Author Archives: DomainNameWire

About DomainNameWire

Domain Name Wire is a blog that deals with the domain name sector. The blog covers a range of domain related topics ranging from issues concerning expiring domains, monetization, domain registries and registrars, ICANN, policy, law etc. The blog began in March, 2005, after Mr. Allemann had dropped out of meetings to become involved in domain portfolio company, iREIT. The project began as a hobby to keep him involved in the domaining business, and then became his full-time business.

Wed 10th October 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
PIR taps Go Daddy to auction 1 and 2 impression .org domain names - .Org registry teams with Go Daddy for auction of short domains. Public Interest Registry (PIR) will auction 42 one and two character .org domain names through Go Daddy, the companies announced today. [Update: it appears eNom is involved as well for a total of 94 domains to be auctioned.] The release of these previously reserved domain names was made possible by a registry amendment and plan approved by ICANN earlier this year. Unlike some other top level domains that ... read more ...
 
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Google and Yahoo .ie domain nameservers temporarily hijacked - Visitors to Google.ie and Yahoo.ie yesterday didn’t get what they were looking for. Yesterday the whois record for Google.ie was temporarily changed, along with its nameservers. Michele Neylon of Blacknight was first to write about the hijacking. The nameservers for Yahoo.ie were also temporarily changed. Who’s to blame? The registry for .ie, IEDR, issued a statement that insinuated that the problem was at the registrar for the domains, Mark Monitor. But Mark ... read more ...
Tue 9th October 2012
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Software association guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking opposite Frank Schilling - WIPO panel rules company filed UDRP “to obtain the disputed domain name at any cost”. A World Intellectual Property Organization panel has found a software company guilty of reverse domain name hijacking in a UDRP filed against one of Frank Schilling’s domain names. The UDRP was filed by MetaQuotes Software Corp. for the domain name MetaTrader.com. Schilling’s company registered the domain prior to MetaQuotes filing for a trademark registration or even copyright ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Doh! Melbourne IT incidentally close down Twitter’s t.co couple shortener - Company placed domain status on hold thanks to phishing complaint. Yesterday Twitter’s t.co link shortener, which it wraps all outgoing links in, went down. Was the culprit some self-proclaimed anonymous user? Or a DDoS? Nope. Domain name registrar Melbourne IT has fessed up to causing the problem. The company, which is the registrar for t.co, admitted to CNET that one of its employees had temporarily taken the t.co domain name offline in response to a phishing ... read more ...
 
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Persona.com survives second UDRP from opposite complainant - Persona.com successfully defended — for the second time. If two completely different complainants file a UDRP against the same domain name, doesn’t that kind of show that it’s a common generic domain? Persona.com was first hit with a UDRP back in 2006 by The Eye Academy of America Ltd. and Total Vision Eye Care Group, P.C. It won the case as the panel determined: The Panel finds that common generic words are open for registration, and thus, Respondent has rights ... read more ...
Mon 8th October 2012
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Afternic scores outrageous domain sales partner with Endurance - Endurance joins Afternic domain sales network. Afternic officially announced today that Endurance International Group has joined the company’s AfternicDLS program. That means customers of Endurance’s various businesses will now see AfternicDLS domain inventory when they search for domains. They’ll also be able to list their domains in Afternic’s system. Endurance is one of the biggest shared hosting and domain registration companies in the world, but it’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Tucows’ Bill Sweetman “uses a force” to lapse DarthVader.com to LucasFilm - Sweetman facilitates LucasFilm getting DarthVader.com domain name. Last month Fusible noticed that LucasFilm was the new owner of DarthVader.com. This morning the story of how that came to be has been released. Tucows vice president Bill Sweetman rescued the domain after it expired and gave it to LucasFilm. I normally don’t reprint press releases, but the humor in this joint release by Tucows and LucasFilm will give you a good chuckle this morning. Here’s the ... read more ...
 
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Directi to relaunch .pw as “professional web” - Country code domain name .pw to be relaunched as generic domain. Directi (see disclosure) today announced plans to rebrand and relaunch the country code domain name .pw to stand for “professional web”. .Pw is the country code for the island country of Palau. Kevin Murphy has some of the backstory including an interview with Directi co-founder Bhavin Turakhia. The domain will be released similar to a traditional top level domain, including a sunrise period for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
New TLD row during TRAFFIC - Panel discusses opportunities for domain investors with new top level domains. The second panel at TRAFFIC in Fort Lauderdale this morning was a session on new TLDs and how they will affect domainers. Panelists were: Michael Berkens and Monte Cahn of Right Of The Dot Mike Mann of Domain Marketplace Dan Schindler of Donuts I thought this was a good mix of panelists. Berkens and Cahn are both .com investors but are betting on the success of new TLDs. Mann is a bit .com ... read more ...
 
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Frank Schilling wins UDRP for DataServ.com - Company files UDRP after $20,000 offer rejected. Frank Schilling’s Name Administration has successfully defended the domain name DataServ.com in a UDRP filed by St. Louis company DataServ, L.L.C. DataServ made offers of $10,000, $15,000 and finally of $20,000, but couldn’t get Shilling to sell. After that it decided to try its hand at UDRP. The offer of $20,000 certainly seems to indicate that DataServ knew it had little basis for filing a UDRP. Here’s how ... read more ...
Fri 5th October 2012
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Verisign files obvious focus for approach of transfering hosting on DNSSEC Domains - Application describes way to change hosting on DNSSEC enabled domains without any downtime. Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) bring all sorts of security benefits, but it can make changing hosting providers more challenging. Verisign has filed a patent for systems and methods for making the process of changing web hosts on a DNSSEC-enabled domain easier (pdf). Here’s the challenge, as the company describes in its application named “Transfer of ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
FacebookIsLikeaChair.com - Facebook registers domain names related to video commemorating 1 billion active user mark. Yesterday Facebook celebrated reaching one billion active monthly users by launching a brand campaign. The first part of the campaign is a video about “things that connect us”. The key prop in the video is chairs. Not a chair as in an empty chair, but how chairs apparently connect us. Other examples in the video are doorbells, airplanes, and bridges. The day before it introduced ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
New Afternic tries to emanate a clarity of community - Completely revamped Afternic.com brings back the sense of community and marketplace. Remember Afternic back in the day? I mean way back in the day. Like around 2000, when the site served as both a marketplace and a popular chat room for domainers (even though they weren’t called that then)? It was a community. An active marketplace. In recent years Afternic became more of a utilitarian device; a tool to list your domains for sale to get them syndicated on other ... read more ...
Thu 4th October 2012
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Company sues to get Reinvention.com domain name - Marketing company claims domain infringes its re:invention mark. An Illinois marketing company called Reinvention, Inc. has sued data sampling company Reinvention, LLC, which owns the Reinvention.com domain name. The brief, five page complaint (pdf) claims that Reinvention, LLC is infringing on Reinvention, Inc’s trademark for “re:invention”. Reinvention, Inc. filed for its trademark last year and it was granted this year. It claims first use in commerce in ... read more ...
 
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Verisign wants obvious on “non-existent domain” research tools - Company files patent application related to NXD data analysis. Verisign has made great strides in opening up its treasure trove of data related to traffic to non-existent domain names (NXD). Now it wants to patent some of its methods. The company filed a patent application (pdf) for “Traffic Like NXDomains” in March last year. The application was just published today. The application explains how its NXD tools benefit domainers: Maintaining and interpreting records ... read more ...
 
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$4M+ GiftCard.com seller is no foreigner to large sheet domain sales - Seller also sold CashBack.com to Microsoft. Yesterday Gift Card Lab announced that it had acquired GiftCard.com for over $4 million in cash and equity. The purchase was not just a domain name; it came with a long running business that also included the 1-800-gift-card vanity number. I confirmed with Gift Card Lab that it paid $4 million in cash and the equity was on top of that. But I also wanted to check in with the seller, Maynard Small. He confirmed that the sale ... read more ...
 
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L.A. association denied possibility to use dot.com bust Kozmo.com’s domain name - Kozmo.com may be defunct but it’s domain registration lives on. In July I wrote about how Los Angeles company Yummy Foods, LLC wanted to relaunch the Kozmo.com delivery brand. Kozmo.com was one of the biggest dot.com busts. It raised around $250 million in order to deliver a pack of gum to your house with no delivery fee. Yummy Foods has two trademarks for “kozmo” for delivery of food and other goods. But despite Kozmo.com going out of business over a decade ... read more ...
Wed 3rd October 2012
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Huge week for finish user domain sales: UFC, USPS, Nuance, etc. - Big names buy domain names this week. All I can say is “wow!”. This was a huge week for end user domain name purchases. I honestly don’t recall a week with this many big names on the list. Many of the buyers are huge companies, ranging from Nuance to Enterprise. There are some other notable names such as United States Postal Service, Ultimate Fighting Championship, and Keith Ferrazzi’s company Ferrazzi Greenlight. It doesn’t stop there, but I can’t mention ... read more ...
Tue 2nd October 2012
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.XXX registry ups ante in online porn corner fight - ICM Registry files counterclaims against online adult entertainment giant. Is it possible to have a monopoly on online porn? That’s part of the argument in a legal fight between porn giant Manwin and .xxx registry ICM registry. Last week ICM Registry filed counterclaims (pdf) against Manwin in response to Manwin’s antitrust lawsuit over .xxx. It’s seeking treble damages on at least $40 million in damages. ICM claims that Manwin grew to dominance with its free ... read more ...
 
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Lean Domain Search adds business name generator (and it’s good) - Tool helps businesses come up with a name. Lean Domain Search, a domain name / web site name idea generator, has launched a new service that generates business names. Much like the existing web site name generator, the new business name generator checks names for domain availability, twitter handle status, and trademarks. So what’s the difference between a domain name generator and a business name generator? It’s subtle but important. Lean Domain Search creator ... read more ...
 
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Go Daddy Auctions sells 30,000+ domains in September - Another month of over 30,000 domain name sales in Go Daddy’s aftermarket. Go Daddy Auctions is reporting over 30,000 domains sold last month. The ticker shows 30,839; the number is typically adjusted upward as final tallies come in. The top reported sale for last month is CashLady.com at $36,000. The domain name was purchased by PDB UK, a payday loans broker in the United Kingdom. Other top sales include: safetygloves.com $22,000 chinaindustry.com $20,540 democraticcapitalism.com $20,000 82.net $17,905 startime.com $15,000 ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Domain registrations grow 12% to 240 million - Base of registered domains continues to grow. The total base of registered domain names increased nearly 12% year over year to 240 million at the end of June, VeriSign announced its its quarterly domain industry brief today. Country code domain name registrations continue to lead the way. There are now over 100 million registered country code domain names, an 18.5% increase over a year. The total base of .com and .net domains, which are managed by VeriSign, increased ... read more ...
Mon 1st October 2012
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Nominet proposes second turn .uk domain names - Hi @Nic and all: The “Sunrise” period has, to my knowledge no legal standing in Court, anywhere; and if an owner of a Trademark happens to miss the window, offered by Nominet, the “registered” owner, has recourse through the UK (or any) Federal Court and the IPO.gov.uk, issued document will win well after the sunrise. Side note 1 Nominet are an appointed Government agency; and where they use the word “Registered” gives you as an official government sanctioned, domain name. ... read more ...
 
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A new Afternic on a approach this week - A completely refreshed Afternic.com will be released this week. On Friday Afternic sent a notice to its registered users that the site is getting a major overhaul sometime this week. When I was at Afternic’s office back in July they gave me a sneak peek of the new system. From what I saw, the new site will be a huge improvement. Both major domain name marketplaces — Afternic and Sedo — were originally built for the old way of selling domain names. Back then ... read more ...
 
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Top 5 domain name stories of Sep 2012 - Patents, the Go Daddy outage, and the French. Here are the top five stories from Domain Name Wire last month, ranked based on page views. Go Daddy patents “announcing a domain name registration on a social website” – Go Daddy got a patent on a way to announce your latest domain name registration on a social networking web site, such as Twitter. (And this post got a lot of traffic from Hacker News.) On day of iPhone 5 announcement, iPhone5.com sits dark – despite ... read more ...