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.

Sun 10th August 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Frank Schilling’s North Sound Names Wins Another URS On Hello.Photo - Frank Schillings North Sound Names has won another Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) on the domain name Hello.Photo to Complainant, HOLA S.L. of Madrid, Spain, who has trademarked “HELLO!”, “in one or more countries”. John Berryhill, represented North Sound Names. Omar Haydar, the examiner found: The Respondent has registered the domain name , and is the owner of many other domain names, many containing similar commonly used generic terms, purchased primarily for the purpose of resale. Complainant ... read more ...
Sat 9th August 2014
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Quick Chat with Josh Garza a male who bought BTC.com for $1million - BTC.com was purchased for $1million as most of our readers know, we talked to Mike Robertson from Domain Guardians earlier in the week. Josh Garza and his company GAW Miners bought the domain, and we had a quick chat with him. Besides talking to us about the domain side of things, after our interview was completed Josh spoke to Tech Crunch about the Mining side of Bitcoin.  Interview 1) Congrats on the purchase of BTC.com, can you tell us a little bit about what your company does and how it makes ... read more ...
 
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1st .Vegas Domains: Wynn, HardRock, Caesars, Sands, Harrahs, Palms, World Series Of Poker - The new gTLD .Vegas just closed it Sunrise period there are over 300 domain names registered including a few retained by the registry. There are actually more .Vegas domain names registered at this point that .NYC according to the zone file. Landrush for .Vegas domains start on August 14, 2014  and runs until September 10, 2014. General Availability starts on September 15th. As usually some very good generics were grabbed in the Sunrise period, which is only opened to trademark holders, so domain ... read more ...
Fri 8th August 2014
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Google Wants You To Encrypt Your Traffic and Will Favor Those That Comply - Another homework assignment for webmasters given by Ms. Google Google announced that it will start to favor websites that encrypt their traffic in their search results. Google said: For these reasons, over the past few months we’ve been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted connections as a signal in our search ranking algorithms. We’ve seen positive results, so we’re starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal. For now it’s only a very lightweight signal—affecting ... read more ...
 
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Interview with Jeffrey Peterson of Mobile Corporation – Company Recently Purchased Mobile.co for $239,000 - Mobile Corporation just completed the purchase of Mobile.co for $239,000. Our readers may recall that there was an interesting story behind this transaction. The start up based out of Cambridge,Massachusetts has raised $5 million in funding. Jeffrey Peterson the CEO of Mobile Corporation was kind enough to get on the phone and give me an interview about the company and their strategy. Interview 1)Please tell us a little about your domain portfolio Jeffrey Peterson: Working together with our partner ... read more ...
 
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SignEasy.com Saved In UDRP But Panel Finds “Sales Page” Not Legitimate or Fair Use - Glykka LLC of San Francisco, California lost its bid to grab the domain name SignEasy.com. The domain name SignEasy.com was registered back on October 7, 2005. The Complainant wasn’t even incorporated until March 8th 2013. So the domain owner registered the domain some 7 years before the Complainant even existed. The Complainant trademark is dated July 30, 2013 which is 7+ year after the domain holder registered the domain. Not only did the one member panel of Sebastian M.W. Hughes refuse to find ... read more ...
 
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VP.Net Being Offered For Sale For The 1st Time - The super premium Domain Name VP.net is being sold exclusively through our brokerage service. The Domain Name VP.net has a current original registration date of 1998, making the domain name over 15 years old. The domain name has never been offered for sale before. VP.net is one of the shortest, brandable, instantly recognizable and unforgettable domain name market. According to Google there are over 94,700,000 references for the term “VP” which the most common is to represent Vice President but ... read more ...
Thu 7th August 2014
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xBiz.com Reports Porn.com Has Been Recovered - Yesterday we wrote about a UDRP that was filed against the domain name Porn.com which we said appeared to be stolen out of a Moniker.com account. Today xBiz.com is reporting that the domain Porn.com has been recovered. It maybe interesting to note that when the domain appeared at the new registrar yesterday the domain was under privacy but today privacy was lifted and the owner was listed as the world famous domainer/adult site operator  lakshmishankar arunkumar The street address of the owner of ... read more ...
 
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Rightside Reports: Revenue adult 13% But Aftermarket Revenue Decreases 40% - Rightside Group, Ltd. (NAME), today announced financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2014. Rightside became an independent, publicly traded company on August 1, 2014 as a result of the completion of its spin-off from Demand Media, Inc.(R) (DMD) so this is the first earnings report by Rightside as a separate operating public company. Shares of Rightside fell over 3% in trading today closing at $14 a share. Rightside now owns and operates the former domain name services business of ... read more ...
 
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Rightside/Enom Enters Into $30 Million Dollar Credit Agreement w/Silicon Valley Bank - According to an announcement just out, after the market closed Rightside Group, Ltd. (the “Company”), its domestic subsidiaries Rightside Operating Co. and eNom, Incorporated (together with the Company, the “U.S. Borrowers”) and its foreign subsidiaries DMIH Limited, United TLD Holdco Ltd. and Rightside Domains Europe Limited (collectively, the “Non-U.S. Borrowers” and together with the U.S. Borrowers, the “Borrowers”) entered into a credit agreement and related security and other ... read more ...
 
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DomainIQ.com takes On DomainTools.com To Take “Domain Name Research to a New Level” - Intelium Corp. , which is headed up by Luc Lezon CEO, has rolled out their newest site DomainIQ.com, “the world’s most powerful domain name and internet research tool.” The site “was created by software engineers with over a decade of experience in the domain industry which created popular services including EstiBot, Dropping.com, Domainex, DomainResearchTool and PremiumDrops” “DomainIQ allows users to discover everything about a domain name; its owner, the server it is hosted on, its ... read more ...
 
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Treat.co Bought For $1,050 in 2011 Just Flipped For $19K - The domain name Treat.co just crossed the Sedo.com sales wire selling for $19,000. The domain was bought by the Seller also from Sedo, back in December 2011 for $1,050. So its a 19X return in about 30 months. Not bad. The domain name is already active and appears to be a new Pet site, that will be coming soon. Congrats to the buyer and seller. ... read more ...
 
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Minds + Machines Adopts Compensation “Restricted Stock Unit Plan” For Up To 12.5% Of Its Shares - Minds + Machines Group Limited (AIM:MMX), announced today “that it has adopted a new share incentive scheme”. “As set out in the Company’s Readmission document published earlier this year, the Company has been considering implementing a replacement incentive compensation scheme across the Group for its directors and employees to better attract, retain and reward employees. Employee attraction and retention are key factors for MMX as it continues to build its operations and launch gTLDs, ... read more ...
 
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Very Troubling: 19 Year Old SouthPaw.com Lost in UDRP - Southpaw Enterprises, Inc. just won the rights to the domain name southpaw.com in a UDRP As a term, Southpaw refers to someone who is left handed. The domain name was registered on April 18, 1995. The Respondent bought the domain name in 2002. The Complainant federal trademark registration is dated March 8, 1983 Despite the domain being 19 years old and owned by the current registrant for 12 years, The one member panel of Debrett G. Lyons explicitly considered and rejected the concept of Laches finding ... read more ...
 
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Principal Financial Loses URS On Principal.Guru - Principal Financial Services,just lost a Uniform Resolution Proceeding on the domain name Principal.Guru The company filed a separate URS on the domain names principal.services principal.center Which case has not been decided yet but I would not expect that to go any better for Principal than this URS. The record shows Respondent’s use of the disputed domain name was to host a webpage containing an HTML link that reads, “This domain name is for sale!” along with a stock image. Complainant contends ... read more ...
 
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.Rocks The New gTLD With Over 5K Registrations. .Limited 1,100; .WTF 973; .Financial 751 - .Rocks led this weeks new gTLD’s that went into general availability yesterday finishing off its first day with  5,191 registrations which includes domains taken in Sunrise and through the Early Access Program (EAP). .Limited finished it first day with 1,101 according to the Zone file which I pulled this morning .WTF had 973 domain names registered after its first day of GA The new gTLD .Financial wound up with just over 750 registrations including Sunrise and EAP. .Reise ended up its first day ... read more ...
 
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When Searches for Bitcoin Go Up, The Price Goes Down according to a new study - A group of Swiss computer scientists conducted a study that took a look at web activity and social media chat around Bitcoin. They concluded when there is a surge in chatter around Bitcoin that the cryptocurrency is bound for a fall. The BBC took a look at the study: Key variable Bitcoin was a great candidate for research because so much of the activity surrounding it takes place online, wrote the team in a paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society. Bitcoins are a virtual currency which ... read more ...
Wed 6th August 2014
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Hong Kong Court Rules Entertainment Tycoon Can Sue Google Over Autocomplete Suggestions - We all start searches at Google and get the autocomplete function going into full effect, giving us suggestions as we type each letter. Apparently one Hong Kong tycoon did not like the results the autocomplete suggested when it came to him. He wants to sue Google for defamation and a Hong Kong court has ruled he can go right ahead and do just that. The South China Morning Post wrote: A Hong Kong court has ruled that a local entertainment tycoon can go ahead with his defamation lawsuit against Google, ... read more ...
 
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Montreal Looks Like The Next City That Wants To Apply For Its Own New gTLD; .MTL - According to the MontrealGazette.com, the city of Montreal seems to be the next city expressing Interest in applying for its own new gTLD, of .MTL “It’s an interesting possibility for Montreal,” said city councillor Harout Chitilian, the vice chairperson of the city executive committee. “We have to be creative to promote Montreal, and it’s a tool that we’ll take a serious look at.” But that gives Montreal time to plan a .mtl initiative, if and when an opportunity comes around again. A ... read more ...
 
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Russian Hackers Steal 1.2 Billion Internet Passwords & 500 Million Email Addresses - According to a blog post on Hold Security company blog, which conducted an 18-month investigation finding that a Russian hacking gang stoled 1.2 billion username and password combos, as well as more than 500 million email addresses. According to Hold Security the hackers pulled off the heist, using unsuspecting systems of botnet network victims (in this case, computers with viruses that allowed a single operator to control a large group of affected systems) to test websites for SQL vulnerabilities. ... read more ...
 
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Porn.com Stolen? UDRP Filed By Company That Paid $9.5 Million For It -       A UDRP has been filed on the grandfather of adult generic domain names, Porn.com with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) The company filing the complaint, MXN Limited bought the domain name back in 2007 for more than $9.5 Million dollars. The domain name Porn.com was registered at Moniker.com for a many years until just a week ago or so when it was transferred to the Regional Network Information Center, JSC dba RU-CENTER (.RU) under privacy. We have not been able to confirm ... read more ...
 
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WhatTheFuck.WTF & Other Taken .WTF Domain Names - The new gTLD goes into general availability (GA) today where domains can be registered on a first come first served basis .WTF domain names are priced at $27.99 for a domain registrations, for a non-premium domain and yes there are some .WTF domains priced at premium  registration and renewal prices. We went through the zone file to find the domain names taken in Sunrise for trademark holders and during the Early Access Program (EAP) where people pay extra for early access which seem to total around ... read more ...
 
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Marchex Reports: Archeo Sells $2.2 Million In Domains, But Other Revenue From Domains Dives - Marchex, Inc. (MCHX), reported its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2014. The good news on the domain front is that Marchex’s Archeo division sold some $2.2 Million in domain names in the quarter (although the financials indicate this number to be $2.3 some verbiage below says its $2.2 in sales) compared to $1.3 Million for the same quarter last year.  The bad news is that revenue from Archeo from domain name monetization or ay revenue other than sales from domains dropped ... read more ...
 
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Does Anyone Actually Care About Security Online ? - It has been reported by just about every major media outlet that the largest ever heist of user data took place recently by a group of Russian hackers. 1.2 billion passwords and 500 million email addresses. Over 420,000 websites are apparently involved. Kashmir Hill from Forbes had the most interesting take on the story out of all the sites I read on the topic. Hill delved into how Hold Security the security firm who uncovered the hack was offering a service to tell people if they were vulnerable. From ... read more ...
 
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With a Success of Twitch.tv, Justin.tv is shutting down - Justin.tv was always one of the most popular sites discussed when people in the .TV sub forum at Namepros would ask for examples of developed sites. The site started back in 2007 and grew to have one million registered users by July 0f 2008. Out of Justin.tv came Twitch.tv which is reportedly in talks to be acquired by Google for $1billion. So now with the focus on Twitch.tv, Justin.tv is shutting down. The Verge reported: So in June of 2011 the team decided to focus in on the most popular section ... read more ...