Domains: July 2007 Archives

A surefire way of losing a domain name is when you register one which you have zero entitlement to. It's one thing when the domain name in question is madeup of words or is an expression of some kind, but when it is a peculiar word it's very hard to defend that position. Take the example of skype.co.uk. While most of the WIPO decisions regarding IE domains have involved a particular party (EUBrowser) the most recent decision does not. Kelkoo.ie was the subject of a WIPO UDRP which was published today. Anyone working in the internet business in Europe would be familiar with Kelkoo who run a price comparison service. The person who registered Kelkoo.ie may have expected the trademark holder not to notice or to possibly turn a blind eye, which they didn't. The decision from WIPO was very straightforward:

6. Discussion and Findings Paragraph 1.4 of the Policy states: “the Complainant carries the burden of proving, prima facie, that the three conditions specified in paragraph 1.1 are met”. A. Identical or Confusingly Similar The first condition in paragraph 1.1 of the Policy is that the Domain Name is identical or misleadingly similar to a protected identifier in which the Complainant has rights. Under paragraph 1.3.1 of the Policy, “protected identifiers” include “trade and service marks protected in the island of Ireland”. The Complainant has invoked three Community Trade Marks, all of which have effect in the island of Ireland. One of these is registered in the name of the Complainant. The proprietor of the other two is “KELKOO.COM”, with a different Paris address to that shown for the Complainant. The Complainant asserts that it also trades as Kelkoo.com and that it is the proprietor of all of the trade marks. The Complainant could have done more to verify its connection with those other two trade marks. However, in the absence of any challenge from the Respondent, the Panel is prepared to infer that the two trade marks are either owned by the Complainant or held within the Complainant’s group on behalf of the Complainant. See the following case under the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy where a similar approach was taken: PartyGaming Plc v. Kriss Vance, WIPO Case No. D2006-0456. One of the Complainant’s registered trade marks is for the word “KELKOO”. Accordingly, the Panel concludes that, disregarding the domain suffix “.ie”, the disputed domain name is identical to a protected identifier in which the Complainant has rights. The Panel makes no finding concerning common law rights as the Complainant has produced no information or evidence concerning its trading activities in the island of Ireland. B. Rights or Legitimate Interests The second condition in paragraph 1.1 of the Policy is that the Registrant has no rights in law or legitimate interests in respect of the Domain Name. Paragraph 3.1 of the Policy specifies three non-exhaustive factors which may be considered as evidence of rights or legitimate interests. The Complainant must establish at least a prima facie case under this heading and, if that is made out, the evidential onus shifts to the Registrant to rebut the presumption of absence of rights or legitimate interests thereby created. See, e.g., Travel Counsellors plc and Travel Counsellors (Ireland) Ltd v. Portlaoise Travel Ltd, WIPO Case No. DIE2006-0002. The Complainant states that it has not licensed or otherwise authorized the Registrant to use its trade mark. Paragraph 3.1.1 of the .IE Policy does not apply as there is no evidence of demonstrable good faith preparations to use the domain name in connection with a good faith offering of goods or services or operation of a business. The holding page posted at the website of the disputed domain name falls well short of “demonstrable good faith preparations”. Paragraph 3.1.2 does not apply as there is no evidence that the domain name corresponds to the personal name or pseudonym of the Registrant. Paragraph 3.1.3 does not apply as there is no evidence of any use of the domain name by the Registrant and the domain name is not a geographical indication. Although there is a slight discrepancy in the spelling of the surname, it is clear that the Registrant owns a registered business name corresponding to the disputed domain name. The Panel thinks it reasonable to infer that the business name was registered to enable registration of the disputed domain name in accordance with IEDR’s domain name registration requirements and not for any genuine independent business purpose. This business name registration is not, of itself, sufficient to constitute rights or legitimate interests. The Complainant has established a prima facie case of lack of rights and legitimate interests and there is no rebuttal by the Registrant. The Panel concludes that the Registrant has no rights in law or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name. C. Registered or Used in Bad Faith The third condition in paragraph 1.1 of the Policy is that the disputed domain name has been registered or is being used in bad faith. The name “KELKOO” is highly distinctive. It is virtually inconceivable that the Registrant registered the disputed domain name other than for the purpose of targeting the Complainant’s trade mark. This is supported by the fact that the holding page posted at the website of the disputed domain name referred to “online shopping”, which is the Complainant’s area of operation. Furthermore, the Registrant has not used the disputed domain name for a substantive website since its registration almost two years ago. Nor has the Registrant had appeared in these proceedings to contest the Complainant’s allegations. Taking all of these matters together, the Panel concludes that the disputed domain name was registered in bad faith. Paragraph 2.1 of the Policy specifies six non-exhaustive factors which may be considered as evidence of registration or use in bad faith. Insofar as it is necessary to have regard to these, the Panel considers that paragraphs 2.1.2 and 2.1.3 of the Policy apply here: “2.1.2 where the domain name has been registered or is used primarily in order to prevent the complainant from reflecting a Protected Identifier in which it has rights in a corresponding domain name; or 2.1.3 where the Registrant has registered or is using the domain name primarily for the purpose of interfering with or disrupting the business of the complainant;…”

(full text) So the main page of the site should be updated from: To read "never opening - sorry!"

According to an announcement on the Tucows blog by their CEO Elliot Noss, Tucows has finalised the acquisition of ItsYourDomain. IYD use an affiliate business model as opposed to the reseller model employed by many ICANN accredited registrars. The acquisition will cost Tucows US$10.35 million upfront.

It was inevitable that ICANN would want to review the Registrar Accreditation Agreement following on the collapse of RegisterFly. At both the Lisbon and San Juan ICANN meetings the registrar agreement was a hot topic. So what is going on exactly? Paul Twomey's announcement yesterday covers most of the salient points:

The need for this review is clear. The current RAA is more than six years old. We’ve seen the number of accredited registrars grow to more than 900. And we’ve seen the incredible difficulties that can be unleashed with the collapse of a Registrar.

The Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) deals with the relationship between ICANN and the registrars. Some of the topics that are up for discussion / review are obviously motivated by RegisterFly's "backdoor" accreditation and the subsequent fallout when it collapsed:

* Incorporating provisions to govern the terms under which a registrar can be sold and continue to retain its ICANN accreditation. * Including additional contract enforcement tools offering more options than the current one option – terminating accreditation. * Addressing the responsibilities of a parent owner/manager when one or more of a “family” of registrars fails to comply with ICANN requirements. * Requiring registrars to escrow contact information for customers who register domain names using Whois privacy and Whois proxy services. * Augmenting the responsibilities placed on registrars with regard to their relationships with resellers. * Requiring operator skills training and testing for all ICANN-accredited Registrars.

A couple of these points may not need further explanation, but others definitely warrant it. The concept of contact information escrow is very important to registrants, as the collapse of RegisterFly led to many registrants (domain owners) being in the awkward position of not being able to prove ownership of their domains. I'm not sure which areas of the reseller - registrar relationship ICANN is interested in, but if you consider how much the market has changed in the last 6 years it's pretty obvious that some mention of resellers is necessary. More information on the consultation is available on the ICANN site

The competition between the various ICANN accredited registrars has been tough for quite some time.
All you need to do is look at the pricing being offered by some of the companies, along with the various other enticements they use to attract new registrants and resellers, to get an idea of how tough the market has become.
However I never thought I would see an ICANN accredited registrar resorting to comment spam.
Unfortunately one registrar does not seem to see spamming blogs with their special offers as being an issue.
Todaynic have attempted to spam this site and several others that I run.
On each occassion they've targetted posts related to domains (which on this site wouldn't take much effort)
The question is who can do anything about it?
Is ICANN in a position to give a registrar engaged in this sort of activity a slap on the wrists?
If ICANN can't take action against them, is there someone else who can?

Brett Fausett, who I met briefly in LA this year, has been blogging about the domain name industry for a long time and is a respected and knowledgeable voice. He has just launched a new domain related blog which should prove interesting, as his first post explores Google's latest play on domain registration.

I came across Domain Log Book earlier this evening via a post on Pinstripe The concept is nice - keep track of your domains in terms of renewal dates and page rank, however it's not that helpful if you deal with ccTLDs. I added a couple of .com domains to it and it showed me the info from whois ie. expiration date and the page rank from both Google and Alexa. However when I added a .ie domain it couldn't handle the renewal date at all. While I can understand that it would focus on .com I get the impression that not much attention was paid to other ccTLDs apart from co.uk, which seems to work. It doesn't, for example, tell you which registrar the domains are with - regardless of their extension, so I can't see it being that helpful for people using multiple registrars. However if you only have a modest domain portfolio with a single registrar this might work out quite well for you... It's free anyway, so you can't really complain :)

A few weeks ago DomainSponsor emailed their clients to inform them of planned changes to their payment processes. Frank covered it here. While anyone reading the email from a few weeks ago would have got the distinct impression that Paypal was being phased out:

We will be phasing out the PayPal payment method

Couldn't be clearer than that, now could it? Oh wait! This is 2007, so maybe if you backtrack quickly enough nobody will remember:

There has been some confusion related to our future plans for PayPal as a payment method. To clarify, we will continue to actively support PayPal as a payment method. Our intent was to provide a faster and more efficient method of payment for clients who have US bank accounts. Direct Deposit accomplishes that goal and is our recommended solution for clients with US bank accounts. The choice, however, remains yours.

"Confusion"? I wasn't confused in the least. They categorically and clearly stated they were removing it as a payment method. It's laughable how some companies think we all have memories like goldfish.. Pity, as I like the guys in DS ...

A few days ago I posted about the state of the EU. This was prompted in part by the first part of John's excellent study into the .eu namespace and activity therein and partially by Eurid's latest promotional campaign. My post here may have gone unnoticed, but shortly after it appeared on CircleID Jay Westerdal posted on his blog. While I agree with the thrust of his post ie. that a TLD needs to be used in advertising and mass media where people can actually see it and relate to it, I would have to disagree with some of his followup comments:

I think the EU should release their zonefile. That would allow people to track growth and chart their marketshare. However they think that is an invasion of privacy and are opposed to it. Historically TLDs that release their zonefile have better adoption. The EU seems to be opposed to true market forces. They discourage buying multiple domains and building value in the TLD. I think this is a fundamental mistake of Dot EU.

In common with so many people across the Atlantic Mr Westerdal seems to have issues with our respect for privacy in the European Union. As John put it to me earlier this evening:

The problem with releasing the zonefile is that EURid is bound by EU data privacy legislation. Most ccTLD registries in the EU do not release their zonefiles so it is not unusual. The .eu is an EU venture. It is no suprise that it is not a free market venture because there is a multitude of jurisdictions to be considered. Thus legislation in one jurisdiction could be used to challenge the release of the zonefile on the basis that it would be interfering with the data privacy of its citizens.

Zonefiles are handy things for certain purposes, but I'd really wonder what he is trying to promote. The language he uses is very suggestive and would make me wonder what he sees as "value" in a TLD. Europeans like me are not overly happy with Eurid's handling of .eu, however they have shown willingness to learn from their mistakes. What a lot of domainers don't seem to understand is that a young TLD needs to have valid usage and growth or else it will end up a bit like .info and won't have any real value in the secondary market, which is where a lot of people are focusing their efforts.

I mentioned DNZoom a few weeks ago and was hoping to be able to try it out. I've been invited to take part in the private beta with a handful of others. I've been playing around with the interface and the various functions while chatting to Dan Kimball, one of the driving forces behind the new service. Web 2.0 services have been over hyped in the last couple of years and a lot of them probably won't survive for a very simple reason - they've no revenue model. DNZoom, however, should succeed. Yes - it is "beta" in the true meaning of the word, so of course some functions don't work properly, but this is the killer app for any domain professional. Why? Because it makes your life a hell of a lot easier - that's why. I wouldn't consider myself to be a serious "domainer" (I don't even particularly like the word!), but I have accounts with at least a half dozen ICANN registrars, all the main aftermarkets and three parking services. Managing all of that can be a pain in the neck! DNZoom does away with all the pain, as it offers you a central location to manage pretty much all aspects of your account. From the control panel I can easily add all my registrar accounts by simply inputting the account login details. If the system has full API support it can import everything for me. You can do the same with your parking accounts. Want to grab more domains? The system comes with a number of tools including name spinners to make it all easy and intuitive to use. Once you've found a domain you want to grab you can simply register it using the registrar of your choice with one of your contact profiles. Instead of having to login to 5 or 6 websites to handle the process you can now do it all from one place. The navigation menu is pretty self-explanatory and the use of AJAX is excellent ie. it makes things easier for you without being fluffy and essentially useless like so many AJAX apps you come across. Let's look at the various options in more detail:

• Dashboard - your starting point or hub with links to other parts of the system
• My Portfolio - pretty self-explanatory. You can import ALL your domains en masse from both registrar and parking accounts
• Find Domains - offers a number of handy tools to help you find new domains to add to your portfolio
• Marketplace - can't find a new domain? There's nothing wrong with an aftermarket purchase or even one inspired by one (ie. spun from a listing)
• Dropped Names - find drops and upcoming drops which you can rank by Google and Alexa rank etc.,
• My Accounts - your account details with the various registrars and parking services
• Manage Profile - your user profile and other details for registering domains. It also includes ccTLD specific stuff which is a really nice touch
• Security Settings - considering the amount of sensitive information you are exchanging via a 3rd party this area should not be overlooked

There are so many options to play with on the system that no simple review can do the service justice and their roadmap for future development sounds like I'll never tire of it! For a "beta" DNZoom is truly impressive!

Centralnic have just announced that .la domains are available to their resellers / registrars:

As you may know, earlier this year CentralNic became the registry provider for .LA. We are pleased to be able to inform you that we are now able to offer .LA to all accredited CentralNic resellers.

.la is the ccTLD for Lao People's Democratic Republic, but it can also be marketed for Los Angeles (LA).

.mobi is aimed at mobile devices and all domains are meant to serve mobile ready content. While that may sound like a nice idea, or possibly a bit crazy, the people running the registry, which is based in Dublin, Ireland, take it very seriously. Of course they know that it's not going to be that easy for everyone to build sites that work on mobile devices, so they have invested heavily in a building a developer and support community. One of the tools that they made available some time ago was their "mobi ready" test, which uses a number of parameters to see if your site will display sanely on a mobile device. The current version works well, but the new version, which is currently in beta, takes things to a whole new level:

The new version is a radically step up in terms of functionality of the tool. (In fact, although we're calling it v1.1, it's far more like a v2.0). Most noticable is the fact that you can test whole sites - the tool will follow links and crawl multiple pages - and of course report your "mobile readiness" for all of those it finds.

James Pearce, dotMobi's VP of Technology, provides full details of their new "toy" on the dotMobi blog

Francesco, who works for Ascio, posted to the Eurid registrars' list yesterday about a domain scam (in German). The scam is strikingly similar to so many of those that we have seen for .com, .ie and .co.uk over the last few years. The text of the mail is below:

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren Sie haben diese E-Mail erhalten, weil Sie der registrierte Inhaber von www.xxxxxxxxx.com sind. Im Rahmen unserer Verpflichtung, Eigentumsstreitigkeiten und Markenverluste durch Domain-Hijacking zu reduzieren, möchten wir Sie über Folgendes in Kenntnis setzen: Domain-Status: www.xxxxxxxxxxx.eu ist verfügbar. Seit dem 6. April 2006 kann jeder innerhalb der EU eine verfügbare .eu-Domain registrieren. Klicken Sie hier zum Registrieren von www.xxxxxxxxx.eu oder besuchen Sie die folgende Adresse http://www.euidregistration.eu.

I don't speak German, but the general gist of the mail is that as the recipient owns domain.com they might be interested domain.eu. And of course the mails are unsolicited .... This kind of activity is hardly good for anyone's business, so it was nice to see that Eurid pulled the domain registration this morning: Name euidregistration Status REGISTERED Registered July 3, 2007 Last update July 3, 2007 6:01 PM Registrant Name revoked domain name Organisation Eligibility criteria not met Language English You can read more details of the scam on Francesco's blog

The EU sunrise and landrush has probably been discussed to death, but what is the landscape like over a year later? A lot of industry insiders were right to express their doubts about the stability of EU following on from the high profile squats, that have been discussed here at length. Of course any discussion on a new TLD would have to wait until after the first wave of renewals. That happened in April, so now, in July, it's a good as time to take stock of the situation. Eurid is currently running a campaign to increase awareness of "dot eu" as a brand. The Going for EU concept is certainly attractive, but maybe a bit misplaced. The domain name is a nice play on words, but only works for native English speakers, who are anything but the majority within the EU. The site of course pushes all the positive aspects of registering and using a .eu domain, which as its run by the registry you would only expect. Of course the reality of .eu might be somewhat different John McCormack has compiled some very interesting and quite disturbing statistics of domain usage. John, who is well known in Irish and international internet circles, runs whoisireland.com and publishes detailed reports on domain usage every month. According to John's study less than 22% of EU domains appear to be actively developed. This was based on spidering the entire EU namespace and then analysing the response codes received, html etc.,. The report overview breaks the namespace down into:

A: Active/not yet classified. B: Brand protection registration. D: refresh in webpage. F: Forbidden or other 4nn code. H: Holding page with no content. N: Duplicate content network of sites. P: PPC parked. R: Redirected (301/302 codes). S: Site is for sale or rent. U: Site unavailable (127.0.0.1 is not a valid IP etc). W: Domain aggregation network sites. X: Porn sites.

While statistics for the IE namespace are currently not available I was able to talk to John this afternoon who gave me some preliminary stats:

.. preliminary utilisation is around 81% (still processing those figures but it might go down to about 75% actively developed) .ie is a managed ccTLD so usage is going to be higher - being a product of difficulty of acquisition and cost of domain.

.eu is not a fully managed TLD, however registrants are meant to fulfill some basic criteria - ie. have an EU address EDIT: The survey was on 2.13 million domains

I've listened in to several domain auctions over the last year or so. Even if you didn't have the list of domains it could be a lively and entertaining experience. Last night's auction, however, was terrible. It wasn't the domains that were up for sale that caused problems but the total lack of interest expressed by those present. Adam and others have gone into the reasons behind this in detail

Kieren McCarthy was interviewed by Monte Cahn on Webmasterradio a couple of weeks ago. It's well worth listening to (mp3) Kieren talks about his book on the sex.com battle, his role in ICANN and gives some very interesting insights into the domain industry. You may not agree with everything he says, but you can't deny that it's a fascinating interview.

In the last week Nominet has reported that the six millionth domain has been registered. For a ccTLD that's an impressive figure by any estimation. Detailed stats are available on their site It would be interesting to see what percentage of registrants are UK based, as the registry has an open policy (the registrant class wouldn't work too well for this) EDIT: This post has also been published on CircleID with my permission

Caroline Greer has announced that 650 .mobi city names will be made available towards the end of August. The full list may be seen here (PDF) and includes dublin.mobi Local authorities will be able to make use of the domains, unlike what happened with so many city / place names in the .eu namespace:

These names have been held back from general registration until now to ensure that it is the cities themselves that have the opportunity to develop mobile sites that best address the needs of their visitors and residents.

Full details of the process are available on the .mobi site

Before you launch a new product or service it makes sense to check the domains. If you don't own them, then maybe you can acquire them before your product launch. Apple obviously didn't think that one through .... Iphone.com has been registered for over a decade, but they didn't think to contact its owner prior to announcing their new product. End result? They didn't get the traffic to the domain for the last few months and have paid the domain's former owner a very large sum of money to acquire the domain. Jay has more details. Moral of the story - check the domain!