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 8th July 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.Club Leads All New gTLD’s Again On Sedo’s List Selling English.Club For $17,500; Total $2.4M - Over the past week, 564 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $2.4 Million 45% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales are: · Top .coms: satoshi.com at 75,000 USD · Top ccTLD: autoankauf.de at 36,000 EUR · Top “other” TLD: english.club at 17,500 USD   Here are the reportable sales: SharpMind.com which sold for $25K ... read more ...
 
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Founder of Mt. Gox To Sell BitCoins.com In HA.com Domain Auction On Jul 24th - The URL Bitcoins.com will hit the auction block on July 24, 2014, as Part of Heritage Auctions’ Domain Names Intellectual Property Auction. The domain name is being sold by Mark Karpeles, the controversial founder of the failed Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, and is expected to bring more than $750,000. “We are hoping, with the sale of Bitcoins.com, to provide some relief to the people impacted by the Mt. Gox bankruptcy,” said Karpeles, “and will be putting at least half of the sale amount toward ... read more ...
 
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.Christmas & .Blackfriday Just Launched & The Extensions Seem To Be Very Lightly Reserved - Unregistry just launched .Christmas .Blackfriday  and the registry seems to have reserved a very small amount of domains. As usually we hunt and peck around for mostly every new extension either to register or to write about. I was actually surprised to see how few domain names seeemed to be reserved by the registry and I would assume most of those are probably on the ICANN collision list. Of course Merry.Christmas and Santa.Christmas and thenightbefore.christmas are reserved but going through ... read more ...
 
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Co.Com Enters “General Availability” Phase At Noon EST Today! -     According to a Press Release we just received the Co.Com registry will enter the live General Availability (GA) registration phase today, Tuesday, July 8th at 16:00 GMT (12 noon EDT). The .Co.Com registry previously announced it was removing tens of thousands of its premium domain names on their reserved list and allowing Landrush registrations which would presumably carry over to GA (except for those taken in Sunrise and Landrush) Here is the rest of the press release: “As we look ahead ... read more ...
Mon 7th July 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.GOP Registry/Registrar is Live At Join.GOP & Domains Are $20.16 - I just checked on the .GOP registry and both the registry and registrar are operational. We reported a few hours ago that the .GOP registry and registrar were not operational To register a .GOP domain name visit Join.GOP Domain names are priced at $20.16 Of course there are reserved and restricted domains but there is a form on the site if you are interested on buying one of those. It appears that Join.Gop is the only place that you can register a .GOP domain name, MindsandMachines.com does not ... read more ...
 
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.GOP Was Suppose To Go Live Today But You Can’t Register One -   The new gTLD extension .GOP was suppose to go live today July 7th for general availability but as far as I can tell you can’t register one. The Dot GOP registry proudly announced in the Wall Street Journal back on April 23, 2014, that there go live date would be July 7, 2014. Landrush applications were being taken as late as Friday night on Join.GOP. I actually submitted  A Total of 14 Landrush applications at $100 per domain name. The Landrush domain name applications seemed to go through ... read more ...
 
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The Namejet .Global Domain Auction Closes In 48 Hours & Reserves Have Been Lowered - Following on the heels of the highly successful Live .Global auction held in London during ICANN where over $63,000 in .Global domain names sold,  the remaining domains that didn’t sell are at auction at Namejet.com As of publication, out of the 47 domain names in the auction all but 11 have opening bids. The auction closes on Wednesday starting at 3PM EST/ 12PM PST. The best part of the auction is that the registry agreed to lower the reserve on a lot of the domains in the NameJet.com auction ... read more ...
 
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ICANN Updates New gTLD Collision Auction Schedule; Here Is The New 2014 Schedule -                 ICANN has published an updated schedule of the ICANN Last Resort Auction for those new gTLD  in Collision. ICANN will hold a Last Resort Auction for new gTLD strings that had more than one application and which have not settled the contention through private auctions or otherwise. You might remember that ICANN proposed most recently to hold 20 Last resort auctions per month starting with June 2014. However June only saw one new gTLD Last Resort auction, none are scheduled ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Will This Domain Portfolio Owned By The Castello’s Be The 1st To Sell For Over $1 Billion? -       Last week I received a tweet to @thedomains, asking the question: “Is any domain name portfolio worth over $1 Billion Dollars? We are about to find out.” The link in the Tweet goes to this site, which says: “The portfolio consists of 40 hyper names (and hundreds of others) that will ensure a substantial and immediate impact on the Internet if they are paired with the right global resource. The seller’s preference is to keep the portfolio intact. It is his belief that the whole is ... read more ...
 
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TMZ.com: Lil Wayne Spent $600,000 To Buy The Domain YoungMoney.com & Is In Default -     According to TMZ.com, hip hop artist Lil Wayne purchased the domain name YoungMoney.com which matches the name of his record label which has signed artists like Drake and Nicki Minaj for $600,000 in 2011. In a lawsuit filed by the company that sold the domain name, Wayne’s company hasn’t paid the $250K balance it owes. The seller is suing to get its domain name back. ... read more ...
 
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Napster.FM Hit With a UDRP by Rhapsody - A name from the past is back in the news, this time the second coming of Napster located at Napster.Fm was hit with a UDRP by online subscription service Rhapsody International, Inc. Rhapsody owns Napster.com and purchased the company a few years back. Napster.FM has been registered since March of 2012 by Napster.fm LLC. The website does not look to be operable as the top menu is blurred out where you would look for links to Chat, Discovery, About, etc… ... read more ...
 
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CentralNic Launches BuyDomains.London, Domain & Website Included For £39.00 A Year -       CentralNic announced today that they have launched the BuyDomains.London A “website for Small SMEs to obtain their .London domain names” taking aim “at the “75% of London’s 841,000 SMEs that will fail to register for a .London domain name before the 31 July deadline”. For only £39.00 per year, Londoners and London-based businesses will get from BuyDomains.London: – A .London domain, which tells local customers and visitors alike that you’re located in London – A professional ... read more ...
Sun 6th July 2014
Written by The Domains in EN
Who is a biggest domain financier of all time ? - There have been many fortunes made and a few lost in the domain world over the last 20 years or so, some were there early and some made a big splash when most thought it was too late to do so. There have been successful domainers from every continent on earth, except maybe for Antarctica. So this post is for you to decide, from Schwartz to Schilling, Ham to Day, Mann to Ye, who is the greatest domain investor in your opinion and why ? Please only post one, you may think of different people for the ... read more ...
 
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Have Trademark Holders Given Up On The URS? Last 17 Disputes Filed, 15 Were UDRP’s - Have trademark holders given up on the Uniform Resolution Service? The URS is something that trademark holders and their representative pushed for at ICANN for years. A cheap, quick take down on obviously trademark infringing new gTLD domain registrations. Although the URS is exactly that a much cheaper and quicker process than a UDRP, if a trademark holder wins a URS the domain registration is simply suspended for the term of the registration and becomes available for re-registration once it drops. Since ... read more ...
 
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Company that bought Mi.com for $3.6m sells 50,000 Tablets in 4 minutes - Xiaomi paid $3.6 million for the domain name Mi.com back in April, and today they sold 50,000 MiPad tablets in four minutes. The company said on their website: Good news! Mi Pad goes on sale for the first time today, and 50, 000 sets of Mi Pad sold out in 3 minutes 59 seconds! Features of Mi Pad: 7.9”IPS display 2048×1536 326 PPI NVIDIA Tegra K1 2GB RAM, 16/64GB Flash, extensible to 128GB via microSD card 8MP rear / 5MP front camera (Camera Samples) 802.11ac 2×2 Wi-Fi6700 mAh battery NeoWin ... read more ...
Sat 5th July 2014
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California Democrats and Wineries Around The Country Oppose .Wine and .Vin - “Seven noted American wine regions have banded together in opposition to the rights-to-the-highest-bidder release of generic top level domain names (gTLDs) such as .wine and .vin by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The regional wine organizations that are driving the opposition include the Oregon Winegrowers Association (545 wineries), the Napa Valley Vintners (500 wineries), Sonoma County Vintners (230 wineries), Willamette Valley Wineries Association (200 wineries), ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
The 1st Installment of Things You Can’t Believe People Did This Week In The Domain World - I spotted a few hard to believe things that happened in the domain world this week and I thought I would put them into one post. I’m thinking about making this a regular weekend feature as there is typically no shortage of incredibly hard to understand things that happen every week in the domain space. Let me know what you think. On second thought you always do Someone actually registered the domain name dddddddddddddddddddddfsd.fish The domain extension .Fish just launched this week and according ... read more ...
Fri 4th July 2014
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After 2 Years .Sex, .Porn & .Adult Become “Sensitive Strings” To The New gTLD Committee - After 2 year years The New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) has decided that .Sex, .Porn and .Adult are Sensitive Strings according to the minutes of the new gTLD committee to ICANN which are dated July 1st. Interestingly before the application period closed it was wildly speculated by many including myself that the Government Advisory Council (GAC) would object to the strings such as .Sex giving level of opposition to .XXX and the years and number of battles that ICM the registry for .XXX faced to ... read more ...
 
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URDP Panel Is Not On Nationwide’s Side Denying Bid To Grab 3 Domains - A one member UDRP panel refused Nationwide Insurance Company bid to grab three domain names containing the word “nationwide” The three domains at issues were; The Respondent registered the disputed domain name nationwideautolending.com on January 5, 2006, nationwideautoapproval.com on April 3, 2006, and nationwideautocredit.com on November 18, 2010. Two of the three domains resolve to active websites that offer online auto loan application and approval services, said to involve a network of lenders ... read more ...
 
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Google’s Matt Cutt to take a break - Head of Google web spam Matt Cutts said that he is taking a break and going on leave. Matt certainly does take a lot of abuse defending the Panda and the Penguin and while I am sure he has made a lot of money at Google, it must be a stressful job. Maybe Sergey and Larry could make it easier on him by allowing Google to be a little more transparent and accountable for their actions. Danny Sullivan wrote on Search Engine Land: It will be the longest break Cutts has ever taken from Google since he ... read more ...
Thu 3rd July 2014
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Google Adult Ad Ban Now In Effect - CNBC is reporting that the Google Advertising Ban on Adult domain names is now in effect. We reported earlier this month that Google was going to impose new restrictions on adult advertising, which some believed amounted almost to a ban on advertising. Today CNBC is reporting that “Google is getting out of the porn advertising business”. The changes, which went into effect late Monday, prohibit any promotion of most sexually themed sites, specifically those that feature “graphic sexual acts ... read more ...
 
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.XYZ Becomes 1st New gTLD To Pass 250,000 Registrations - .XYZ has become the first new gTLD to pass 250,000 registrations. The official count according to ntldstats.com, 250,731 domain names. Of that amount 217, 752. are registered at Network Solutions representing over 86% of all registrations. As we always note, the vast majority of these .XYZ registrations at Netsol are free and being pushed into customers account without the customers asking for the domains. Disregarding all NetSol registrations .XYZ is still doing pretty well, with over 32,000 registrations ... read more ...
 
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Another Poor 1st Day For This Weeks New gTLDs: .Vision 905; .Report 845; .Fish 542 - Three new gTLD’s went into their first day of general availability yesterday and it was another underwhelming week. The totals include Sunrise registration and those domains registered in the Early Access Program .Vision 905 .Report 845 .Fish 542 A total of less than 2,500 for the three strings However especially in .vision there were quite a few premium domain names with registration and annual renewal prices of $400 or more that got registered including 2020.vision,  double.vision and perfect.vision. This ... read more ...
 
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Silicon Valley VC is a solitary Winner of Government Bitcoin Auction - Last week the U.S. government held an auction for 30,000 bitcoins that were previously seized. Reuters is reporting that Tim Draper a well known Silicon Valley VC purchased the coins. In the article Draper noted that he saw the auction as a sign that Bitcoin had a real value to society, if not they would have just buried them. I am not sure that anyone can say if  that is actually true, the government knows there is value for these coins and it makes sense to liquidate. Whether they are giving ... read more ...
Wed 2nd July 2014
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Owner Of Ruraliving.com A $7 Billion Company Loses UDRP On RuralLiving.com - AgStar Financial Services, ACA (“Complainant”),  just lost its bid to grab the domain name RuralLiving.com from Ashantiplc Ltd, who was represented by John Berryhill, Esq. , who also in full disclosure represents our company in UDRP cases. The complainant owns the domain name Ruraliving.com (missing the other letter “L”) along with a trademark on the term (also with the missing “L”) The domain holder registered the domain name RuralLiving.com in August 3, 2005, the Complainant’s trademark ... read more ...