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.

Thu 8th December 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New program will bond dots between “rogue web sites” - Company says it will help legal efforts against counterfeit goods sales. As congress debates the Stop Online Piracy Act (STOP) and companies file dozens of lawsuits against counterfeiters, a New York company claims to be developing software to aid in the fight. RogueFinder, LLC is a new company, having just registered its domain name RogueFinder.com a week ago and filing a trademark application around the same time. But its software looks interesting if it achieves ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Frank Schilling and John Berryhill group adult to get RDNH decision - Company files dispute for UDRP in bad faith. Frank Schilling, with the help of attorney John Berryhill, has convinced a UDRP panel that AINS, INC is guilty of reverse domain name hijacking in a dispute over eCase.com. AINS, Inc has a trademark for “ecase” for its software for workflow and case management. It claimed a first use in commerce date of 2009 on its trademark application. Schilling acquired the domain name eCase.com in 2002, so the case had no chance ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
What a infamous UDRP decision - UDRP makes it hard for entrepreneur to start his consulting business. UDRP mostly gets it right. It sometimes gets it wrong. Other times it gets it absolutely, disgracefully wrong. Consider the case of a Minnesota man who wants to set up a consulting firm. He comes up with the reasonable name Fresh Look Consulting, LLC. So he files for his company name with the state on October 3 of this year. Then he registers the domain name FreshLookConsultingLLC.net on October ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign releases DomainCountdown for lapsed domains - .Com and .net registry released more data on expiring domain names. VeriSign has just released a beta of DomainCountdown, a source of data on expiring domain names. DomainCountdown provides a wealth of information about domain names in pending delete status, and some of them are quite fascinating. The baseline data for each domain has to do with NXD data — basically queries to non-existent/non-resolving domain names. VeriSign is in a unique position to capture this ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
How Hall.com picked the name and bought it for $20,000 - Company founder has great message about the importance of (domain) names. Brett Hellman of chat and collaboration company Hall.com today posted an intriguing insight into the company’s naming process. It explains how the company’s initial ideas for names, such as medium.com and foundation.com, were just too expensive. The owners wanted $300k+. Then they decided on Hall.com but couldn’t get in touch with the owner. They settled on halleo.com, but then came to ... read more ...
Wed 7th December 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Jobs foes to ICANN: Hurry up, open up, and get a spine - Coalition calls out ICANN for apparent lack of progress in dealing with Employ Media. The .Jobs Charter Compliance Coalition, a group of job boards opposed to expansion of the .jobs namespace, has sent a letter (pdf) to ICANN’s CEO and Board of Directors asking it to hurry up, open up, and get a spine. Hurry Up The letter admonishes ICANN for an apparent lack of progress in its arbitration proceedings with .jobs registry Employ Media, or at least not updating the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
LiveDrive buys LiveCloud.com for $92,000 and 10 other domain sales - An online storage company makes a big splash in the domain market. This week’s top (reported) end user domain name purchase comes courtesy of cloud storage company LiveDrive. It bought LiveCloud.com for $92,000 via Sedo from Seattle based Groupee, Inc. Here’s a look at ten other end user domain purchases over the past week. All sales occurred at Afternic unless otherwise noted. Barrett Distribution bought a perfect domain in FulfillmentCenters.com for $1,500. Cypress ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Single number .co.uk domains underneath attack - Four single digit .co.uk domain names subject to arbitration. I officially nominate 9.co.uk as the most fascinating domain arbitration of 2011. You may recall that .uk registry Nominet auctioned of its one and two character domain names a couple months ago, bringing in a over 3m. One of the active buyers was XYZ Invest LLC. Shortly after winning the domain name at auction XYZ Invest was hit with a DRS — the .UK equivalent of a UDRP. Apparently similar cases have ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
55,367 .xxx domain names purebred in initial 24 hours - Big numbers in latest top level domain release. I just got an email from ICM Registry about .xxx registration results in the first 24 hours. 55,367 new .xxx domain names were registered. That brings total registrations (including sunrise and landrush) to 159,351 as of noon EST today. Many of these domains won’t resolve, of course — they were registered by non adult companies wishing to block their brands from becoming porn sites. High registration prices of around ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New TLD module has dual hearings on Capitol Hill within one week - Get ready for representatives to pretend like they know about domain names. ICANN and its new top level domain name program will be put under the microscope in Washington, D.C. twice over the next 7 days. Tomorrow morning the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will hold a hearing called “ICANN’s Expansion of Top Level Domains”. As usual, the deck is stacked against ICANN. Three of the five witnesses will be against the program in ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
RickPerry.com now forwards to RonPaul2012.com - Right wingers may end up on libertarian’s web site. As if Rick Perry doesn’t have enough problems in his quest for the white house: RickPerry.com has recently started forwarding to RonPaul2012.com. Rick Perry’s official web site is RickPerry.org. The sad thing for the Perry campaign is that Rick Perry could have easily acquired the .com version for little money. It expired in 2010. I even wrote about how it had expired. Someone from Perry’s office read my ... read more ...
Tue 6th December 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
It’s go-time for .xxx as www.Buy.xxx commercials make a buzz - .XXX opens for registration today. At the time of writing the .xxx domain name launch is just two hours away and the internet is buzzing thanks to an aggressive TV ad campaign. The ads tell visitors to visit www.Buy.xxx, where you’ll find a list of accredited registrars who will sell you a .xxx domain name. But many of those registrars have already closed their queues for the first few hours of today’s launch. Some of them had a deadline of yesterday to pre-order ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Whois privacy. Even a Fortune 500 use it. - It’s hypocritical for large companies to lobby against whois privacy services when they use them as well. Why do so many large companies argue against whois privacy and whois proxy services when they use the same tools themselves? It’s a frequently asked question, one that Kevin Murphy asked again today: Sure, a lot of people hide their whois information for nefarious purposes. But for companies to label all whois privacy as “bad” when they do it themselves ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DomainTools gives spotlight to screenshots with Screenshots.com - Company launches dedicated site for historical screenshots. We all know that DomainTools is a domain name treasure trove. But few people know how extensive the data is. Sometimes the company highlights it with a dedicated site such as DailyChanges.com for nameserver changes. Today it launched Screenshots.com, a standalone site to highlight its historical screenshots of millions of domain names. Any domainer should give the company credit for the great domain name. ... read more ...
Mon 5th December 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Co to lapse to Super Bowl in GoDaddy commercial - .Co to be featured in GoDaddy Super Bowl commercial. The .co top level domain name will get heavy exposure at the Super Bowl for a second year in a row. Today domain name registrar GoDaddy announced that one of its two commercials in next year’s Super Bowl will feature .co. Last year’s .co/GoDaddy commercial tempted viewers to visit GoDaddy.com to find out who the new .co girl was. Despite the young Tabitha Taylor’s body in the commercial, the .co girl turned ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Wave59 guilty of retreat domain name hijacking - Arbitration panel says software company changed dates in UDRP. Stock trading software company Wave59 has been found guilty of attempted reverse domain name hijacking by a National Arbitration Forum panelist over the domain name W59.com. Wave59 originally said that it started using the abbreviated W59 mark in 2009. It has a design trademark that includes W59 in it. After the owner of the domain name pointed out that he registered the domain nearly six years before ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tim Schumacher announces depart from Sedo - Longtime domain industry vet Tim Schumacher is moving on. Sedo announced today that co-founder and CEO Tim Schumacher will be stepping down from the company at the end of January. He will transition to the company’s Board of Directors. Schumacher founded Sedo with three others in 2001 and grew it into a domain sales and parking powerhouse with 1.3 million registered users. In 2007, he was named “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Ernst Young Germany. In 2009 ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The “got milk” loophole - You can own GotMilk domains if… I’ve written before about how “got milk” is a trademark and actively protected by the California Milk Processor Board. Yet the owner of GotMilke.com just handed the group its first ever uniform domain name dispute resolution policy (UDRP) loss. How did he do it? Well, his last name was Milke. Surely the California Milk Processor Board noticed this when it originally sent him a cease desist letter? Just because the registrant’s ... read more ...
Sat 3rd December 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Apparently a lot of people have nonetheless to switch to DNS parking - Google will cut you off at the end of the year. The “deadline” to change your domains parked on Google parking services from URL forwarding to DNS has passed, but apparently a lot of people haven’t made the switch yet. Sedo sent an email out to customers this week encouraging them to comply with the changes. Apparently the final, drop dead deadline is January 1. According to the email, Google tested not monetizing URL forwarded domains for three day in the middle ... read more ...
Fri 2nd December 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Mike Tyson wins heavyweight cyber fight - Tyson gets domain name MikeTyson.com. Knock out! A World Intellectual Property Organization has determined that retired Boxer Mike Tyson should get the domain name MikeTyson.com. The domain name was originally registered in 2001, but it expired in 2004 and was picked up by the current owner. The registrant appears to have gone by the name “In Stealth Mode”, according to historical whois records and a former placeholder on the domain name. The content of the page ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Afilias: Could be 10 years before another new TLD focus turn opens - Registry urges brands to get their act together. With just forty days to go before ICANN opens the application process for new top level domains, Afilias has a warning for brands: this opportunity could be once in a decade. Here’s how it figures this: If you take one of ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom’s numbers for possible applications (4,000) and consider a delegation rate of 500 domains per year, along with other possible delays, it could be a decade. Indeed, it could ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy investment should tighten before finish of year - Investment from big name private equity groups should be completed before the end of the year. A private equity investment by KKR, Silver Lake, and Technology Crossover Ventures in GoDaddy should close by the end of the year, according to Iowa news station KCRG. The deal has finally passed its big regulatory challenge — approval by the People’s Republic of China, the report says. Foreign government approval is important since one of the main points of the investment ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Porn Fight: Manwin says it won’t do business with .xxx domain names - Porn site operator follows up anti-trust suit with competitive threat. Porn purveyor Manwin has taken its battle against the .xxx domain name a step further following its antitrust lawsuit: it’s not going to have anything to do with sites that use the new top level domain. That’s according to a post on XBIZ this afternoon. According to the article: Manwin, with the announcement, has banned all activity between its brands and Internet sites registered with a .XXX ... read more ...
Thu 1st December 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
6 things to do in Dec to make 2012 your best year in domaining - It’s time to set the stage for a successful 2012. There’s just one month left in the year. Rather than settling in for the holidays and vacation, savvy domainers will make December a critical month to set the stage for 2012 — and make it their best ever. Here are 6 things you should do before the end of the year to prep for 2012. 1. Look for end-of-the-year bargains. A lot of hand-to-mouth domainers sell domains in December to raise cash for holiday presents. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Where to find a cheapest .xxx domain pricing - .XXX domain names become available early next week. But you need to reserve now to get the good ones. If you want to register .xxx domain names then you better get your act together. General availability starts December 6. But to get the best domains you’ll need to pre-reserve them with a registrar. They will then submit the registration the moment the registry opens December 6. Many registrars have a pre-registration deadline of December 5. I expect lots of attention ... read more ...