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.

Mon 16th May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
How Much is a One Character .CM Domain Name Worth? - We’re about to find out. Just how much is a one character .cm domain name worth? We’ll get a pretty good idea within the next few days. Sedo is currently running an auction consisting exclusively of these short .cm domain names. .Cm is the country code for Cameroon. It was made famous by Kevin Ham’s deal with Cameroon to wildcard the domain in an effort to monetize typos of .com domain names. Then Cameroon decided to sell the domain names off to anyone. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Yep, Paul Stahura’s Donuts is All About New Top Level Domain Names - Another clue about Donuts’ plans. At first I could only make an educated guess that Paul Stahura’s new venture, for which he recently raised $1 million, was about new top level domain names. Then I got confirmation that the company was at least a domain name company thanks to a trademark filing. Now we know for sure. Donuts Inc. COO Richard Tindal just filed comments on the latest new top level domain name guidebook on behalf of the company. That means TL Ventures ... read more ...
Fri 13th May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
How to Avoid Go Daddy’s 60 Day Lock for Whois Changes - An explanation of exactly when Go Daddy puts a transfer lock on domains for making a whois change. It seems that every month someone emails me about how GoDaddy places a 60 day lock when you make certain changes to your whois information. The lock prevents you from transferring the domain name to another registrar. I also get a lot of search visitors searching for information about this lock based on previous stories I’ve written. Yesterday I caught up with ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Olympics and Red Cross Push for Special Rights with New TLDs - GAC backs move by groups to get names added to reserved names lists for new TLDs. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) continues to pester ICANN about giving it special privileges for new top level domain names, and now the American Red Cross is adding its name to the hat as well. IOC’s outside counsel for intellectual property met with ICANN representatives during the ICANN meeting in San Francisco earlier this year, a letter just published on ICANN’s web ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Nooooooooooooooo.com, a Domain You’d Never Type In - A really long domain name but lots of traffic. My wife sent me a link to a funny single use site today, nooooooooooooooo.com. She included the accompanying note: “That’s clearly a domain name you link to. You’d never be able to type that in.” Yep, I’d say that’s a domain name that fails the radio test, spelling test, and just about every other cardinal rule of domain name selection. But the site gets tens of thousands of visits a month according to Compete.com. ... read more ...
Thu 12th May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Priced Domains Can Sell in Go Daddy Auctions, Too - Premium Listings can also sell within Go Daddy Auctions — and at a lower commission. I recently received a sale notice for one of the domains I listed at Go Daddy as a Premium Listing. I assumed it was a standard sale through Go Daddy’s registration path. But a couple days later I got another email and realized the sale was actually on the Go Daddy Auctions site. It was still a fixed price sale based on my Premium Listing price, but occurred through the auction ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Job Boards Launch Another Attack on .Jobs Registry - Monster, CareerBuilder, and others write open letter to ICANN. The .Jobs Charter Compliance Coalition, whose membership consists of online job boards, has sent an “open letter” to ICANN regarding Employ Media’s request for arbitration over .jobs. The Coalition says that its letter is to “address the Request’s numerous inconsistencies, omissions and mischaracterizations” in Employ Media’s request for arbitration. The letter states: The Coalition believes ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tucows Handicaps a Chances of New TLDs Kicking Off In Singapore - Will the new TLD application process finally get approved next month? For a while it looked assured that the new top level domain name applicant guidebook would get the green light at ICANN’s meeting in Singapore this June. But then Lawrence Strickling, head of the NTIA, said he didn’t think this was possible unless ICANN got on board with government demands. So what does Tucows CEO Elliot Noss think the chances are? BMO Capital Markets analyst Thanos Moschopoulos ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Go Daddy Starts Featuring Auctions in Registration Path - More exposure for domains listed on Go Daddy Auctions. Go Daddy has started to show domain names that are listed on its auction platform to users searching for available domain names. For example, if you try to register Branson365.com, you’ll see this: This will drastically increase the exposure domain names on the Go Daddy Auctions platform receive. Not all of the domains I checked that are on Go Daddy Auctions showed up when I searched for the exact domain ... read more ...
Wed 11th May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo Reports Strong Sales Including Closing of Gambling.com for $2.5 Million - A big week with a seven figure sale. Sedo had a strong sales week, headlined by officially closing Gambling.com for $2.5 million. But this sale wasn’t the only one the company had to cheer about as the week included many good five figure sales. One highlight is POW.com, which was sold to Internext Media Corp. for $75,000. Internext Media Corp. is a major search engine advertising company that owns Advertise.com. Here are other notable sales for the week: .com tiempo.com 41900 USD isu.com 23000 USD personalica.com 20000 USD playaresorts.com 12500 USD prfirm.com 12111 EUR absbelt.com 10000 USD svenska.com 10000 EUR cloudstack.com 10000 USD weico.com 10000 USD asztalos.com 9500 EUR inmold.com 7000 USD mutou.com 7000 USD mobile360.com 7000 EUR gamutnews.com 7000 USD kuza.com 6300 USD technosat.com 6000 USD teamtop.com 6000 USD artpix.com 5940 USD renewableelectricity.com 5500 USD safeoffsite.com 5250 USD machiavelli.com 5226 USD aism.com 5000 USD interracialpicture.com 5000 USD cieloazul.com 5000 USD brica.com 5000 USD ccTLDs t.ag 60000 USD want.it 26500 USD poker.org.uk 25000 GBP walk.co.uk 9999 GBP properties.co.nz 8000 USD apostas.pt 6000 EUR gowrings.co.uk 6000 GBP anz.kr 6000 USD recipes.co 5600 USD af.ro 5000 USD employment.de 4750 EUR melrose.co.uk 4450 GBP haier.nl 4425 EUR Other sanfrancisco.net 20000 USD cloudstack.org 7500 USD snakes.net 4999 USD diabetes.pro 4500 USD kfz-versicherungen.net 4500 EUR ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
HootSuite Adds .Li Shorteners But Defends Use of .Ly - Service adds back up URLs but says people need not worry about .ly. That’s wrong. Social networking platform HootSuite has added alternatives to shorteners that use Libya’s country code domain name .ly after users expressed concerns about relying on the Libyan .ly domain name. In addition to Ow.ly and Ht.ly, users can now use Owl.li and Htl.li. .Li is the country code domain name for Liechtenstein. At the same time the company defended the stability of .ly, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Prominent UDRP Defense Attorneys Also Opposed to UDRP Reform - If it ain’t completely broke, don’t risk breaking it. Yesterday I wrote about how World Intellectual Property Forum and National Arbitration Forum are opposed to initiating a UDRP reform effort at WIPO. They aren’t the only ones in this camp. Prominent UDRP defense attorneys John Berryhill and Ari Goldberger also spoke on yesterday’s “State of the UDRP” webinar. And both of them are opposed to an overhaul of UDRP. This is an interesting dynamic. The ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Teen Domainer Wins $10,000 Go Daddy Scholarship - Domain blogger wins $10,000 scholarship from Go Daddy. Brian Diener, who writes the domain blog TeenDomainer.com, has been selected as one of the winners of the Go Daddy .Me Scholarship Program. Go Daddy will pay $10,000 toward Diener’s education at Emory University next fall. On his blog today Diener wrote: I was on godaddy one day buying a domain name when I saw the ad for the scholarship on the bottom of the page, and thought that it was a perfect scholarship ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo Domain Revenue Falls Thanks to Domain Parking - Revenue down as domain parking continues to slide. Sedo Holding’s revenue from its domain name segment fell 6.3% in the first quarter of 2011 compared to the same quarter in 2010, the company disclosed in a financial report (pdf) today. As with results reported in its annual report for last year, the company blames falling domain name parking revenues for the decline. At the end of the first quarter the company was monetizing 6.3 million domain names, down from ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign Monopoly Case Fizzles, No Break for Domainers - CFIT settles with VeriSign for $0. Hopes by domainers that .com prices would fall thanks to an antitrust lawsuit have officially been dashed. VeriSign just released a press release stating that Coalition for ICANN Transparency has agreed to drop a case against it. The lawsuit attacked both VeriSign’s no-bid contract with ICANN that allowed it to raise prices 7% a year as well as its planned domain waitlisting service. Although ultimately CFIT lost, I suspect their ... read more ...
Tue 10th May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Above.com In Settlement Talks with Verizon - Domain company working toward settlement over trademark lawsuit. Above.com is currently in settlement talks with Verizon over a lawsuit brought by Verizon in February, according to court records. Verizon filed the suit against Above.com, parent company Trellian, and some of its key employees back in February. It also served the company during DOMAINfest. The complaint alleges that the defendants use a number of false identities to traffic in trademark-infringing ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Incumbents Opposed to UDRP Reform - Two largest UDRP providers opposed to UDRP reform. The two largest UDRP providers — National Arbitration Forum (NAF) and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) — are opposed to reforming the UDRP at this time. Representatives of NAF and WIPO made statements this morning on an ICANN conference call regarding “The State of the UDRP”. WIPO also released a written statement that you can view here. It seems that intellectual property interests are concerned ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Cleveland Browns Win Browns.com Domain Name - NFL team gets rights to Browns.com domain name. The Cleveland Browns football team just scored a big win off the field. A World Intellectual Property Forum panel awarded the team the domain name Browns.com in arbitration. According to the football franchise, the owner of the domain name used the page as a parked domain name with pay-per-click links to football topics. When the team reached out to the owner of the domain name, the name of the owner in the whois database ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Urgent: Now Intellectual Property Group Wants to Apply New Rights Protections to .Net - Make your voice heard now. (After reading this article I recommend reading more details about what this means.) Earlier this week I wrote about how a draft version of the business constituency’s comments about VeriSign’s renewal of the .net contract requested that uniform rapid suspension be added to .net. Thankfully the business constituency didn’t include that provision in its final comments. But the Intellectual Property Constituency did: Once the post-launch ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Puzzle.com Domain Name Sells for $500,000 - Another big domain name sale to report. Domain name marketplace Afternic has completed the sale of Puzzle.com for a whopping $500,000. It’s unclear if the sale was handled on behalf of a third party seller or Afternic’s parent company. The old whois information for the domain included a Waltham, Massachusetts (the same city where the company is located) post office box and an email address for the BuyDomains brokerage. The buyer is based in Amsterdam. Puzzle.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Confusion About Domain Seizures Spreads After IP Constituency Comments - Commenters confused about domain seizures under URS. The number of comments submitted to ICANN about its proposed renewal agreement with VeriSign to run .net has exploded over the past hour. The source of the comments appears to be a misunderstanding over what the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) proposed in its comments. As I wrote earlier, IPC wants Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) to apply to new top level domain names. I believe the confusion started at ... read more ...
Mon 9th May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New Bob Parsons Video Surfaces - A new Bob Parsons travel video is now online…but no animals lose their lives. A new Bob Parsons travel video has surfaced, but this one won’t be as controversial as his Zimbabwe ones. Parsons traveled to Haiti with his wife Renee to see how the $1 million he has donated since the earthquake was being used. The money was donated to Hope for Haiti, an efficient charity that spends 95% of its money directly to support those in need. Parsons posted the video on his ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameCheap Sued Over WhoisGuard - Company sues NameCheap after it doesn’t disclose identity behind protected whois. I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again — offering whois privacy and proxy services is not free for domain name registrars. Here’s another example. Emergency Essentials, Inc, which caters to end-of-the-worlders by selling emergency and food kits, has sued NameCheap over a domain name registered using its WhoisGuard service (pdf). It’s common for someone to name a domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Watch Out Chevy Volt Fan Sites – GM is on a Prowl - GM wins rights to web site about Chevy Volt. Last year I wrote about GM-Volt.com, a site that was getting over 75,000 visits a month. I warned that using trademarks in your domain name — even as a fan site — is treacherous ground. Indeed, GM just won a case brought before the World Intellectual Property Forum for the domain name ChevyVolt.org. GM said that the site looked like a fan site on the surface, but as you dug deeper it clearly was not: …the website ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Seattle Residents Can Now Opt Out of a Yellow Pages - Save a tree. Kill your phone book. I’ve made fun of the yellow pages — those antiquated bricks of cut trees — for many years. I even registered some domain names related to opting out of receiving the books (which for me go straight into the trash): CancelPhonebooks.com and PhonebookOptOut.com. Now residents of Seattle can opt out of receiving their Yellow Pages. Predictably, the Yellow Pages industry is fighting this in court. This means they don’t care ... read more ...