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 9th April 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Verisign: 271 million domain names registered - Universe of registered domain names slowing ticking upward. Verisign has resumed publishing its Domain Name Industry Brief, a report it used to publish quarterly. The company reports (pdf) that there were 271 million domain names registered as of December 31 across all top level domain names. That’s a 1.9% increase over the previous quarter and 7.3% for the year. This number includes free .tk domain names. The Tokelau country code domain name is the most-registered ... read more ...
Tue 8th April 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Busted: UDRP panelist contradicts his progressing decisions - Panelist’s rationale for latest decision directly contradicts earlier ones. National Arbitration Forum panelist Héctor A. Manoff has found against Restomod, Inc. in a UDRP it filed for the domain name restomod.com. The decision is probably correct, but how he came to the decision directly contradicts earlier decisions he has made. In the Restomod.com case, the domain registrant registered the domain name way back in 1999. The complainant didn’t register a trademark ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
17 finish user domain sales adult to $24,000 - Kim DotCom’s Mega among end user domain name buyers. I’m still playing catch-up, so these are end user sales from the list Sedo sent last week. You can view previous end user sales lists here. HomeLane.com $24,000 – HomeVista Decor and Furnishings in Bangalore. Mega.io $10,000 – Kim DotCom’s Mega CruxEngineering.com $1,495 – Crux Subsurface, Inc. MoneyHub.co.uk 7,500 GBP – Blue Speck Financial Ltd in the UK. GraphAcademy.com $1,500 – Neo Technology, ... read more ...
Mon 7th April 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
10 Domains we like in this week’s Heritage Auctions domain name auction - Here are ten domains I think are worth the money in this week’s domain auction. Heritage Auctions’ second domain name auction takes place April 9. It’s difficult to place bets on which domains will sell, especially for the higher-end domains. It depends on if someone watching the auction has pockets deep enough to pay six figures for a domain name. That said, here are ten domains I really like in the auction at varying price levels*: CorpusChristi.com ($150,000 ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
UDRP complainant shoots self in feet with supplemental filing - Company effectively admits its original complaint was destined to fail when it makes supplemental filing. Inbay Limited of the United Kingdom has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking in a UDRP for Inbay.com. The three person panel found that Inbay should have known its complaint would fail from the outset. Perhaps more importantly, it should have known it would fail after receiving the domain owner’s response — yet it decided to file a supplemental ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tesla buys a typo and Lord of a Flies association buys author’s domain name - Tesla pays a lot of money for a domain it could have won in a UDRP. I’m a bit behind on end user sales reports thanks to DomainFest last week. This list is the one Afternic/GoDaddy sent last week. Some notable buyers include Tesla and BMI. You can see previous end user lists here. MusicMark.com $12,750 – Music Giant BMI PartnerCloud.com $13,000 – RelayWare, which offers partner channel management services. PhysicianResource.com $1,000 – Medical Education ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
JustBelieve.com saved in UDRP, no RDNH interjection to “idiot defense” - Arbitrator decides that the case was so weak that the complainant just didn’t know any better. In March I wrote about how Life is Now, Inc., which promotes business coach David Neagle, had filed a UDRP against JustBelieve.com. Domain owner Greg Ricks has successfully defended the ridiculous UDRP. The primary determining factor was that Ricks owned the domain name before the complainant started using the term “Just Believe”. That makes it impossible to prove ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google appears to have sole Hello.com domain name - Hello.com domain name transferred. It appears Google has sold the domain name Hello.com. The company used the domain name for a photo sharing service called “Hello” last decade. It later shut down the standalone service and eventually stopped using the domain name. Last Friday it looks like Google transferred the domain name. The Hello.com domain name whois record showed a change of registrant from Google to “John Murphy” on April 4. The contact email address ... read more ...
Fri 4th April 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Top 5 domain news stories from March - 4chan and a registry acquisition were top reads last month. March was a very busy one for the domain name industry, punctuated by Neustar’s acquisition of .Co. Here’s a look back at the top five stories on Domain Name Wire last month: 1. 4chan demands 4chan.com domain name – this post took off after hitting the front page of Hacker News. 2. Neustar acquires .CO for $109 million – In a surprising announcement, Neustar said it paid $109 million for the .co ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Wed, .XYZ and Donuts featured in NPR new TLD story - Planet Money features some of the people behind new TLD applications. NPR aired a story on Planet Money this morning about new top level domain names. I thought the story was well done. It features Adrienne McAdory of .Wed, Daniel Negari of .XYZ, Daniel Schindler of Donuts and domain attorney Thomas Brackey. It takes a good angle on the story by featuring some of the actual applicants and their story. It starts with Adrienne McAdory, who applied for .wed. (For her ... read more ...
Thu 3rd April 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
5 DomainFest questions answered + 10 reasons I’m blissful Shane wasn’t there - Answers to the five questions about DomainFest. I’m flying back from DomainFest right now, so it’s time to answer the five questions about DomainFest that I published on Monday. I’d also like to respond to Domain Shane’s post “10 Great Things That Will Happen By Me Not Going to DomainFest”. First, here are the five questions about DomainFest and the answers: 1. How many people will show up? Officially there were over 400 in attendance. It didn’t always ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
HugeDomains sues medical organisation to keep domain and claims RDNH - HugeDomains claims Austin medical group provided false statements in UDRP. A couple weeks ago I wrote about a UDRP for AustinPain.com and how I thought the panel got it wrong. Now HugeDomains, which was on the losing end of the case, has filed suit to halt the transfer and is asking to recover damages under Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH). The suit was filed against Austin Pain Associates in U.S. District Court in Colorado yesterday. In the suit, HugeDomains ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
10 new TLDs now tip 10,000 registrations each - .Center appears to have hit the milestone, making it the tenth domain to do so. Ten new top level domain names have now eclipsed the 10,000 registration milestone. That’s according to new TLD tracking site nTLDStats.com. Actual zone files show the tenth one is slightly below 10,000, but given the number of “dark” domains without nameservers typically found in a TLD, the 10-at-10k number is probably correct. Here are the top 10, along with nTLDStats.com’s numbers: 1. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy Auctions down, auctions will be extended until tomorrow - GoDaddy Auctions experiences outage and will extend auctions by a day. GoDaddy’s auction site at Auctions.GoDaddy.com has been down for over an hour and GoDaddy is working to get the site back up. Here’s a statement from GoDaddy Sr. Director, Aftermarket Paul Nicks: We noticed an issue with our Auctions.GoDaddy.com Web page today. We suspended the auction process temporarily, and are working to restore service as soon as possible. Once we’re back up, we will ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
MapFree.com is not confusingly identical to Mapfre, row rules - Majority of panel denies all three prongs of UDRP complaint while another confirms all three. A World Intellectual Property Organization panel has ruled against Spanish company Mapfre in a UDRP case the company brought against MapFree.com. The domain name belongs to Vertical Axis (Kevin Ham’s company). Vertical Axis argued that it registered the domain name for its generic meaning. It pointed out that is has registered many other domains that start with Map. The ... read more ...
Wed 2nd April 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
No Justin Bieber bashing in new .xyz domain name - Be careful what content you post at JustBieberDruggie.xyz. The .XYZ top level domain name has published its launch policies, and it includes perhaps the most off-the-wall restriction of any new TLD to date: No Bieber-bashing. Oprah, too. Page 22 of the policy states that abusive and forbidden uses of .xyz names include: “illegal malicious and fraudulent defamation of Oprah Winfrey, Daniel Negari, or Justin Bieber” Depending on how you look at generational dates, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Some SnapNames-caught domains to be managed during NetworkSolutions - Domains caught by SnapName’s own registrars will be managed through Network Solutions. Here’s the first notable change as a result of Web.com acquiring expired domain marketplace SnapNames. SnapNames announced today that domain names acquired through a SnapNames credential (i.e. registrar) will now be managed via Web.com registrar Network Solutions. Previously these names were managed by Moniker. I can already hear the collective groan from domainers not wanting ... read more ...
Tue 1st April 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Gary Vaynerchuk during DomainFest: domain values headed downward - Vaynerchuk makes a prediction about domain name values during talk at DomainFest in Hollywood. Yesterday Gary Vaynerchuk gave a spirited keynote at DomainFest, with an even more spirited QA session. It got interesting when Vaynerchuk predicted that the value of a good domain name will go down over the next decade or two as the importance of having a good domain name goes down. Vaynerchuk thinks that the importance of domain names is being eroded by other platforms ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Major email providers restraint some RAA corroboration emails - Blocking could lead to website suspensions. Beginning January 1st domain name registrars are required by the new Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) to verify contact details for registrants. Most registrars do this by sending an email to domain registrants and asking them to click a link in the email. For the registrant fails to do this, their domain names can be suspended. This has resulted in at least one high profile website being suspended, and more will ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New York City sets phases, sequence mandate for .NYC domain name - LaunchPlan.NYC. New York City has finalized its launch plans (pdf) for the .NYC web address coming out later this year. The domain name will be allocated in four phases rather than the usual three. The first phase will be a sunrise for trademark owners running May 5-June 20. That will be followed by a unique “City Government Affiliated Phase” in which governmental organizations can request domains. A 60 day landrush will then start on August 4. Domains will finally ... read more ...
Mon 31st March 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Could NamesCon strike 1,000 attendees subsequent year? - Conference sets ambitious attendance goal…and it might hit it. The inaugural NamesCon domain name conference happened just two months ago, but organizers are already planning a repeat in 2015. The event will take place Jan 11-14, 2015 at the Tropicana in Las Vegas. It will include an additional day of conference programming and networking. Conference organizers also say they are adding additional conference space at the Tropicana hotel in Las Vegas. I guess that ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Wow: is this a many costly new TLD sale yet? - English.club sells for $17,500. The .Club domain name enters landrush tomorrow, and already the domain name is showing solid early results. Point in fact: English.club sold for $17,500. Given the huge supply of new TLDs hitting the market, solid keywords are selling for a fraction of what the matching .com domain would sell for. So $17,500 is really high. (This is something I’ll talk about on my panel at DomainFest tomorrow.) Add to that TLD Registry’s $181,000 ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
5 questions to be answered during this week’s DomainFest - Attendance, new TLDs, and other questions to be answered this week. I’m writing this while airborne on my way to Los Angeles for this week’s DomainFest conference. Here are five questions that will be answered by the end of the week. 1. How many people will show up? DomainFest usually packs in 500+ people at its conference. That might be a challenge this year. The conference was moved back a couple months, announced late, and is part of a packed conference schedule ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DomainNameSales.com syndication with GoDaddy is over - Today is the last day domains listed on DomainNameSales.com will show up for searches on GoDaddy. Today is the last day that Sedo listings will be syndicated to GoDaddy. It turns out it’s also the last day for DomainNameSales.com listings on the site. [Update: while March 31 was supposed to be the last day for DNS syndication on GoDaddy, GoDaddy has kept the listings up while it finishes a transition for Afternic listings in the registration path.] That means that ... read more ...
Fri 28th March 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
4chan final 4chan.com domain name - Popular bulletin board asks arbitration panel to give it the 4chan.com domain name. One of the world’s most trafficked websites is on a .org domain name, and now its asking an arbitration panel to give it the matching .com. Image-based bulletin board 4chan (at 4chan.org) has filed a complaint with The World Intellectual Property Organization. It claims that the owner of 4chan.com is cybersquatting and demands the domain name be handed over. 4chan.com has been owned ... read more ...