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.

Mon 23rd March 2015
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Shocking? Google Domains Now Listed Organically Number 1 On Google For "domains" -                 Just a little over 2 months after launching out of Beta, Google new domain name registrar Google Domains is showing as the number one organic entry under Google when you search for the term “domains” replacing registrars like Godaddy.co,, Network Solutions.com, 1and1.com, NameCheap.com and Domain.com Google Domains is also ranking organically, number 2 under the term “domain registrar” number 4 for the term “domain” number 6 for the term “domain registrars” Not ... read more ...
 
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Donuts Suffers the 1st Overall Negative Domain Day -   The new gTLD Registry, Donuts suffered its first net negative domain day since becoming a registry; where the number of new domain names registered were exceeded by the number of new gTLD deleted or removed from the zone file for non-renewal. According to ntldstats.com Donuts had a net loss of 63 domain names yesterday on  March 22nd. You can see this by checking out this chart and mousing over yesterday. Donuts is now reporting its renewal stats on its company blog and updating it daily. Donuts ... read more ...
 
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NAE.com Saved in UDRP But No RDNH Despite Domain Reg 6 Years Before TM - National Automotive Experts, L.L.C. just lost its bid to grab the three letter domain name NAE.com in a UDRP, from Vertical Axis Inc. who was represented as usually by Ari Goldberger of Esqwire.com The three member panel of Ho-Hyun Nahm,  Diane Thilly Cabell and Sandra J. Franklin easily found in favor of the Domain Holder concluding that the Complainant didn’t establish that they had an exclusive rights to the term NAE and that the domain was registered 6 years prior to the date the  that Complainant ... read more ...
 
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Go Daddy Wins Important Section 230 Case - Eric Goldman published an article on what he deemed an important legal victory for Go Daddy. Go Daddy won a Section 230 case which involved some Teamsters Union members. Section 230 is a part of the Communications Deceny Act and it provides immunity for providers like Go Daddy hosting. From the article: GoDaddy won a Section 230 case in the Second Circuit. It’s a short and efficient ruling, but it’s a published opinion and the court says it’s the first Second Circuit opinion on Section 230 ... read more ...
Sun 22nd March 2015
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Butterfly Twists Is Every New gTLD Operator's Dream - Butterfly Twists is a shoe company based in the U.K. Steve Hall wrote a story on Marketing Land that should be of interest to those dabbling in the new gltd space. The company went out and registered 100 different new domains and created a custom website for each one. They even did a video which is basically an introduction to the new gtlds for their customers. Every registry should hope that other companies emulate Butterfly Twists.     The .com extension is celebrating its 30th anniversary this ... read more ...
 
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Taylor Swift Registers TaylorSwift.porn But May Have Missed TaylorSwiftPorn.com - There are at least 50 stories in non-domain publications about Taylor Swift registering two new gTLD domain names TaylorSwift.Porn and TaylorSwift.adult yesterday in the Sunrise period. However another domain name was registered yesterday which didn’t make any headlines, TaylorSwiftPorn.com. The domain name was registered yesterday under privacy at Godaddy.com The domain name TaylorSwiftAdult.com remains unregistered today which leads me to believe it was not the Ms. Swift who registered the domain. It ... read more ...
 
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So What Happened to that whole Do No Evil ? - The Verge published an article that painted Google in a very bad light. When your motto is “Do No Evil” being accused of blackmail can be very upsetting. The article discusses certain findings by the FTC back in 2012. Apparently one of the findings was that Google  lifted product rankings and placed them in their own search results for those products. When the companies complained to Google about the process, Google threatened to remove them entirely from results. From the article: In 2012, ... read more ...
Sat 21st March 2015
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Just Transferred Last Week -             A UDRP has been filed on the domain name Kite.com The registrant of the domain is currently Escrow.com under the email address of dnholding@escrow.com. While I have no details about Kite.com I can tell you that Escrow.com uses that email address when its holding a domain name that has been sold typically while payments are still being made by the buyer to the seller, through escrow.com The domain was owned under privacy at Godaddy and transferred to Escrow.com on March 15th. In ... read more ...
 
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China Denies Any Involvement in Cyber Attack on Register.com - An article on TheHill.com says that China has denied they had any involvement in a cyberattack on Register.com. The crazy thing is that the hackers were in Register.com’s system for over a year. From the article: China has denied involvement in a cyberattack on Register.com, which manages more than 2 million domain names worldwide, Reuters reported. The Financial Times reported earlier this week that the FBI was investigating possible Chinese military involvement in the digital hit, which could ... read more ...
Fri 20th March 2015
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Diamond.com Which Sold For $7.5 Million in 2006 Is Back On The Market - The domain name Diamond.com is back on the market and its being brokered by Godaddy. In 2006 Ice.com bought the domain name Diamond.com for $7.5 Million from Odimo According DnJournal.com, Diamond.com it is the 5th highest all cash domain sale of all time. “If you consider that in nine years, the market has gone up, we hope for a better number than [the previous sale],” says Paul Nicks, senior director of aftermarket at GoDaddy. “If you look at the top end of the domain market, it’s all generic.” “We ... read more ...
 
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North Korean Registrant Holding DailySquib.mobi hostage - According to the Daily Squib a North Korean hacker has registered one of their names, and its a .mobi of all things. The satirical website is having a little fun with someone in North Korea registering their name in .mobi. LONDON – England – You’ve got to hand it to those pesky North Koreans, they have now acquired one of our domain names and we have no chance of ever getting it back. Is this some kind of humour malfunction the North Koreans have? According to Whois records www.dailysquib.mobi ... read more ...
Thu 19th March 2015
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Great Britain Looking to Regulate Digital Currencies - Reuters had a story on Britain announcing it would be looking to regulate digital currencies like Bitcoin. From the story: Britain took a significant step towards becoming a global bitcoin hub on Wednesday as the government announced it would regulate digital currencies for the first time by applying anti-money laundering rules to exchanges. Already the center of the $5-trillion-a-day market for traditional currencies, the UK is fast emerging as a center for digital currencies too, cementing its ... read more ...
 
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Hip-Hop Artist Wiz Khalifa Files UDRP On TaylorGang.com, Registered in 2007; TM Filed 2014 - Hip-Hop artist and rapper Wiz Khalifa whose real name is Cameron Thomaz, filed a UDRP again the owner of the domain name TaylorGang.com with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The domain name was first registered in August 2007 according to DomainTools.com but according to Screenshots.com there was a site on the domain going back to 2005. However again according to Screenshots.com, going to the domain appears to have been going to a parked page from 2008 until 2014 and now is going ... read more ...
 
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Author Asks Security Expert To Steal His Godaddy Domain/Account & He Does - csoonline.com, just published a Troubling post on  how easy it was to gain control of a domain name and access to a Godaddy account they did not own.  The author of the story, Steve Ragan, tells the tale of how he asked the CEO of Night Lion Security Vinny Troia, to try to take control of the author’s domain name and account at Godaddy. The story entitled “GoDaddy accounts vulnerable to social engineering and Photoshop” and subtitled “GoDaddy’s layered verification protections defeated ... read more ...
Wed 18th March 2015
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HipHop.com Redirecting to KanyeWest.com - Back on March 4 we posted an article about the owner of Loser.com redirecting that domain to the Wikipedia page of Kanye West. Elliot Silver actually spoke to the owner and got some insight behind the move. You can read Elliot’s post here Well now it seems the registrant of HipHop.com who lives in the U.K. is redirecting HipHop.com to KanyeWest.com. This looks to have been a recent change, maybe it was done by the registrant to counteract the loser.com redirect. Maybe Kanye’s people did some ... read more ...
 
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Can Hollywood Stop Popcorn Time ? - Andy Greenberg did a story on Wired that was a great read for those interested in the intellectual property battles around the Internet when it comes to piracy and how each side plays the game. The article centers around Popcorn Time and Greenberg interviewed one of the programmers under an alias. The programmer discussed how they are looking to go p2p so that no matter how many domains are suspended it won’t matter. These guys so far are not making any money they seem to be doing it for the admiration ... read more ...
 
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Major League Baseball (MLB) Wins a New Domain Extension .Baseball Beating Donuts - In what only can be described as win for the new gTLD program, Major League Baseball (MLB) has won the rights to operate the new domain name extension .Baseball. Donuts was the only other applicant. Donuts had won many sports extensions including .football, .Hockey, .Run and .Soccer. .Baseball was scheduled to go to a ICANN Last Resort Auction next week. Here is what MLB plans for the new gTLD  .Baseball according to its application with ICANN: Major League Baseball (“MLB”) is the oldest professional ... read more ...
 
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Donuts Wins new gTLD .GMBH Beating Google & 3 Other Applicants - Donuts has won the rights to the new domain extension .GMBH beating Google, Straat (.Co) as well as InterNetWire Web-Development GmbH, and TLDDOT GmbH which had applied and lost its bid to win the extension on a community basis. GMBH is a a type of legal entity very common in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and other German-speaking Central European countries and would be equivalent to .INC and even LLC in the United States. Here is a link to a story where you can learn more about GMBH’s I have ... read more ...
 
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Scripps Networks Wins .DIY Beating Google: Now Owns 11 gTLD's - Lifestyle Domain Holdings, Inc. part of the Scripps Networks Interactive, Inc., and Scripps Networks, LLC (“Scripps”) won the rights to operate the new domain extension .DIY beating Google who withdrew its application. The company operates the The DIY Network.com, as well as many other Television networks including the Food Network, and the Cooking Channel, HGTV and the Travel Channel. Of course DIY stands for Do It Yourself. Scripps originally applied to operate 13 new gTLD and with the exception ... read more ...
 
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Donuts Beats Google To .MBA; Google Wins .PHD - Two more new gTLD strings that were scheduled to go to a ICANN Last Resort Auction next week, have been settled privately. Donuts won rights to operate the .MBA new domain extension, beating out Google and a company known as Your Dot Phd, Inc. Yourdotphd.com Google won the rights to operate the new gTLD, .PHD beating out Your Dot Phd, Inc. There are plenty of new gTLD’s in the education vertical including .education,  .school, and .university all owned by Donuts  and .College which is owned by ... read more ...
Tue 17th March 2015
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UDRP Panel Denies TractorSupply.com Bid To Get Rights To The Word "Traveller" - Tractor Supply Co. of Texas, which has a long history of UDRP wins on “Tractor Supply” domains just lost its attempt to grab the new gTLD domain traveller.tools The one member panel of Andrew D. S. Lothian didn’t buy the argument that the tractor supply company also owned the exclusive rights to the generic term TRAVELLER. I think it’s an important case because had the panel found that Tractor Supply owned the rights to the word “Traveller”, based on the company’s avid defense of its ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Weekly Sales Total $1.2 Million Led by TheRecRoom.com during $89,888 - Over the past week, 675 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.2m. 54% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings.  Highlights of public sales are:   Top .com: therecroom.com at 89,888 USD Top ccTLD: videos.de at 50,000 EUR Top “other” TLD: agro.net at 5,900 EUR ... read more ...
 
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Malaysia To Invest Billions In New Airline "FlyMojo" But Fails To Secure The .Com - According to BBC.com, “Malaysia’s government has unveiled plans to create a new airline and signed a $1.5 Billion dollar deal to purchase 20 new planes from Bombardier . The new carrier would be called flymojo and be based out of Johor Bahru in the south and Kota Kinabalu in East Malaysia. The deal with Bombardier includes the option to buy 20 more aircraft, taking its value up to $2.9 Billion.” However the Government failed to acquire the domain name FlyMojo.com before making the announcement. The ... read more ...
 
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Military Intelligence Officer Turned Domainer Launches Domain.Buzz - An interesting story was published in the form a press release today about the Domain.Buzz which was recently launched by  acquired  by Tim Culpepper, a Military Intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, turned domainer. Domain.Buzz seems to be an aggregator of mostly domain blogs and publications along the lines of Domaining.com and NameBee.com but had sections for domain Sales Reports and Trends, Entrepreneurship and Emerging Tech. According to the story, Mr. Culpepper, who had been paying off his ... read more ...
 
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Worst UDRP Decision Of The Year? Panel Gives Away Domain Registered Before TM Was Filed - A one member UDRP panel has awarded a domain name purchased in 2010,  TheLightBlubStore.com, to Lumen Inc. based off a trademark filed in 2011, after the owner wanted to “reselling it for an outrageous profit. Specifically, Respondent offered to sell the disputed domain name for $18,000.00.” Hon. Carolyn Marks Johnson was the Panelist who found the Complainant had a common law trademark right even though the Complainant did not make that argument or even a statement that they had a common law ... read more ...