November 2009 Archives

The UK's Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a number of complaints brought against Domain Registry of America (DROA).

In a recent ruling the UK regulator's decision includes responses from DROA and is worth reading.

The complaint centred around three complaints:

Three recipients believed the mailing was misleading because it appeared to be a bill requiring payment and implied they had transferred a domain name registration when they had not.

No surprise there.

Their reply, however,  should raise a few eyebrows:

Domain Renewal Group (DRG) said their mailing was intended to notify recipients that their domain name was about to expire and, because of deregulation in the Domain Name industry, consumers had a choice of registrars with whom to renew or register a domain name.  They said their mailing did not claim that the recipient's domain name had been transferred to DRG or that payment was due without agreeing to move to their company.  They believed this was clear from the claims "Domain name holders are not obligated to renew their domain name with their current Registrar or with the Domain Renewal Group", "Review our prices and decide for yourself.  You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated below, unless you accept this offer" and "This notice is not a bill, it is rather an easy means of payment should you decide to switch your domain name registration to the Domain Renewal Group".

The ASA didn't believe their explanation:

The ASA noted the mailing was headed "Domain Name Expiration Notice" and closely resembled a bill, including a credit card payment slip, and considered recipients were likely to infer that their domain name had been transferred to DRG and a renewal payment was now required.  We noted the mailing stated "This notice is not a bill ...", "You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated below ..." and "... now is the time to transfer and renew your name from your current Registrar to the Domain renewal Group ...", but did not consider it was sufficient to remove the overall impression that the mailing was a genuine bill requiring payment.  We concluded that the mailing was misleading for falsely implying that recipients had already transferred their domain name to DRG and for not making sufficiently clear that it was a marketing communication

What does this mean for DROA?

Unfortunately very little, as the ASA does not have a huge amount of power, nor does its counterpart in any other country, at least not to my knowledge.

At various times throughout the year websites end up getting adorned with various "bling" to celebrate holidays of various kinds.

Enom have tweaked their header image slightly in advance of US Thanksgiving:



Have any others?

I don't normally do this, but I was feeling a bit "naughty" this morning, so here you go ..


Over at Blacknight we've just launched a "silly" promo on .be registrations and transfers. We're also running several other domain discount promotions at the moment, so if you want to switch provider, save money or register *that* domain  .. now's the time!

(Normal blogging will resume later .. )

Related articles by Zemanta

• Cheap EU Domains - What Would You Do To Get One? (blacknight.com)
• Info Price Shocker (blacknight.com)
• Dotmobi Price Slash (blacknight.com)

You'll have to excuse me for the Shakespeare quote, but something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

While talking to some of the people involved with the Danish domain industry it becomes evident that there is something something seriously wrong with how .dk handles disputes.

A recent case revolved around the domain orango.dk

The domain had been registered for nearly 10 years (since 2000)

The registrant was using the domain in good faith since they registered the domain name, but now found themselves subject to a dispute.

The dispute involves a 3rd party that have requested a trademark for "orango", but only did so this year.

Somehow, and this is the bit that makes absolutely no sense to me, the arbitration court found in favour of the complainant!

If that isn't a reverse hijack then I'd love to know what it is!

Maybe Danish registrants would be better off using other TLDs?

You can download the original text of the decision here (it's in Danish)

Thanks to the guys in Larsen Data for providing various translations of it. (Peter has posted about it also - again in Danish)

In an interesting move several members of the ICANN community formed an "informal" Working Group to discuss the concept of "expressions of interest" in new TLDs. This all happened very quickly, which is more or less the opposite to how most ICANN related activities progress.

Earlier this evening the group submitted its report / paper to ICANN

The report, which runs to about 11 pages, is concise and seems to have covered most of the areas of interest. What's also interesting to note is that the people involved came from a variety of areas and probably give a reasonably good cross-section of the ICANN community.

If you have a few minutes the document is definitely worth reading and is a nice example of how a group of people can get things done quickly and efficiently when needed.

Now if only the rest of the ICANN processes were this quick to reach consensus!

(Maybe pigs flying is more likely!)

Paul Stahura, who founded Enom, has announced that he will be leaving DemandMedia via his Facebook page:

"After much thought, and 12 years after founding eNom, I've decided to join the ranks of eNom alumni. Demand Media, the company I sold eNom to nearly four years ago, is a great company and will be even greater in the years to come. Truly "going big"... Huge. The board, the management team, the employees - everyone - our customers, our services, are top notch.Demand is still in the first innings, but its time for me to move on. I look forward to working with Demand in the future, just not as an employee, and to keeping in touch with you all. Very best of luck to everyone at eNom and Demand Media! So long for now, Paul"

It's not clear at this stage what Stahura is planning, but I somehow doubt if he'll simply "vanish". Paul has been heavily involved with the growth of the domain name business for over a decade.

Best of luck to him in his new endeavours

CENTR is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.
The organisation brings together ccTLD managers from the four corners of the globe, though with a focus on Europe.

On December 2, 2009, they are organising a seminar in Brussels entitled: Who should Govern the Internet?

The event is being held to promote CENTR to EU officials as a resource for all things DNS (to paraphrase CENTR's Andrzej Bartosiewicz)

It will be interesting to see how such an event is received.

During the ICANN meeting in Seoul it became very clear that new TLDs were not going to progress on schedule (which schedule doesn't matter).

It also became clear that:

• ICANN still wants them to go ahead
• ICANN wants to make everyone happy

There's an obvious flaw there.

You cannot appease all interest groups AND move forward with new TLDs.

The "overarching issues" need to be addressed before the "community" can move towards a workable solution.

For a lot of new TLD applicants the delays with new TLDs are a source of worry, concern and possibly financial strain. While a big corporate may have ample funds to "wait out" the process, this probably wouldn't be the case with some of the smaller TLD projects.

During the week in Seoul some of the applicants tried to come up with a workable "halfway house" style solution.

The concept of garnering information on "interest levels" was put forward in various forms. While the idea has been welcomed in some quarters there are others who are not as comfortable with it.

The logic behind it is quite simple.

At present ICANN does not know how many applicants there will be for new TLDs, nor does it know how many contenders there will be for the same strings. A lot of the "problems" and "issues" are based on guesswork and wild assumptions.

While there may indeed be a basis for concerns it would be significantly easier to address an issue that is clearly presented and identified than by simply "imagining' or "guessing" about its existence.

The Board made reference to this community driven concept during their meeting in Seoul and referenced their experience with planning for the introduction of IDN ccTLDs.

Of course waiting for ICANN to "make a move" can be a frustrating experience, so it's hardly surprising that a group of new TLD applicants got together to form their own, informal, working group to push things forward.

It's also hardly surprising that this move has been met with some criticism from within ICANN circles (drawing parallels with the IRT).

And now ICANN has launched its own initiative to cover the same ground. (Or will the two be working to the same goal? Sorry - I'm getting quite confused by all the back and forth)

Meanwhile the RAA is coming under review again and there's a silly number of other working groups trying to deal with other aspects of ICANN policy...

Oh the fun and games!

SIDN, the registry operator for .nl, has announced a timetable for the rollout of EPP.

A test environment will be available in January, with a "go live" scheduled for February 17 2010.

Full details on their site