimum amount of refunds at stake here is $703,000 — 20% of the original fees — which would remain in ICANN’s coffers if it remains unclaimed after the deadline.

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Nominet opens $500,000 fund for open source projects

Nominet plans to grant almost half a million dollars worth of funding to DNS-related open source projects.

The .uk registry said it has opened the Nominet DNS Fund, which will make up to £370,000 available to eligible projects in its first year of operation.

In a press release, Nominet explained the need to fund such projects, but the rationale I think can best be encapsulated by this famous xkcd cartoon:

The DNS Fund is intended to thank that broke Nebraskan, assuming their project is DNS-related. Larger projects are also welcome to apply. There is no minimum funding request.

Nominet said that proposals “must benefit the public and respond to core DNS needs”. In addition, all funded source code must be released under a licence approved by the Open Source Initiative or the Free Software Foundation.

A panel of experts from Nominet members, ICANN, Sovereign Tech Agency, Linux Foundation has been assembled to judge the proposals, the first tranche of which must be submitted here by October 26.

Comment Tagged: nominet

Com Laude buys larger rival Markmonitor

Consolidation in the corporate registrar market continued this week, with Com Laude announcing that it is buying longstanding rival Markmonitor for an undisclosed sum.

Markmonitor is being spun out of Newfold Digital, which acquired it for $302.5 million three years ago, with Newfold saying it wanted to “simplify its portfolio” and focus on Network Solutions and Bluehost.

Both companies compete in the brand protection and corporate domain management space, managing domain portfolios and dot-brand gTLDs on behalf of high-value clients.

Markmonitor is the larger registrar by far in terms of gTLD domains under management, with over a million domains at the last count. Com Laude has about a quarter of that number on its accreditation.

Ben Crawford will remain CEO of Com Laude and Stu Homan will remain head of Markmonitor. The company will maintain its offices in Idaho, London, and Tokyo.

Just last week Com Laude said it was acquiring rival new gTLD consultant Fairwinds Partners. Expect to see Com Laude’s fingerprints on a lot of new gTLD applications next year.

1 Comment Tagged: acquisition, com laude, markmonitor, new gTLDs

Epik took down Charlie Kirk doxing site

Epik confirmed that it took down a web site dedicated to doxing people who celebrated the murder of right-wing American podcaster Charlie Kirk.

Epik said it had “removed” the Charlie Kirk Data Foundation — originally titled Expose Charlie’s Murderers — from its platform.

The company said it “will not provide services to anyone who generates credible security threats”.

While the site — originally at charliesmurderers.com before switching to ckdf.org — hosted an unmoderated database of personal information on tens of thousands of people who had allegedly celebrated Kirk’s murder online, Epik seems to have removed it on more technical grounds.

The registrar said the original domain was registered “using false information” in violation of its terms, and that there were “verifiable DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) threats” connected to the site.

Both domains in question are now at Namecheap, though neither resolve to a web site at time of publication and the group’s social media accounts appears to have been dormant for a few days.

Epik was once known as a safe haven for right-wing extremism but has since said it’s turned over a new leaf.

Comment Tagged: epik

Number of subsidized gTLD bidders far lower than thought

A huge number of organizations that started applying to ICANN for subsidized new gTLD applications have apparently pulled out of the program, judging by newly released stats.

As of September 19, 42 would-be applicants had joined the Applicant Support Program, with ICANN stats published yesterday revealing that 30 have been removed compared to last month’s stats because they are “deemed inactive, with 90 or more days of inactivity.”

Last month, there were over 70 reported applicants.

To date, only three have received provisional approval and of those only one has fully progressed through the system. Only one has formally withdrawn from the process.

ASP promises applicants — only non-profits and/or charities so far, though small businesses from the developing world can apply too — 75% to 85% off the expected $227,000 application fee when the next application opens in Q2 next year.

ICANN has faced some criticisms from governments at the lack of applicants so far from under-serviced regions such as South America.

Comment Tagged: applicant support program, asp, ICANN, new gTLDs