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 15th December 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Registrar Acquired for $22 Million - by Kevin Murphy Indom, a medium-sized European domain name registrar, has been bought for €16.9 million ($22 million) in cash. The buyer is Group NBT, an acquisitive British registrar holding company that already owns NetBenefit, NetNames, Easily.co.uk, Ascio and Envisional. Indom, founded in 1999 focuses primarily on the French corporate market. It had revenue of €6.6 million ($8.7 million) in 2009, was slightly profitable, and is growing at 18% this ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
How Would You Visit .Nike, Anyway? - I don’t understand the protocol for visiting a web site at a top level domain name. Let’s say a brand like Nike gets its own top level domain name — in this case .nike. Just how would people visit that TLD, anyway? I must confess I’m a bit confused by this issue. I’ve asked a number of people and haven’t gotten an answer, so I figured I’d throw this up on the blog and let anyone who knows respond. Let’s say Nike gets the domain name .nike. How ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Woolworths Buys Hardware.com.au for $33,333 After Rival Lets it Expire - Big bucks for an expired domain — but an even more interesting story. Australia’s Woolworths Limited got into the domain name drop catching game recently by picking up the domain name Hardware.com.au for $33,000 AUS. What makes this story more interesting, according to the Herald Sun, is that one of Woolworths’ rivals let the domain name expire. Bunnings Building Supplies Pty Ltd owned the domain name but may not have received the renewal notice due to an ... read more ...
Tue 14th December 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
After Losing UDRP, Complainant Sues to Get FirstQuote.com - Earlier this year a workers compensation insurance company that has a trademark for 1stQuote lost a UDRP for the domain name FirstQuote.com. On the balance, the panel found that the domain name owner registered it due to the generic nature of the domain name. Now the complainant is taking the matter to the courts, filing an in rem case (pdf) against the domain name FirstQuote.com. Interestingly, the UDRP was filed by Aspen Holdings, Inc, while the lawsuit was filed ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Can’t Spell Boutiques? Google (Sort of) Has You Covered. - Boutiques.com is hard to spell, and there are plenty of typos of the generic domain. Do you have trouble spelling the word “Boutiques”? You’re not the only one. That’s one of the challenges with Google’s new Boutiques.com store. So the company is trying to buy up a handful of typos of the generic term. For example, it bought botique.com from Frank Schilling’s Name Administration earlier this year. It also picked up butique.com and boutiqe.com. But ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.XXX Domain Launches Founders Program - Companies can get premium domains if they host “meaningful content” on them. As ICANN gets closer and closer to approving the .xxx top level domain name, ICM Registry is gearing up by launching its Founders Program. Modeled after similar programs from other registries, the .XXX Founders Program allows qualified companies to get premium domain names if they agree to develop and promote them. The idea is to get actual web sites using the top level domain name to ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
SedoMLS Beta Now Open to SedoPro Customers - Company expands beta for listing syndication and fulfillment service. SedoMLS, which syndicates your Sedo domain name listings across multiple sites and instantly transfers domain names upon purchase, is now available for select Sedo customers. Sedo launched the service last year but it has been closed to most domainers. The new beta phase permits SedoPro customers to list domains at the MLS level. Other Sedo customers with 5,000 or more domain names may request ... read more ...
 
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Afternic Sells Decide.com for $175,000 - Afternic and Sedo announce six figure sales. Afternic has sold the domain name Decide.com for $175,000. The buyer appears to be someone associated with Seattle based PriceYeti. PriceYeti launched last year, offering to send users an email alert when the price of an item they were tracking online dropped. However, it appears the service is now offline. The whois records for PriceYeti and Decide.com are different, but Decide.com is registered under PriceYeti. Elsewhere ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
WikiLeaks Finally Figures Out How to Change Its DNS - I thought these guys were tech savvy? A couple weeks after WikiLeaks.org’s DNS services provider cut if off, someone within the organization finally figured out how to log into the registrar account and change the DNS. Seriously, was this just a ploy to get more publicity? When EveryDNS cut of WikiLeaks, all the organization had to do was log in to its Dynadot account and change the nameservers to another DNS or hosting service. Instead the domain name sat there…not ... read more ...
Mon 13th December 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
This is a 4,000th Post on Domain Name Wire - 4,000 and counting. Domain Name Wire launched in March of 2005, meaning it will turn six years old this March. At 4,000 posts, that’s about two posts for every day of the year, on average. The first three years were fairly slow, averaging one post a day. This year so far Domain Name Wire is approaching 1,100 posts, or an average of over 3 per day including weekends. If you’re new to the domain name industry and want to learn more about any particular topic, ... read more ...
 
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Video and Highlights from Go Daddy’s $4M Holiday Bash - Scenes from a four million dollar holiday party. Go Daddy held its annual holiday party at Chase Field in Phoenix on Saturday evening. In this video you’ll see some highlights from the night. You’ll also wonder if the event really took place at Chase Field. It looks more more like an amusement park to me. Here are some highlights from the video: GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons gave some interesting stats on what happens at Go Daddy every minute: -75 domain names are ... read more ...
 
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“It Would Take a Super Bowl Commercial for a New TLD to Stick” - Go Daddy releases details about Super Bowl commercial with .co It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? Whenever people doubt (including me) the potential for a new top level domain name to go mass market, we often say “it would take a Super Bowl commercial to make a new domain name go mainstream”. Today Go Daddy released details about its upcoming Super Bowl commercial featuring .co. While .co isn’t really a “new TLD”, it is being marketed as such. And this ... read more ...
 
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Domain Name Thief Pleads Guilty, May Spend 5 Years in Jail - New Jersey man expected to serve about five years in jail for domain theft. The man accused of stealing the P2P.com domain name and selling it to NBA player Mark Madsen has entered a guilty plea in a New Jersey criminal case. Daniel Goncalves, 26, of Union Township, pleaded guilty to theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception, and computer theft, all in the second degree, before Superior Court Judge Stuart L. Peim in Union County. As part of a plea bargain, prosecutors ... read more ...
Sun 12th December 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sorry Domainers, But Groupon.com was a Better Name than Coupon.com - Company’s choice of a made up word was smart. I’ve read a lot of posts and comments on domain blogs over the past couple week about Groupon while the company was considering a buyout offer from Google. I don’t remember what I read where, but here is an amalgamation: it isn’t worth $6 billion (which it reportedly turned down), its technology is basic and easy to replicate, there’s little barrier to entry, and the name sucks compared to a good generic one. I ... read more ...
Fri 10th December 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Why Did Someone Have to Pay to Defend this UDRP? - An example of why UDRP needs reforming. This was going to be a rant about “why would a lawyer take on this UDRP case for the complainant”. But then when I realized who represented the complainant (not a lawyer), I changed it up. Here’s the deal. A St. Louis area woman is getting ready to launch “Sheryl’s SHAREABLES”, a bite-sized meat product that both dogs and humans can eat. (Note that just about any meat product a human eats can also be eaten by ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
So What Exactly Did ICANN Decide About .XXX and New TLDs Today? - Issues mostly punted to next year. There’s an old truism amongst lawyers. Show them a one page contract and they’ll tell you it’s rock solid. Show them a long contract and they can start poking holes in it. That truism carries over to ICANN’s resolutions on .xxx and new top level domain names today. They’re long and therefore say less than usual. There’s a lot of wiggle room. .XXX - ICANN “intends” to enter into a contract with ICM Registry to ... read more ...
Thu 9th December 2010
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5 Reasons for Brands to Get Their Own New TLD - By Roland LaPlante [Roland LaPlante is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Afilias, a domain name registry services and DNS provider. In this guest article he gives five reasons why a brand might want to get its own top level domain name.] This week at the 39th international ICANN meeting in Cartagena, the ICANN Board is expected to make a decision on the final rules for applicants of new top-level domains (new TLDs). The opportunities that new ... read more ...
 
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$2 Million Wasted on Economic Studies for New TLDs - Economic studies about new top level domain names are futile. Depending on which transcripts I read from the ICANN meeting in Colombia this week, ICANN has spent $1 million to $2 million on economic studies about new top level domain names to date. This is money wasted. Not just because the reports — particularly the first two — were extremely weak. But because getting an answer will require too many baseless assumptions. In other words, the exercise is futile. The ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Complainant Loses Case for M2P.com Despite Owner Not Responding - AWOL domain name owner can keep domain name. Casual gaming site Meet2Play GmbH has failed to win the domain name M2P.com through UDRP, despite the domain name owner not responding. From reading the decision, it appears the company tried to contact the domain name owner but was unsuccessful. It then filed the UDRP in an attempt to get the domain name. But the domain name was registered in 1997, more than a decade before Meet2Play filed a mark for M2P. Because of ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
My Predictions on .XXX and New TLDs for Friday’s ICANN Board Meeting - ICANN’s Board will make big decisions Friday. Here’s what I think will happen. On Friday ICANN’s board will meet and pass resolutions on a handful of contentious issues. Here are my predictions on two of them. .XXX - Full steam ahead. The stalling game will conclude even though the Free Speech Coalition says .xxx will be the end of the internet as we know it. New TLDS - The comment period of the proposed Final Draft Applicant Guidebook ends shortly before ... read more ...
 
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Demand Media Demands Three-Strikes Rethink - By Kevin Murphy Demand Media has asked ICANN to reconsider an anti-cybersquatting provision in the new top-level domain Applicant Guidebook that may ban the company from running a TLD. ICANN will do background checks on the companies applying for TLDs and their officers. If they are found to have lost three UDRP decisions in the last four years, their applications will be rejected. Demand Media, which owns eNom, calls this “draconian”, saying that three UDRP losses ... read more ...
Wed 8th December 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Registry Group Asks ICANN To Remove All Pricing Rules on New TLDs - Registries want to remove all pricing controls on new top level domain names. ICANN’s Registries Stakeholder Group (RySG) has submitted comments regarding the Proposed Final Applicant Guidebook for new top level domain names. One proposed change sticks out: requesting no notice requirements for price changes on top level domain names. As it stands in the guidebook right now, a registry for new TLDs must give 30 days notice prior to changing the cost of a new domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Like Fantasy Football? Try Fantasy Domaining. - Fantasy domaining contest runs through January 15. Oversee.net’s DOMAINfest conference has an innovative contest going on right now: fantasy domaining. It works similar to fantasy football. But instead of drafting players and watching their Sunday afternoon performance, you draft domain names and watch their pay-per-click performance. Here’s how it works: 1. Select 35 domain names out of 1,000 owned by Oversee.net 2. Pick 25 of these to be your “in game” ... read more ...
 
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Facebook Bought FB.biz Domain Name, Too - Facebook snaps up FB.com; currently owns FB.com and .biz. Remember when .biz registry Neustar auctioned off two letter domain names at twodotbiz.biz? Facebook participated and picked up the domain name FB.com. The company registered the domain name under DNStination Inc., which is associated with domain registrar MarkMonitor. Facebook used the same group to acquire FB.com from American Farm Bureau, which still owns the .org domain. The domain name just recently ... read more ...
 
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ICANN Blasts KnujOn for “Not Verifying a Facts” - ICANN says article by KnujOn is factually inaccurate. KnujOn has been a controversial group when it comes to trying to clean up domain name abuse. Its latest attack was on ICANN in an article on CircleID titled “Two Years Later Dozens of Registrars Still in the Shadows“. The crux of the article is that 23 domain name registrars do not disclose their addresses on their web sites as required in section 3.16 of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA). There’s ... read more ...