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 29th September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN May Test Whois Privacy and Proxy Services - How do whois privacy services respond to requests to reveal owner information? The Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) has asked ICANN to consider the cost and feasibility of extended whois studies. ICANN has already undertaken studies to determine what percentage of whois records are accurate. The next study is to see how whois privacy and whois proxy services respond to requests to reveal the actual owner of domain names. The study would involve working ... read more ...
Tue 28th September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Win a New iPod Touch or Kindle from DNW Certified Stats - Try out free stats sharing service and win a prize. Have you tried DNW Certified Stats yet? It’s the easiest way to share domain name parking stats, and today I’m giving you another reason to give it a try: I’m giving away your choice of a new 32 GB iPod Touch with Facetime or an Amazon Kindle 3G with a $100 Amazon gift card to one lucky person who uses DNW Certified Stats. Here’s the deal: 1. Sign up for a free account at DNW Certified Stats if you don’t ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Amazon.com Gets Patent for Selling and Leasing Domain Names - Amazon granted patent for domain name marketplace. Amazon.com subsidiary Amazon Technologies, Inc. was today granted U.S. patent number 7,805,379 for “Method and system for leasing or purchasing domain names”. This patent, which was applied for in December 2007, seems to conflict with a number of existing domain name marketplace and domain monetization technologies that were commercially available at the time the patent application was filed. One conflict in particular ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
First Two .Co Domain Disputes Decided - Companies belatedly pursue .co domain names. World Intellectual Property Organization has handed down its first two UDRP decisions for .co domain names since .co was relaunched over the summer. In two separate decisions, WIPO panelists found in favor of the complainants for lafitness.co and tilda.co. Twenty-one .co UDRP cases have been filed since August. In some cases the domain owner handed the domain name over voluntarily. For example, Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Athens Plans .Athens Top Level Domain Name - Municipality wants .athens, but may run into challenges with trademark application. Add Athens to the list of municipalities that want to register their own top level domain names. I haven’t seen anything on the web about the city’s plans, but it filed two trademark applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for “.Athens” and “dot .athens” back in February. I hadn’t seen these yet because the original applications didn’t list domain names ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
From Domain Industry to TechCrunch, Now Arrington Cashes Out to AOL - Michael Arrington sells his business to AOL. It’s official. AOL has purchased TechCrunch. GigaOm was the first to break the news last night that AOL was buying TechCrunch. The popular tech blog confirmed the news today. TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington spent much of the five or so years directly before starting the blog bouncing around in the domain name industry. In 1999-2000 he worked for Real Names, which was supposed to be a competitor to domain names ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Domaining.com Launches Numeric Domains Marketplace - Another week, another niche marketplace from founder of Domaining.com. I think we should award Francois from Domaining.com the “prolific domain marketplace creator”. He’s at it again, launching a marketplace for number-only domain names at NumericDomains.com. The site already has a number of listings, primarily consisting of 3 and 4 number domains. NumericDomains.com quickly follows the launch of TrafficDomains.com, a site dedicated to selling domain names ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
$500k IPO.com Sale One of Many Big Sales during Sedo This Week - IPO.com headlines strong week for domain marketplace. Sedo had a great sales week including the sale of IPO.com that Michael Berkens wrote about on September 22. But that wasn’t the only notable sale the company brokered. In second place was AirTickets.com at $80,000 followed by ResumeWriting.com at $66,000. ResumeWriting.com appears to have been sold by Frank Schilling’s Name Administration. But the buyer is peculiar. The current whois shows that EditMeNow.com, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Group Wants to Become New UDRP Provider - Comment period open to review proposed arbitration provider. Arab Center for Domain Name Dispute Resolution (ACDR) has sent a proposal to ICANN to become a resolution provider under UDRP. Based in Jordan, ACDR is a joint venture between Arab Intellectual Property Mediation and Arbitration Society (AIPMAS) and the Arab Society for Intellectual Property (ASIP). ACDR plans to charge about the same as other UDRP providers for low volume cases. One or two domain names ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameMedia sells VSAT.com for $61,600 - Four character domain name appears to go from end user to end user. NameMedia, which operates Afternic and BuyDomains, has brokered the sale of VSAT.com for $61,600. Historical whois records show the seller is Metro Communications Company, Inc of Illinois. The buyer is using whois privacy, but VSAT.com is now forwarding to VSAT.eu, the site of Elektrikom Satellite Services. Other notable .com sales include: lakegeorgehotels.com $18,000.00 collectionsagency.com ... read more ...
Mon 27th September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Your Guide to Prague for DOMAINfest - by Jan Barta [Jan Barta is Chairman of Elephant Orchestra, a fast-growing media company focused on direct navigation and lead generation based in Prague. One the company’s domain products is Elephant Traffic, a direct navigation monetization solution.] Andrew asked me if I could write a short guide to Prague with some tips what you can do here during DOMAINFest or if you decide to prolong your stay afterwards. Since Prague is my hometown, I obviously had to accept ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Pay for TRAFFIC Conference with Your Domains - Trade-in your domains for a ticket to TRAFFIC South Beach. This month’s Epik conference had a unique twist — you could pay for conference admission by trading in domain names. I was a bit surprised, yet excited, to learn this morning that you’ll be able to do the same thing for October’s TRAFFIC conference. Rob Monster has worked out a deal with TRAFFIC organizers to let you pay for admission with Epik bucks. To take advantage of the offer you need to send ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
This is a Problem with a U.S. Congress Trying to Regulate Domain Names - U.S. control of internet can be misused, leading to countermeasures by other countries. What’s wrong with the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act being proposed in the U.S. Congress? The problem is that the U.S. government is trying to use the fact that VeriSign is located in the U.S. as a way to shut down internet traffic it doesn’t agree with. Other governments look at this and worry that the U.S. is trying to control the internet. They start ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Coming to America: Mark your Calendar for Mar 2011 - ICANN meeting coming to America next Spring. For the first time in a long time ICANN will hold its international meeting in the United States March 13-18, 2011. That means U.S. residents won’t have to make a trip that involves three plane hops and 12 different time zones to attend the meeting. You probably don’t pay attention to ICANN policy that much if you’re a domainer. You aren’t excited by policy. You probably don’t care much, either. That has ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN Says It Can Scale Up to 1,000 New Top Level Domains a Year - Technical infrastructure can handle 1,000 new TLDs a year, but there will be other bottlenecks. One of the interesting things to come from ICANN’s closed door board retreat over the weekend is this tidbit: ICANN thinks it can delegate up to 1,000 top level domain names a year without technical root scaling problems. Staff has also developed a model and a rationale for the maximum rate of applications that can be processed over the next few years. Staff is directed ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
First Ever IDN Event and Auction on Tap for New York in October - New York City event will educate about Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). Few topics have received greater attention this year than IDNs. So it’s fitting that the first ever “IDN Event and Auction” will take place October 30, 2010 at the Haru Restaurant in New York City at 7 pm. The event is organized by IDNTools and will be sponsored by Register.com, Moniker and SnapNames. The goal of the event is to educate domain registrants about IDNs, their value ... read more ...
Sat 25th September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Moniker and SnapNames Get New Web Sites - Sites get consistent look and UI upgrades. Moniker and SnapNames will receive a facelift with improved user interfaces and clean designs on Monday evening. I took the new designs for a test spin yesterday, and it certainly appears to be a big improvement over the old designs. Oversee.net acquired the two companies in separate transactions over the past few years. The companies have done some work to integrate the two, but this is the first bottom-up redesign to ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
David Castello is Psychic - David Castello saved me a lot of embarrassment this weekend. Earlier this year at TRAFFIC in Vancouver I asked David Castello which of two dates I should hold a domain name event in Austin: September 24-25 in conjunction with the Texas v. UCLA football game or November 12-13 with the Texas v. Oklahoma State football game. David said “Don’t do it in September. It will still be too hot.” He was right, and he influenced me to host the event in November. What ... read more ...
Fri 24th September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Two New Cases Show What’s Wrong with UDRP - Two cases show why we need UDRP reform. National Arbitration Forum has handed down two recent domain name decisions that show what’s wrong with UDRP. This isn’t an attack on National Arbitration Forum, as its panelists got both of these cases right. In both cases they found that the registrant had rights or legitimate interests in the domain names and that they weren’t registered in bad faith. What’s wrong about these cases is that the respondents even had ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DNW Certified Stats Adds SedoPro and DomainAdvertising - Two more parking companies added to parking stats verification service. Today DNW Certified Stats added support for SedoPro accounts and DomainAdvertising. Now you can easily share stats for your parked domain names at 8 different parking companies. SedoPro is the advanced parking program offered by Sedo. Users must have at least 1,000 domain names or $300 in monthly revenue to qualify. If you are interested in a SedoPro account and meet the qualifications, please ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GAC to ICANN: Limit Next Round of New Top Level Domain Names - GAC asks ICANN to hold a limited fast-track round for new top level domain names. Interim Chairman of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) Heather Dryden has sent a letter (pdf) to ICANN urging it to limit the number of new top level domain names in the next round by holding a “fast track” process: The GAC concludes therefore that an initial fast track round for a limited number of non-controversial applications which should include a representative but diverse ... read more ...
Thu 23rd September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tomorrow is a Big Day for New Top Level Domain Names - Big issue on the table at ICANN retreat. In about 24 hours the ICANN Board of Directors will kick off a retreat. It’s not an official board meeting, but it’s anticipated that the two day retreat will finalize an important issue: registry/registrar separation. A lot is at stake in this decision. Millions of dollars for the stakeholders. Until now a registry hasn’t been able to own a registrar and (technically) vice-versa. Afilias is owned by a number of registrars, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Astroturfing? At Least Do It Right. - Remember that the web is not anonymous. The online world seems anonymous. Except it’s not. That’s why I’d like to remind you to be careful when you think you’re anonymous. Or at least don’t pretend to be someone you’re not. Two days ago I posted a story about Bridgepoint Education losing a UDRP case. It wasn’t a friendly post to the company. Lots of people from Bridgepoint viewed the post. One of them decided to defend the company in a comment using ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google Searches for Typo Traffic to .Com Alternatives - Google buys typos of ccTLDs and top level domain names other than .com Over the past few days Google has ramped up its efforts to get country code and top level domain name typos in the .com version. For example, it has registered dozens of domains in the format: google-(cctld).com including google-in.com (India), google-lu.com (Luxembourg), and google-ws.com (Western Somoa). The company has also registered or acquired a number of google-TLD.com names including google-net.com, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Hotel Sold Out (and Other Things to Know About DOMAINfest Prague) - DOMAINfest heads to Prague. Here’s what you need to know. Heading to Prague for DOMAINfest in two weeks? I hope you’ve booked your hotel since the Intercontinental is sold out. But if not, we’re here to help. Read on for alternative hotels and more information about your trip to Prague. I caught up with Oversee.net to get answers to some common questions: Is the hotel sold out or are just the discounted rooms sold out? Where should people look for alternative ... read more ...