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.

Sat 10th January 2015
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Peter Thiel Invests In The Marijuana Business - Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal has is diving into the world of legalized marijuana, through his Founders Fund he has made an investment in Privateer Holdings who is the first private equity firm to invest solely in the legal cannabis niche. In the domain world 2014 saw many domain investors getting into the niche of marijuana related domains. Over the last 30 days 1782 marijuana .com domains have been registered. USA wrote about the investment: Founders Fund announced Thursday that it has made ... read more ...
 
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At Least 16 .World Domains Registered On So Far On Day 4 of EAP @ Up To $1,228 Per - We are on the 4th day of the Early Access Program (EAP) for .World which are priced at $1,222.99 at enom.com (rack rate). This $1,222 fee is assuming there the domain names are not premium domain names, which actually some of these,  are meaning that the registrants paid the premium renewal and registration fee in addition to the Early Access Fee. The biggest registrant of .World domain names so far today is Chad Wright of Webquest who bought several of these domain names. Day 4 of EAP continues ... read more ...
 
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The First Director of .IFFOR, Set Up By .XXX Registry; Clyde Beattie Resigns & The Money Went? - Clyde Beattie, who was one of the founders of the non-profit company set up by ICM the operator of the .XXX extension, IFFOR, (The International Foundation for Online Responsibility) which was set up as “a not-for-profit organization dedicated to developing policies for Top Level Domains that maximize benefit to global Internet users, domain holders and domain registry operators.”   has left the association as of December 31, 2014. When .XXX was approved by ICANN, $10 of every active (but not ... read more ...
Fri 9th January 2015
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Best Reverse Domain Hijacking UDRP Decision Of 2015: SpeedTest.Org: This Is What We Are Talking About - A three member National Arbitration Forum UDRP panel has finally done like Spike Lee long suggested, do the right thing and called out an attempted theft of a domain name for just what it is, in the case of SpeedTest.org Scene LLC, d/b/a Ookla represented by Jeff Nelson of Miller Nash Graham Dunn LLP, of  Washington, USA have just been found to be guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) in the case of Speedtest.org The domain holder, Innovation HQ, Inc. was represented by Zak Muscovitch ... read more ...
 
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Las Vegas Review-Journal Renames Its Job Classified Section As RJJobs.Vegas - The Las Vegas Journal Newspaper, the newspaper with the largest circulation in the the state of Nevada has named its classified job section as RJJobs.Vegas. Although the domain name RJJobs.Vegas forwards to the reviewjournal.com/jobs, it seems that the newspaper is using the branding opportunity that a Geo domain like .Vegas brings. If your wondering the domain name Jobs.Vegas is registered reserved by the .Vegas Registry. There are several .Vegas registry owned domain names in the RightoftheDot.com ... read more ...
 
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Auctions.com Reserve Price At Namescon is Around What Auction.com Sold For 6 Years Ago - Back just about six years ago to the date the domain name Auction.com sold for $1.7 Million dollars to Real Estate Disposition Corporation (REDC) Next Tuesday at the RightoftheDot.com domain name auction at Namescon, the domain name Auctions.com will up for sale and the reserve price is right around that same price that Auction.com sold for 6 years ago. Of course REDC has grown its business tremendously since acquiring Auction.com six years ago the company is now the largest online real estate dealer ... read more ...
 
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Report: Google To Sell Car Insurance: Google Compare Auto Insurance Licensed in More Than 25 States - According to TheVerge.com, citing a a  new report from an analyst named Ellen Carney at Forrester says that Google maybe getting ready to sell car insurance in the United States, through Google Compare. Google does own the domain name GoogleCompare.com since 2005, but it currently does not resolve. “A company called Google Compare Auto Insurance Services Inc. is already licensed to do business in more than 25 states, and licensed to sell on behalf of a handful of major insurers like Metlife, Dairyland ... read more ...
 
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xHamster regulating Bitcoin as a primary approach to accept online payments – A demeanour during a tip sites regulating Bitcoin - CryptoCoinsNews.com took a look at the top 100 sites using Bitcoin. The article started off looking at Xhamster.com the popular adult tube site. Mega porn site xHamster has not only accepted Bitcoin as a prime way to receive online payments, but is very happy with the results and is looking to expand services with the leading digital currency. Over the last six months, xHamster and many others have joined Bitcoin as a new way to pay online going forward. The article went on to list the top 100 sites ... read more ...
 
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Qihoo 360 Re-brands Its Search Engine So.com To Haosou.com - According to chinainternetwatch.com, Qihoo 360 has taken a shorter brand and made it longer, launching its new search brand Haosou.com and re-directing the traffic from  its previous search engine domain So.com to Haosou.com. “360 changed its search engine brand name and its logo trying to help users easily remember and understand. One insider believed that Haosou is more applicable in mobile internet market and Haosou could be sub-brand of Qihoo 360 which can make it an independent search brand. Qi ... read more ...
 
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Domain Holder Who Loses UDRP, Files Federal Court Case Over DirectorsChoice.com - Back in late December we wrote about the domain name DirectorsChoice.com which was lost in our opinion in a very bad UDRP decision. Today the domain holder, Russ Smith, pro se, filed a federal lawsuit in the United States District Court For The District Of New Jersey pursuant to Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (“ACPA”) 15 U.S.C. § 1114 (2)(D) (iv) and(v) to obtain a declaration of lawful use of the domain name and obtain a declaration that the Defendant made materially false statements ... read more ...
Thu 8th January 2015
Written by The Domains in EN
Andrew Rosenser Launches Ganjapreneur; Cannabis Domain Name Market -

Michael Berkens, Esq. is a owner and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also a co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. that owns over 75,000 domain names and whose sell site is during MostWantedDomains.com. Michael is also a Director of RightoftheDot.com that is a consultant in a new gTLD space and a attorney of super reward domains.

Via: thedomains.com

 
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MediaPost: $20M A Year AdEase Changes Its Domain To a .Agency But Credits Google Not Donuts - Mediapost.com just published a story tonight about San Diego-based ad shop, AdEase which they say has grown into a company with 35 employees and $20 million-plus in annualized billings. According to the story it is remaking itself as a cause-focused agency. As part of the makeover it is changing its name to Civilian. Also as part of the redo, the agency is adopting a .agency domain name. “Google added .agency as a Generic Top Level Domain name option about six months ago. “ “The agency believes ... read more ...
 
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AsiaOne: “Major firms to use names as website domain suffixes” - AsiaOne.com wrote an article today that talked about brands in Asia that will be adopting their own brand extension and using it over .com or say .co.jp. One company mentioned in the article was Dai Nippon Printing Co, the company is publicly traded in Japan. The company said that the new domain has been attractive for regular consumers, but, still uses its previous domain at dnp.co.jp. Of course that makes sense for any company that switches to a new gtld, but for me the confusion was what to use ... read more ...
Wed 7th January 2015
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877.com Gets A $200K Bid At The RightoftheDot/ Names Con Auction - On the heels of the $800,000 sale of 345.com, a pre-bid has just been placed for the domain name 877.com for $200,000 at the RightoftheDot.com auction that will be held at Namescon on January 13th, at 4:30Pm Pre-Bidding is currently ongoing online through SnapNames.com You of course will have to have an account at SnapNames.com to make a pre-bid online or online during the live system, so if you don’t have a snapnames.com account go sign up for one now. There will be a special link that you will ... read more ...
 
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EscrowHill.com Adds US Based Escrow Services Through Greenberg & Lieberman, LLC -       According to a press release we just received, EscrowHill.com announced they added the U.S. based attorney firm, Greenberg Lieberman, LLC, in addition to the New Zealand registered Financial Service Provider, Escrow Hill Limited. “Andee Hill, CEO of EscrowHill.com stated, “I am very pleased to be offering the domain escrow services of Greenberg Lieberman at EscrowHill.com. Stevan Lieberman is a trusted domain attorney with a vast knowledge of domains, the domain industry and domain ... read more ...
 
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Sedo.com Releases 3 Weeks Of Transactions Totaling $2.6 Million Led By TV.AE For $95K - Sedo just issues its transaction report covering the past 3 weeks including the Christmas and New Years holiday weeks In those 3 weeks 1,067 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $2.6 Million 49% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. All .com sales were led by one of our domain names FindYourCalling.com which sold for $30,000 but all domain sales were led by Tv.Ae which sold for $95,000 .AE is the ccTLD for the United Arab Emirates. The highest other ... read more ...
 
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We Paid Six Figures For SexEducation.com & Its In The ROTD NamesCon Auction At No Reserve - We have placed the domain name SexEducation.com which we paid six figures for,  into the RightoftheDot.com live/online domain name auction at the NamesCon conference at No Reserve. The domain name has an Estibot value of $123,000. It’s a domain we bought as we saw it as one of the only “adult’ type of domain names that you could advertise in mainstream media and would be great for one of the tapes, videos, books and DVD’s you see advertised all the time for “better sex” The domain name ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
DegreeDirectory.org UpGrades To Learn.Org -

Michael Berkens, Esq. is a owner and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also a co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. that owns over 75,000 domain names and whose sell site is during MostWantedDomains.com. Michael is also a Director of RightoftheDot.com that is a consultant in a new gTLD space and a attorney of super reward domains.

Via: thedomains.com

 
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Troubling Decision: 19 Year Old DesertGolf.com Lost In UDRP To DesertGolfer.com On Common Law Mark - We are only into the first few days of the year we have what I consider to be first horrible UDRP decision of 2015. A one member UDRP panel decision handed by by the National Arbitration Forum by Richard DiSalle as Panelist gave the domain name DesertGolf.com to the owner of the domain DesertGolfer.com The Complainant Pade Publishing, LLC, who has since 2001, published “Desert Golf Tennis, a luxury magazine illustrating golf and tennis lifestyles and activities. Complainant uses the domain name ... read more ...
Tue 6th January 2015
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Donuts Beats The Owner Of Gold.Org To The New gTLD .Gold - Donuts, which we can only assume won a private auction for the new gTLD string .Gold against the World Gold Counsel (WGC) which operates Gold.Org The new gTLD .Gold was scheduled to got to an ICANN Last Resort auction later this month. Here is some information from WGC application” “The Applicant is a wholly owned subsidiary of the World Gold Council, a non-profit organisation tasked with the market development for the gold industry (collectively referred to as the World Gold Council Group). ... read more ...
 
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Hackers Get over $5million in Bitcoin from Europe’s Largest Exchange - Europe’s largest Bitcoin Exchange Got Hacked CNN Money reported that Bitstamp, the largest Bitcoin exchange in Europe was hacked. The take was over $5million. The exchange says that most of their reserves are held offline in secure storage systems. From the article: Cyber thieves have run off with about 19,000 bitcoin ($5.2 million) from Bitstamp accounts. The company said it has suspended services after some digital wallets were compromised on Jan 4. Bitstamp told customers not to make any deposits ... read more ...
Mon 5th January 2015
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2014: Here is Our Thoughts On The New gTLD Program & Some Predictions for 2015 - The new gTLD’s were certain the talk of the domain industry in 2014. I thought it would be a good time to take a look at where the program is in our opinion and make a few predictions for 2015. The new gTLD ‘s ended with lets call it 3,650,000 domain name registrations just to round the numbers off. We did an analysis when the new gTLD’s hit 3.5 million and backing out the free domains and domains registered by the registry or parties related closely to the registry we figured there were about ... read more ...
 
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After 14 Years Porsche Finally Gets Around To Filing & Winning UDRP On Porsches.com - Its pretty hard to believe but it took the car maker Porsche over 14 years to go after the domain name Porsches.com The domain name was registered on March 13, 2000 The domain name is of course the plural of the car makers name properly spelled A pretty bang on trademark issue. However the UDRP wasn’t filed until October 23, 2014. The case is not worth discussing except for this portion: “The Panel recognizes that there has been a 14 year gap between the date the disputed domain name was registered ... read more ...
 
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Inc.com Asks “Will New Top Level Domains (New gTLD’s) Even Matter in 2015″ Hint: No - Inc.com just published a post, entitled “Will New Top Level Domains Matter in 2015? Will new URL endings change web design and marketing in 2015?” The Inc.com story is about as negative on new gTLD’s as I read recently and pretty much the opposite of Paul Stahura recent post on Circleid.com “”In 2014, the new Top Level Domains (TLDs) were introduced to much fanfare from the press and tech bloggers. New web address endings were touted as a land rush on the internet and a game changer for ... read more ...
Sun 4th January 2015
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The Domain Name Indian.Me In Auction At Sedo Meets Reserve At Just $4,817,200 - The Domain name Indian.Me just hit its reserve price at auction at Sedo at $4,817,200. The domain name which is in auction at Sedo.com, shockingly only has one bid which was placed just a little bit after the auction went live on Sedo. There is still over 6 days and 14 hours to bid on this domain but you will have to bid at least $4,822,200 to have a chance to become the high bidder. I know as a bidder on Sedo if you want to bid $10K ore more you need to be verified and then there is another verification ... read more ...