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 24th June 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Mint Condition: How Domaining is Like Collecting Baseball Cards - There are many similarities between baseball card collecting and domain names. I suspect that many domainers collected sports cards growing up. There are a lot of similarities between baseball cards collecting and domaining. We like to show off our prized domains. We often gravitate toward certain themes, such as collecting four letter domains. We monitor pricing trends. We go after “scarce” domains such as LLL.com. And we constantly try to buy, trade, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Parking Scammers Get Aggressive - As parking companies get more sophisticated, scammers get creative. Ask any domain name parking company what their number one nuisance is and they’ll say fraud. Click fraud is big, but it all starts with trying to get an account at the parking companies. One large parking company told me it approves fewer than 1% of the applications it gets. They’re not trying to be selective; it’s just that 99% of the applicants are trying to set up accounts to perpetrate ... read more ...
Wed 23rd June 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
AOL Ad.com Trademark Claim Refused as Generic - Trademark examiner refuses Ad.com trademark again. AOL’s continued battle to trademark a domain name it doesn’t even own has hit another roadblock. On June 21, a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office examiner refused the trademark for Ad.com on the grounds that it’s generic. The USPTO previously refused the mark because Ad.com was merely descriptive of AOL’s services. In response, AOL amended the application to add a claim of acquired distinctiveness. In refusing ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tucows Donates Domain to Estate of Queen Rocker Freddie Mercury - Domain registrar gives domain to estate of Freddie Mercury. Tucows’ Yummy Names has donated the domain name FreddieMercury.com to the estate of the late lead singer of rock group Queen. An announcement on QueenOnline.com reads: In a recent act of fantastic generosity, domain registrar company Tucows Inc. secured the domain name FreddieMercury.com and donated it free of charge to Freddie’s estate. We would openly like to thank Bill Sweetman and his team for their ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Pricing Released for TRAFFIC Dublin - Registration open for August’s domain name conference. Registration for The T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domain name conference taking place in Dublin, August 24-26, is now open. Early pricing until July 15 is €695, although there’s also a link for a lower $730 USD price at the time of writing. Hotel rooms are available for only 159 EUR per night. In a blog post today, show organizer Rick Latona noted: You can’t talk about Dublin without mentioning beers. Folks, the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Fairwinds Says Typosquatting Costs $327 million, Based on $2.74 Per Click - Report makes some lofty estimates for typosquatting. Fairwinds Partners, the group behind Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, released a study today suggesting that typosquatting costs the 250 most visited web sites $327 million per year. Like the creators of many studies, Fairwinds has something to sell — services to the very brands that are affected by typosquatting. There are a number of assumptions in Fairwinds’ report, and also a lot of references to its ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Company Says Woman Has No Right to Her First Name in Domain Dispute - Company claims women has no rights to her first name. Let’s say your first name is, I don’t know…Andrew. And you register Andrew.com. There are of course companies that use the name “Andrew” as well. Could they claim that you have no rights to the term “Andrew” and be able to get that domain name through UDRP? Of course not. But that’s what Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., which published an Italian women’s magazine Grazia, tried to do to ... read more ...
Tue 22nd June 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DOMAINfest Global Moves to Feb for 2011 - Largest domain conference sets date for 2011. Oversee.net’s flagship DOMAINfest Global conference is moving back a week this year to the first week of February. The conference will take place February 1-3, 2011 and will again be held at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, California. Hotel reservations for the event are already available. If it’s anything like last year, the hotel will sell out in a hurry even though the entire hotel is reserved for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ESPN Wants ESPN3d.com Domain Name For New 3D Network - Sports network asks arbitration panel to give it domain name for new 3D network. Sports network ESPN has filed a complaint with National Arbitration Forum to get the domain name ESPN3d.com. The company announced its new ESPN 3D network in January, saying that it would show 85 sporting events in 3D during its first year. The 3D broadcasting kicked off this month with matches from the World Cup, but the network still doesn’t have the ESPN3D.com domain name. It ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
7 Steps to a Launch of New TLDs - Kurt Pritz explains what’s left to do in the long march to new top level domain names. During Monday’s New gTLD Program Update session during ICANN’s meeting in Brussels, ICANN Senior Vice President Kurt Pritz spelled out the steps remaining to launch new top level domain names. Here they are in his words. 1. “So we’ll take the public comment in and then make a recommendation for community and board decision whether this should be the last draft version ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Will ICANN Insiders Get Leg Up with New TLDs? - I have read the Tim-Berners Lee and his opposition to .mobi and .xxx. I disagree entirely with the notion that .com is the only king and any other TLD are useless and could have no value to their appropriate constituencies and communities. So Tim-Berners should have a little talk with the 1.3+ million that have signed the .music initiative and tell them that they wanting their .music is not in the public interest or in their interest, even though they want it. Also it depends on the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo Hits 6 Figures with Three Domain Names - Domain broker has good sales week. Sedo completed three six figure domain name sales last week, capping off a great week for the company. First, it sold the three number domain name 027.com for $100,000. It also sold Pengyou.com and Pengyou.net, each for $100,000. PengYou appears to be a Mandarin word for “friend”. Two of Sedo’s other big sales are ones I’ve already written about, including Rage.com for $49,999 and TVs.co.uk for 51,000 GBP. Here are other ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Book Review: Slurls Pokes Fun during Double Meaning Domains - New book gets a laugh out of unfortunate domain names. I first became amused by domain names with double meanings when a now-defunct domain name blog put together a list several years ago. One example on that blog was TherapistFinder.com, which, when not capitalized, looks like TheRapistFinder.com. This sort of double-meaning domain name is what computer programmer Andy Geldman calls a Slurl. And he’s taken Slurls to the next level in his book Slurls: They Called ... read more ...
Mon 21st June 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
This Week, Another Chance to Act on .XXX and What it Means for New gTLDs - ICANN’s actions on .xxx go well beyond this one top level domain. ICANN’s Board of Directors will once again consider what to do with the .xxx top level domain name during its board meeting at the culmination of the Brussels meeting this week. More than just a decision on a mistake ICANN made long ago, this will act as a bellwether on the new top level domain process. Why? It will show us how much of a stomach ICANN has for controversy when it comes to introducing ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
KnujOn Calls eNom “Active Facilitator of Illicit Criminal Traffic” - KnujOn calls out eNom for pharmacy sites. Internet security research group KnujOn isn’t afraid to pick a fight. And its latest report (pdf) picks a big one, going after 162 domain name registrars including eNom, the second biggest in the world. It even says that eNom is an “active facilitator of illicit criminal traffic”. But that logic is based on the idea that everything illegal on the internet usually involves a domain name, and you should blame the registrar. Before ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Owner of MyCyty Mark Goes After MyCity.com - The dates tell the story. The owner of a trademark for “MyCyty” has failed in his attempt to get the domain name MyCity.com through UDRP. That someone would go after the correctly spelled version of their made up trademark is a bit surprising. But the circumstances in this case are particularly egregious. It should be clear to anyone who visits MyCity.com that it is being used for a bona fide purpose by its owner, 411WEB Directory. Even if it weren’t, the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Red Bull Wastes $100k’s on Domain Disputes - Red Bull spends big bucks disputing domains, then let’s them go. Is it possible that Red Bull’s lawyers are too caffeinated when they file domain name disputes through UDRP? More than perhaps any other company, Red Bull finds itself winning domains at UDRP that are “canceled” instead of “transferred”. This means that the current registration is deleted and the domains become available for re-registration rather than being transferred to the winner. I’ve ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Name Administration Reaches Settlement over Cheat Code Mark - Company settles trademark dispute. Frank Schilling’s company Name Administration has reached a settlement with the holder of a trademark for Cheat Code, according to documents at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Late last year CheatCodes.com LLC started going after people who had “cheat code” in their domain names, thanks to somehow slipping the generic term “Cheat Code” past a USPTO examiner. It went after small webmasters, but also sent a demand ... read more ...
Fri 18th June 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
3 Deadbeat Domain Registrars Bite a Dust - Three inactive registrars terminated for failure to pay accreditation fees. ICANN has sent notices of termination to three domain name registrars for failure to pay past due accreditation fees. Each of the three domain name registrars — Abansys Hostytec, S.L, NameHouse, Inc., and Gee Whiz Domains, In.c — owe between $7,000 and $13,500 each. According to the termination notices sent to each registrar, ICANN sent numerous notices to the registrars notifying ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ZeniMax Buys Rage.com for Upcoming Rage Video Game - Video game creator shoots bullseye with domain name purchase. A long awaited video game has a new home on the web – Rage.com. ZeniMax Media Inc. purchased the domain name from a man in Great Britain for $49,999, and is now forwarding the domain name to rage.bethsoft.com (Bethsoft is the publisher). The deal was handled through Sedo. The seller moved his web site to RageLive.com. That a company would spend so much for a domain name for a video game should come ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Demand Media Wants to Patent Keyword Profitability Ranking - Company files patent application for ranking algorithm. Demand Media has content revenue prediction down to a science. The company has an army of freelancers who produce content based on the company’s prediction of how much ad revenue each piece of content will bring in. Now the company wants to patent its methodology for figuring out which keywords are the most profitable. U.S. patent application 12/337550 is for a “Method and System for Ranking of Keywords ... read more ...
Thu 17th June 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Web.com Buys Register.com for $135 Million - Large registrar agrees to be acquired by small business hosting and design company. Web hosting and design company Web.com has agreed to purchase privately held domain name registrar Register.com for $135 million. The company views domain name registration as a lead generation tool for other services such as setting up web sites and hosting, and also sees cost savings of $10 million by merging the two entities. Register.com is one of the original higher cost domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Time to Cleanse and Renew (Your Domain Portfolio) - Prices increase next month, so now’s a good time to take a hard look at your portfolio. The cost of registering or renewing a domain name will increase at most domain name registrars on July 1. This is thanks to an increase in the wholesale cost of registration courtesy of VeriSign. The company is increasing the price of .net domains 10% and .com domains 7%. That makes the next couple weeks an ideal time for domain investors to take a good look at their portfolios. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
iPad is No Domain Name Killer, Nor a Kindle Killer - My thoughts after a couple days with the iPad. My wife bought an iPad for me for Father’s Day. She can’t keep a secret so she gave it to me as soon as it arrived in the mail. I’ve had a couple days to play with it, which has given me time to reflect on what apps might do to domain names. So far I’m going to agree with Jason Fry. Basically, the apps that correspond to web sites are subpar at best, and the actual web sites suffice. Score one for navigating ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
My.CO Powers .co Domain Name Registrations - Company offers way for non-.co-accredited registrars to sell .co registrations. One of the unique aspects of the launch of the .co domain name is that there are only ten domain name registrars accredited to sell the domains. This includes some big names such as Go Daddy, eNom, and Tucows. But that means that smaller registrars are shut out from selling .co domain names unless they strike a deal with one of the ten accredited registrars. That creates an interesting ... read more ...