Domain Names

How Many TLD Applications Will ICANN Receive?

This post could be subtitled: "The Wisdom of Elites." I polled some people I know in the domain field (plus Andrew Goodman, who wondered what the hell I was going on about). I asked them a simple question: "For the record, how many new TLD applications do you think there'll be?" Most of these people know the domain name world very well, but from different perspectives. Journalists, registrars, intellectual property attorneys, domainers, registry operators, TLD aspirants, entrepreneurs, domain aftermarket auctioneers, civil society activists... more

CIRA Creates Backdoor WHOIS Exceptions for Police and IP Owners

Earlier this year, I wrote glowingly about the new CIRA whois policy, which took effect today and which I described as striking the right balance between access and privacy. The policy was to have provided new privacy protection to individual registrants - hundreds of thousands of Canadians - by removing the public disclosure of their personal contact information... Apparently I spoke too soon. more

Domain Names Users vs Domain Names Registrants

Antony Van Couvering from names@work writes that ICANN's constituencies are a "bad idea". While I am not sure to agree with him on the general principle, he makes some interesting remarks. Among others, he points out that the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) includes groups that seem to be redundant (the Business and Intellectual Property constituencies) and others like domainers which are not represented in the ICANN arena, yet are an integral part of the domain name business... more

.hk the “Most Unsafe” Domains?

Hong Kong domains are the most dangerous in the world; this little factoid from a recent McAfee report generated quite a bit of media coverage, and even made TIME magazine's top stories list. But all is not as it seems, and aspects of the report may have been out of date before the report was even published. McAfee's study seems to be based on a year's worth of data, and last year was a particularly bad year for the Hong Kong domain, thanks to a gang of botnet spammers registering thousands of domains under the .hk ccTLD. These domains were most likely registered using stolen credit cards... more

Demystifying Statistical Approach to Domain Name Appraisals

Professional domain name appraisals have acquired a dubious reputation, and I understand the rational skepticism regarding their usefulness. In my recent paper, "Statistical Domain Name Appraisal: Same as What You're Doing, +/-," I try to demystify the statistical approach by pointing out its commonality with methods intuitively adopted by active domainers. It will also underscore some of the sources of skepticism toward various appraisal methodologies, and point out the advantages and limitations of statistical models. The paper concludes with a list of the conditions that can make a professional appraisal value adding, and with a plea for transparency. more

Long Live the Neodomainers: The Domain Game, Good or Bad

David Kesmodel's to be released book The Domain Game, irrespective of how it is received, will undoubtedly catapult the industry into a new era: that of the neodomainers, the super crunchers. To analyze the impact of the book on the industry, let's look at stylized exchange scenarios featuring a domainer as intermediary (an intermediary in that he or she acquires from the seller and then hopes to resell to the buyer)... more

Dot Travel Still Isn’t Dead Yet

I've writen several blog entries about the continued downward swirling motion of Tralliance, the company that runs the registry for .TRAVEL. In this month's installment, as told in their quarterly 10-Q SEC filing, they flirt with bankruptcy but may well end up more stable than before. One of the more eye-catching paragraphs says... more

Domain-Name Error Redirect: Incentives and Solutions

Some domainers, having forgone parking revenue to avoid any claims of trademark violation, have then found themselves thrown into legal trouble with trademark claimants because of actions taken by a third party (ISPs and PC manufacturers). In addition to the resulting direct legal cost, the possibility of action by a third party heightens uncertainty and steals management's attention away from its real job. The troubles for the domain name owner start when a surfer who enters in the browser an inactive domain name is redirected to a Web page with advertising instead of getting a page that says there is an input error... more

A Patent for SiteFinder-Like Resolution

I saw an interesting news item that broke Monday courtesy of DomainNameNews and SlashDot that hasn't been broadly covered yet. I'm surprised no one has posted on this yet on CircleID, so here goes. Apparently VeriSign has been awarded a patent for the resolution of mis-typed domain names. This was at the heart of the controversy back in 2003 around their SiteFinder Service. Amidst a storm of criticism ICANN insisted VeriSign shut down the service, and the company eventually agreed. more

New CIRA Whois Policy Strikes Balance Between Privacy and Access

My weekly technology law column focuses this week on the new CIRA whois policy that is scheduled to take effect on June 10, 2008. The whois issue has attracted little public attention, yet it has been the subject of heated debate within the domain name community for many years. It revolves around the whois database, a publicly accessible, searchable list of domain name registrant information (as in "who is" the registrant of a particular domain name). more