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 11th November 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
NamesCon is donating 100% of Registration Revenue Received on Veteran’s Day To Charity - NamesCon is donating 100% of Registration Revenue received today Veteran’s Day to  Veteran’s Village Las Vegas managed by SHARE, a 501(c)3 Registered Charity. Not 10%, not 20%, not even “Net Proceeds”, but a whopping 100% of all registrations. Today of all days is a time to reflect on the sacrifice our troops have made for our country, our nation, our families. Bigger men and women than you and I have faced down the enemy braving what we can only imagine. As co-founder of Right of The Dot, ... read more ...
 
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UDRP Panel Rules That The Word “Club” Is Generic - A one member UDRP panel has found that the word “club” is generic The disputed domain names were clubsail.com; clubyachting.com and clubyachting.org however in the case of clubsail.com the domain holder agreed to transfer the domain leaving only the other two domains at issue Here are the relevant facts and finding: The Complainant operates a marine leisure business based in Tenerife. She is the owner of the following registered trademarks: The disputed domain names clubyachting.com and clubyachting.org ... read more ...
 
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Amazon Not Only Owns The New gTLD .Buy; They Just Acquired .Pay Too - Amazon which won an ICANN last resort new gTLD auction for .Buy for $4.6 Million has now acquired the .Pay. .Pay which was scheduled to go to an ICANN Last Resort auction next week, has been settled. The other  applicant for .Pay, DOTPAY SA has just withdrawn its application, leaving Amazon as the winner of the .Pay domain name extension. Now that Amazon owns both .Buy and .Pay it would seem companies like Paypal should be concerned. Amazon already offers a branded credit card but with .Buy and ... read more ...
 
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Amazon Beats Google & Wins Rights To The New gTLD .Book - Amazon now owns the  new gTLD .Book winning a private auction beating Google among others. The final remaining other applicant for .Book, R.R. Bowker LLC, withdrew their application last night leaving Amazon the Winner of the Private Auction. Other applicants include Minds + Machines (which announced yesterday the walked away with over $8 million for losing .Book as well as .cloud, .dog , .site and .style), Google, Global Domain Registry Pty Ltd, Donuts, Straat (former owners of .Co) and Famous ... read more ...
 
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Bandzoogle Partnering With Rightside to Offer .ROCKS and .BAND Domains and Websites for Musicians and Bands - Rightside and Bandzoogle announced a partnership where Bandzoogle will offer .Rocks and .Band new gtlds to musicians and bands that use their services. From the release: Bandzoogle is offering Rightside’s Top Level Domains (TLDs) to its customers, beginning with .ROCKS, a new web extension that launched earlier this year, and .BAND, which will open for pre-registration later this month. The company will incorporate the new domains into its offering that helps musicians, bands, ensembles, DJs, ... read more ...
Mon 10th November 2014
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ICANN Last Resort New gTLD Auctions Scheduled for November - A bunch of private auctions held in October headed off many of the the ICANN Last Resort Auctions scheduled for November. However as far as we know the following New gTLD auctions that will be held by ICANN in November are: .APARTMENTS DERApartments, LLC June Maple, LLC (Donuts) .DOT Dish DBS Corporation Charleston Road Registry Inc. (Google) .EARTH Interlink Co., Ltd. Charleston Road Registry Inc. (Google) .LATINO Dish DBS Corporation Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (Minds + Machines) PAY DOTPAY ... read more ...
 
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ICANN Changes Last Resort Auction Rules To Allow Early Bidding -

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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PR Is out & Its Official: Radix, Tucows and Namecheap Win .Online Auction - A Press Release out today confirms what we told you last week that the team of Radix, Tucows and Namecheap won the new gTLD auction for .Online: “Domain industry veterans form a “global supply chain supergroup,” secure the first viable alternative to .com A newly formed entity owned by Radix, Tucows and Namecheap won the auction to operate the .online registry for an undisclosed amount. In the past year, dozens of new generic top level domains (gTLDs) from .actor to .wtf have brought meaning ... read more ...
 
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Stuart Lawley Clarifies .XXX Registrant Rights in a Upcoming Adult New gTLDs - Stuart Lawley from ICM Registry (.XXX) left a comment about .XXX registrant rights in the new adult gtlds, this is worthy of being its own post. I know many have been confused with what they get as a .XXX registrant when the new .porn, .adult and .sex new gtlds are available. Stuart explains . Our original grandfathering plan was to release the new extensions with priority registration for the underlying matching .XXX owner who could at that point register the new names (and of course pay the registration ... read more ...
Sun 9th November 2014
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Court Orders Google To Help Marvel Discover Source of Leak - We continue to see courts getting involved in telling registrars and search engines what they must do to comply with a growing number of complaints that arise with issues of copyright infringement. A couple days ago we wrote about a German court telling Key-Systems that they and all registrars can be held liable for the infringement violations of their customers. Gizmodo reported that a U.S. judge has ordered Google to turn over all information they have with regards to a leaked trailer for the new ... read more ...
Sat 8th November 2014
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New Site domcomp Compares Price Of 10+ Registrars Across Over 600 Extensions - A new site has popped up which compares the registration, renewal and transfer prices  of 10 + different registrars across over .com, .net, .org selected ccTLD and what seems to be hundreds of new gTLD extensions. Domcomp which seems to have launched in September ,bills itself as the “No-nonsense Domain Price Comparison” “We aggregate prices for over 600 top level domains from the industry’s most popular registrars. “Straight-forward, unbiased comparisons help our users find the best deals, ... read more ...
 
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Donuts Beat Microsoft & Google For .Live - According to ICANN’s site both Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) have withdrawn their application for the new gTLD .Live, leaving .Donuts as the winner of the .Live new gTLD. Earlier today we reported that three other public company’s Google, Amazon and Symantec Corporation, (NASDAQ: SYMC) all lost the new gTLD auction for .Cloud. The Donuts application was placed under the company Half Woods, LLC So far Google has won 4 new gTLD in contention:  .Dev over Amazon;  .Docs over Microsoft,  .Drive ... read more ...
 
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Shocker: Both Amazon & Google Lose New gTLD .Cloud Private Auction - A private auction was held a couple of weeks ago for the new gTLD .Cloud and shockingly neither Amazon (AMZN) or Google (GOOG), which both applied for the extension, won the auction. Amazon, Google, Donuts, Dot GLOBAL AS (cloudnames.com) and a third public company Symantec Corporation, (NASDAQ: SYMC) have all withdrawn their applications for .Cloud The only two applicants who have not yet withdrawn their application are;  Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (Minds + Machines) and ARUBA S.p.A. which ... read more ...
Fri 7th November 2014
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Wall Street Journal: The Gold Rush Is On for .NYC Domains; Some May Resell for $100K+ - The Wall Street Journal just covered .NYC domains name in a story “The Gold Rush Is On for .NYC Domains; Some May Resell for $100,000 +” In the story The Wall Street Journal featured long term domain name investor Steve Kaziyev. “Since the new .NYC domain extension hit the market last month as an alternative to better-known extensions like .com and .org, Mr. Kaziyev has snapped up more than 400 Web addresses at $25 a pop. He’s now the proud owner of SingingLessons.nyc, Cognac.nyc and the ... read more ...
 
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Another Scam Email: “I’m Selling Dontnology.com: Which Sold in 2000 For $2.5 Million” - Another day another scammy email from faustinorejopalomo@gmail.com “I am writing again because I have recently been fortunate enough to acquire a very interesting and historical dominance in the world of domains, belonging to the famous list of most expensive areas in the world, namely dontnology.com, which was sold in 2000 for 2.5 million, but over the years the owners let the domain expire and now I’ve been lucky enough to re-register. Here are several links to the list of most expensive domains ... read more ...
 
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Shocking: Holiday.com Fails To Sell For $30 Million As Breathe Luxury Had To Change Venues At a Last Sec. - Despite a slew of press releases touting how Holiday.com at $30 Million was the sure bet steal of a lifetime, the domain name apparently  failed to sell at the much hyped auction at the World Travel Market. According to travelmole.com, the domain name Holiday.com, which had a goal of selling for $30 Million, only was able to get a high bid of £4.7 million, which just under the £5 million starting price. Of course if you know a domain is at auction with a £5 million starting price, you can be ... read more ...
 
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.XXX Registry Announces .Porn & .Adult Domain Matching Program Starts On Apr 15th - ICM registry which operates the .XXX registry, announced today that the Sunrise period for .PORN and .ADULT will be made available for a thirty day (30) period to trademark holders who are registered in the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH), as required under ICANN’s Rights Protection Mechanism starting March 1, 2015 After Sunrise has closed, the next phase of the .PORN and .ADULT launch will be a thirty (30) day Limited Registration Period, referred to as the Domain Matching Program. The Domain ... read more ...
 
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.Com Domain Name Registrations Top 115 Million For The 1st Time - According to Verisign’s zone file the number of .Com domain name registrations have topped 115 million, an all time high. As we have written the new gTLD program does not seem to be effecting the number of .Com registrations. Back just 7 weeks ago on September 19, we posted that the number of .com registrations had crossed the 114.6 million domain mark. Today in crossing the 115 million mark,  .com added over 600,000 domain name registrations in just 7 weeks. As of March 31, 2014 Verisign reported ... read more ...
 
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Looks Like The Team Of Radix, Tucows & NameCheap Has Won .Online - The new gTLD .online looks like it was won by the previously announced partnership with Tucows and Namecheap.com Last year Radix announced that the three applicants for .online have partnered up to run the .online registry. At that time, both Tucows and Namecheap withdrew their applications for .Online with ICANN. Today the ICANN site has updated and the remaining applicants for .online, except for Radix have withdrawn their applications ICANN shows Donuts, Whatbox, and I-Registry Ltd. have withdrawn ... read more ...
 
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Amazon Wins New gTLD .Hot As Donuts & Secondgen.com Withdraw Their Apps -

Amazon has won a rights to a new gTLD .Hot as a other dual applicants, Donuts and SecondGen.com withdrew their applications from ICANN’s site.

The new gTLD was substantially staid by private auction.

It will be engaging to see what Amazon’s Plan for .Hot is.

Amazon’s focus for .Hot does not unequivocally lay out a prophesy for a extension.

Via: thedomains.com

 
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Law Enforcement Cracks Down on a Dark Web, Seizes 400 .onion domains - We have had news stories before about international law enforcement agencies banding together to take down websites that deal in illicit goods or counterfeit merchandise. Yesterday the U.S, Canada and European agencies made another round of takedowns, the difference this time is that they hit the “Dark Web” websites using stuff like the onion router or TOR. USA Today covered the story: Police in 17 countries arrested at least 17 website administrators, vendors and cybercriminals as part of the ... read more ...
 
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German Court Says Domain Registrar Can Be Held Liable For a Infringement of their Customers - Court rules registrars are responsible for fighting piracy In a case that involved the music of Robin Thicke and his album Blurred Lines, a German court has ruled that a domain registrar can be held liable when it comes to copyright infringement. The domain registrar in this case is Key-Systems who appealed the initial ruling and lost their appeal at The Higher Regional Court of Saarbrücken. Torrent Freak wrote: In a case brought by Universal Music over the album Blurred Lines, a Court of Appeal ... read more ...
Thu 6th November 2014
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Rightside (NAME) Is Up 20% In After Hours Trading - After its first earnings report as a public company, Rightside (NAME) is up about 20% in after hours trading. Rightside is currently trading at $11.26 up $1.85 from its closing price of $9.41 Rightside has a 52 week low is $8.96 and its 52 week high of $17 but just started trading on August 1st 2014. Here are the highlights: Rightside reported 16 Million domains under management through its registrars. Over all Rightside’s registrars are experiencing a 75.2% renewal rate overall. The new gTLD gave ... read more ...
 
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Rightside’s 1st Earnings Report: Revenue Up 15%: Makes $8.6 Million By Losing gTLD Apps - Rightside Group, Ltd. (NAME) announced its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2014. Rightside is the company that was spun off from Demand Media, Inc, (DMD) which owns the domain name registrars Enom.com and Name.com, and owns a bunch of new gTLD’s and is the backend provider for Donuts which just passed one million domain name registrations This is Rightside first earnings as a separate public company. Here are the highlights: Domain name services revenue for the three ... read more ...
 
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Will Web.com Hurt Godaddy’s IPO? - Web.com in reporting its earnings earlier today had a few comments on its earnings call that should be of concern to all domain name regisrtrars: CEO David L. Brown noted “the increased availability of [domain] names has had a near-term negative impact on domain-related revenue,” primarily related to “non-core domain-related revenue such as sales of premium domain names and bulk domain sales.” Non-domain businesses (do-it-yourself websites, hosting, etc.) have been hurt by the “unintended ... read more ...