Author Archives: The Domains

About The Domains

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 5K domain names . Michael is also a Director of RightoftheDot.com which is a consultant in the new gTLD space and a broker of super premium domains. Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest this year.

Tue 14th April 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google Malaysia Experiences DNS Redirect Attack - TheStat.com.my is reporting that Google Malaysia was hit by a DNS redirect hack. It looks like Google’s actual servers were not comprimised and not everyone accessing the local Google site is being affected. From the article: Some users visiting the Google Malaysia website are seeing a hacked page that says “Google Malaysia hacked by TiGER-M@TE”. Although TiGER-M@TE claims to have hacked the search giant’s local website, it seems to be another DNS redirect attack on the .my domain. Google ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Opens Up For Advertising - Sedo.com is now showing advertising rates on its website. I’m not sure how long they have been showing this but I believe its a new feature Here is what the site currently shows: “”Advertise with Sedo to reach the world’s largest audience of domain investors, as well as small business owners, marketing professionals and a wide variety of other consumers all interested in domain-related products and services. Our audience’s key interests include domain registration, domain valuation, domain ... read more ...
 
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YM.com Sold By Advance Publishing Inc. - The 2 letter domain name YM.com has been sold by the 44th largest private company in the United States, Advance Publishing Inc. according to whois records. Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. was the official company name listed in whois records for YM.com, and they are a subsidiary of Advance Publishing Inc. Advance Digital and Conde Nast Digital are all part of Advance Publishing Inc. company. The domain name YM.com was forwarding to TeenVogue.com for several years but I wasn’t able to find a public ... read more ...
 
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Forget $2,499; Network Solutions Is Charging $4K For A Premium .Sucks Registration - Hundreds of stories have covered the launch of .Sucks and the suggested retail price of $2,499 for a one year registration of a “premium” domain. However all the registry Vox Populi can do is charge the registrars the wholesale cost of the domain names and suggest a retail price. Each domain registrar can then set the price they want to charge their customers for the domain name. We understand that the wholesale cost of a premium .Sucks registration that the registry is charging the registrars ... read more ...
Mon 13th April 2015
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Owners of C.UK Generating 100,000 Uniques a month - Mike stumbled upon a very interesting use of a typo domain in the .UK extension. If you go to ebay.c.uk like Mike did, or any domain where you leave off the o in .co.uk, you get a page that explains that the company behind the domain is Claims.co.uk. The company has apparently done a lot of work helping charities and they are also owners of C.co.uk and the matching C.uk. So what the company is doing is using a wildcard on any typos and bringing users to this landing page, the page explains who they ... read more ...
 
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Flashlights.com, Gobe.com and More Domain Movers - Welcome to the latest installment of domain name movers that are mainly all associated with domains acquired by large companies for future products, services and brands. As always, these are mainly all very early discoveries. Amazon Technologies Inc. which has a payment service called Amazon Simple Pay (ASP) is discontinuing the service on June 1, 2015. Interesting to note, Simple Payments Corp acquired the domain name SimplePay.com between 10/31/2014 to 1/25/2015 when the domain went into privacy ... read more ...
 
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Panel Makes Reverse Domain Name Hijacking Finding Without Domain Holder Asking For It - NH Resources LLC and Vaughn Crowe of Southlake, Texas, were just found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) on the domain name no-heat.net, despite the fact that the domain holder didn’t even ask the panel to make a RDNH finding. The three member panel of John Swinson, Gaynell Methvin and David H. Bernstein rejected the Complainants claim of a common law trade mark rights in no-heat.com. The Complainants registered the domain name on October 21, 2004. The domain holder registered the ... read more ...
 
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.Poker Passes 500 Registrations In Sunrise & Landrush -     .Poker will launch into general availability on April 21. Through Sunrise and Landrush there are already over 500 .poker domain registrations (506) to be exact I do not thing domain names that got more than one landrush application and therefore heading to auction are included in the totals or in the zone file. Here are the more interesting .poker registrations: 007.poker 32red.poker 365.poker 3cardpokerpoker.com 7cardsstud.poker 7cardstud.poker 888.poker 8888.poker americascardroom.poker andrew.poker android.poker apple.poker appt.poker aria.poker axa.poker azimut.poker b10.poker backing.poker baidu.poker bellagio.poker bet365.poker betcoin.poker betcris.poker betfair.poker bets10.poker betsafe.poker betsson.poker betstars.poker betwin.poker biggame.poker bigwin.poker blackchip.poker blitz.poker blogger.poker bluff.poker bodog.poker borgata.poker bovada.poker boylepokerpoker.com boylesports.poker brian.poker brown.poker bwin.poker byron.poker californiaonline.poker cash.poker cashgames.poker celebrity.poker cloud.poker club.poker crown.poker cyber.poker duel.poker eureka.poker excalibur.poker extreme.poker florida.poker freetexasholdem.poker fulltilt.poker game.poker get.poker getstaked.poker google.poker goplay.poker grosvenor.poker guide.poker hall.poker hardrock.poker highstake.poker instagram.poker intelli.poker jamesbond.poker juegos.poker king.poker learnplaying.poker letitride.poker linkedin.poker live.poker macau.poker mgm.poker michael.poker microsoft.poker mike.poker mint.poker mirage.poker mohamed.poker monte-carlo.poker monte-carlo-casino.poker msn.poker naughty.poker newjersey.poker newyork.poker next.poker nike.poker office.poker omaha.poker onlinetournaments.poker open.poker party.poker paypal.poker perfect.poker planet.poker playmoney.poker pocketfives.poker redbull.poker rich.poker ritz.poker rollsroyce.poker rookie.poker rush.poker school.poker sevencardsstud.poker sky.poker snap.poker spiele.poker sportsbook.poker stars.poker team.poker theborgata.poker theritz.poker thompson.poker tilt.poker titan.poker true.poker university.poker usa.poker viagra.poker vip.poker virgin.poker watch.poker wins.poker worldtour.poker wpt.poker wtp.poker wynn.poker xbox.poker xxx.poker youtube.poker youwin.poker ... read more ...
 
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Hugo Boss Loses UDRP Attempt To Grab Domain Hugo.mx - Hugo Boss just lost its bid to gain control of the domain name Hugo.mx The domain holder Jesus Navarro Saracibar, of Baltimore who seems to own some 10K domain name represented himself in the matter and seemed to do a very good job even citing other UDRP cases in support of his arguement. Bottom line the panel rightly found the term “Hugo” is generic Here are the highlights: Factual Background The Respondent is a German fashion house founded in 1924 by luxury Hugo Boss. The Respondent is listed ... read more ...
Sun 12th April 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Sex Domains Big Business In Australia - Iconic.Sydney published an article about Sex and Domains, there is a combo, they go together like Peanut Butter and Jelly. Apparently sex related names are becoming a popular choice with the new Aussie based gtlds. From the article: Overall, adult industry domain names accounted for just over 5% of last week’s registrations, making them more popular than food and hospitality (3.7%), beauty and cosmetics (2.9%) and medical services (2.6%). The sex industry: driving online innovation? The fact ... read more ...
 
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Why .Com Probably Won't Get NetFlixed By The New Gtlds - Alex Kehr wrote an article on his personal blog, titled “Why .COM will probably get Netflixed by New TLDs” The article is about the relationship of .com and new gtlds being analogous to Blockbuster and NetFlix. I think he is misguided in his interpretation. The other thing missing from the article is that Alex works for Name.com who is owned by Rightside. It helps the reader know where you are coming from and where your particular bias may lie. From the article: The .COM domain is starting to ... read more ...
 
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World Domain Day 2015 Industry Award Winners & A Big Thanks From TheDomains.com -             The World Domain Day 2015 Industry Awards were presented at the World Domain Day conference that was held in New Delhi on April 10th, 2015. We at TheDomains.com are very proud to announce we won the award for Best Domain Blog and thank the show organizers and all the voters. Here are the winners of the Awards handed out by WDD, congrats to all: Best Registrar: GoDaddy Best Aftermarket Platform: SEDO Best Parking Provider: DomainNameSales Best Domain Blog: TheDomains Best New gTLD: ... read more ...
 
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Three Year Global AdSpend Forecast Growth Better Than Last Twenty - Jack Loechner wrote on MediaPost that the next three year forecast for global ad spend growth is better than the last twenty. The article took a look at a recent study from Zenith Optimedia. No surprise the greatest area for growth is in online video which is expected to grow at an average 29% a year through 2017. From the article: According to the new Advertising Expenditure Forecasts from ZenithOptimedia, global adspend will grow 4.4% to reach $544 Billion US in 2015, and will accelerate to 5.3% ... read more ...
Sat 11th April 2015
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ICANN Really .Sucks By Saying They Don't Regulate Content: Anyone Remember .XXX? - After collecting over 1/3 of a billion dollars in application fees, ICANN attempted to pass off the whole .Sucks issue to law enforcement this week, asking them for an opinion, which is very unlikely to come, of whether the .sucks roll-out violates US or Canadian federal law. ICANN is quoted as saying it was “concerned about the contentions of illicit actions” by Vox Populi but that it lacks the expertise or jurisdiction to evaluate them”. Really? Basically ICANN just “ratted out” one of ... read more ...
 
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Flippa Weekly Sales Led by FZV.com - Flippa released their sales leaderboard for the week on their blog today. FZV.com at $15,000 led the way and that was followed by another 3L.com, NVL.com sold for $12,600. Both of these sales were negotiated post auction. Flippa continues to be the place for .io domains. Analytics.io sold for $10,000 and Movie.io sold for $6,500. There was also some nice .net sales there this week led by Keyboards.net at $6,800. Flippa Domain Sales Leaderboard for This Week FZV.com  @ $15,000  (Negotiated Post-Auction)NVL.com  ... read more ...
Fri 10th April 2015
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Go Daddy Purchases Web Design Marketplace Elto - Back in October of 2013 Ophelie Lechat introduced me to a gentleman named Ned Dwyer, Ned ran a company called Tweaky and was looking to change the name of the company and was looking for a new domain name. I submitted a bunch of names both personal and client names. We were close on a couple but nothing that was perfect for the company. Eventually Ned purchased the domain name Elto.com. Today Elto.com was purchased by Go Daddy. Tech Crunch wrote: Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Elto had ... read more ...
 
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New gTLD's Registrations Top 5 Million; .Science & .Link Break 100K: We Break Down a Numbers - The number of new gTLD domain name registrations have topped 5 Million for the first time, according to ntldstats.com Here are the top 30 most registered new gTLDs: Domain                Total Reg  % of all Reg Now let’s go behind the numbers. .XYZ as we have spoken about numerous times includes about 375,000 free registrations that were stuffed into Network Solutions customer accounts which represented about 43% of its registrations. The next five top-selling registrars for .XYZ ... read more ...
 
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SnapNames Is Holding Auction of 36 Registry Owned .Yoga Domain Names - SnapNames.com is holding an auction of  36 .Yoga domain names. About 1/2 the domain names have a reserve range price of $1k or less. Many are at no reserve and only one domain has a high range reserve of $2,500 All of the 36 .Yoga domain names are owned by the registry, Minds + Machines (LSE: MMX). The auction closes on May 4th at 3:15pm EST in accordance with Snapnames.com normal closing rules. As of publication one domain, Practice.yoga has a bid,  but has not hit reserve. Here is the entire ... read more ...
 
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Global e-Commerce Sales Projected to Hit $994.5 Billion This Year - Thad Rueter reported for InternetRetailer .com that global e-commerce sales are expected to hit $994.5 billion according to A.T. Kearney. The report cited the United States ahead of China for “online market attractiveness.” From the article: Global e-commerce sales will reach $994.5 billion this year, up 18.4% from $839.8 billion in 2014, according to a new forecast from A.T. Kearney. That compares to a 20.8% year-over-year increase in 2014, with a 16.1% increase anticipated for 2016, to $1.155 ... read more ...
 
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Australian Judge releases personal info on over 4700 who allegedly pirated movie - The AP wrote that an Australian judge has apparently agreed to release the names of over 4700 Aussies who downloaded the movie Dallas Buyers Club. SYDNEY (AP) — Internet providers have lost an Australian court battle to keep secret the names of Internet users suspected of illegally downloading Hollywood movie “Dallas Buyers Club” over file-sharing networks. The Federal Court ruling on Tuesday is a landmark win for copyright holders in a country which has a reputation for being among of world’s ... read more ...
Thu 9th April 2015
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NameJet Holding Auction Of Court Ordered Domains To Be Sold Including FILETMIGNON.COM - Pursuant to Order of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, and further at the direction of the US Marshals Service, NameJet is auctioning some terrific steak-related domains, such as FILETMIGNON.COM, along with a few other assorted names, including the following: 1-800-nuts.com azizmerchant.com buykobebeef.com dodgeinnsteak.com dryagedsteaks.com filetmignon.com flowerofthemonthclub.biz flowerofthemonthclub.net flowerofthemonthclub.org flowerofthemonthclub.us flowerofthemonthclub.ws fruitclub.net grandadsbaconrinds.com kobebeef.biz kobebeef.net kobebeefsale.com kycity.net luckyagro.com simonmeats.com steaks-meat-food.com tropicaldental.com wagyusteaks.com wagyusteaks.net wagyusteaks.org These ... read more ...
 
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Namejet.com Holding No Reserve Auction Of Over 250 Short .BUZZ Domain Names - Namejet.com is holding no reserve auction of over 250.short Buzz domains. All of the domains are short, most are 4 letters  (5 letters is the longest) as well as some 3 letter words. The domain have to be back-ordered by dates starting as soon as April 16th but they are staggered, with the last one’s needing to be back-ordered by May 3rd. Here is the list of domain names, which all require a $69 bid to enter the auction and the date each must be back-ordered by. As usually all back-orders must ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
UDRP Panel Finds Not Responding To C & D Letter Is Bad Faith: 14 Year Old Mascot.nl Lost - “Mascot International A/S of Silkeborg, Denmark, just won the rights to the domain name mascot.nl which was registered on October 31, 2001. Complainant, a Danish company has a Benelux trademark for the term MASCOT which is really a figurative mark for the  word MASCOT as written in a special script: which was granted in January 18, 1989 Complainant also filed a wordmark as CTM, for goods in classes 9 and 25, application date October 29, 2001, registration date March 3, 2004, registration no. ... read more ...
 
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Ford.com, eStore.com and Many More Domain Movers - I have been doing these Domain Movers lists for awhile and they never get old! Never! They are packed with valuable and always interesting domain name data watching what companies are buying, registering and selling their domain name assets. Having an “insiders” look at potential “news” like new brands and products is always cool! As always, a TON of time goes into these articles and this dedication is to help all domain name investors and the domain industry as a whole. Here we go with the ... read more ...
 
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.US Domains Are Subject To Being Suspended Under The URS - .US domain names have became subject to the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) policy. Actually ICANN site on the URS specifically  says that .US domain names are not subject to the URS Technically the decision is a usRS for the .usTLD Rapid Suspension System (the “Rules”). In the National Arbitration Forum decision, Beachbody, LLC of Santa Monica, CA got the domain name t-25.us suspended for the life of the registration Sandra J. Franklin, was Examiner. The decision did not cite what trademark ... read more ...