Domain Name Blog

In the September issue of Sedo Newsletter reports the PPC provider that .DE is rising in popularity on the internet coming only second to .COM. But I already thought that it was a foregone conclusion that .DE was the strongest of all ccTLDs? This is exactly why Sedo has not informed me much in it’s September issue. The letter goes on to say that .DE has been popular because of the huge population size of Germany and economic muscle. While the I find the first reason rather too light the second one that DENIC’s policies have played the biggest role is the best IMHO. Why do I say this? Denic, like any other registry has well laid out a domain registration policy that only allows domain registrants (owners) to provide valid German street addresses while registering a domain. That is ok. But while this has its own advantages, it does have its own disadvantages e.g. leads to cybersquatting. The domainers who own .DEs have won in this regard. A liberal Denic is a good example of a success story as compared to its backward and conservative french counterpart Afnic. However, the good news is that Afnic is slowly loosening the bolts as we saw last June–individuals not companies can now register domains in France.

It was interesting to read in the late August issue of the Economist about the near death of the Newspaper. With a running sensationalist theme “Who killed the newspaper”, the Economist elaborated on how the most useful bit of the media is disappearing. This is a cause for concern, but not panic, concluded the magazine! I was not so convinced by the author of the article who stayed on the fence in his writing without coming out substantially on the “death” of the newspaper! However, with local advertisers migrating to the web, the plight of newspapers seems to get worse daily. Newspapers are being forced to cut on their sizes due to diminishing ads and sales since the invention of the internet. Late last week, according to a report in the Boston Business Journal, the Boston Herald is slashing an average of 6 pages from its daily newspaper to save on costs.

Two CNET News.com reporters’ personal telephone records were accessed by a contractor hired by Hewlett-Packard to uncover the source of boardroom leaks to the media, according to the California attorney general’s office.

The investigation conducted by a company hired by HP used a controversial technique called “pretexting” to obtain the personal phone records of CNET News.com reporters Dawn Kawamoto and Tom Krazit, state prosecutors said. Pretexting is a sometimes-illegal method of obtaining personal records through misrepresentation of someone’s identity.

Kawamoto and Krazit co-wrote a Jan. 23 article outlining a private, long-term strategy session held by HP’s board of directors.

As reported earlier on DnsBlogs.com, Microsoft has acquired Facebook.com. However, a series of drastic changes introduced on facebook including a RSS Newsfeed is bound to rebound the popular site for the worst. According to a campaign signed up to now by plus 350 Facebook.com members, 12th September, 2006 will be a boycott day. If the proposed boycott goes through, this is definitely would not be a good start for Microsoft who beat Yahoo to buy Facebook.

According to Forbes online edition, Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004. The Palo Alto, Calif., company is privately held. ComScore’s MediaMetrix report said the site has about 9 million registered users, making it the seventh-most-popular Internet site in the United States. The site includes geographic, work-related, collegiate and high school networks.

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I have just came across an article that discusses how Microsoft is once again on the receiving end from trademark violators. One domainer owns the domain IE7.com. IE7 is the name of microsoft’s new internet explorer browser schedueled for release later this month. Online users who key in www.ie7.com expecting to locate information on the upcoming Microsoft browser IE 7, will instead see a big logo of Firefox, the open source browser developed by Mozilla.

The logo includes a link back to Mozilla’s site, and a disclaimer statement at the top of the Web page that reads: “Neither this site nor Mozilla is connected with Microsoft.”

Mozilla Corp stated that the website was created by a web designer who is not affiliated with the company. main.

Last month Microsoft filed three lawsuits in a US federal court against cyber squatters it alleges reaped profits in bad faith. The suits revolve around more than 600 domain names.

According to domain news website Vino.com, there was a great domain sale at the end of last week. Vintners.com was sold by a Sonoma resident and Bulgarian wine importer Vance T. Petrunoff to a Pennsylvania web developer for $45,000.

This marks a strong summer ending for the dot-domain sales amid speculations that the domain industry is heating up. Nonetheless speculation among domainers is rife as a simple search of any other extension of vintner could tell. vintner.info, .org, .info, .net amont other IDNs are all taken!! Take heart, keep on registering more domain names for future profit. A dollar wisely invested today will be worth 2 tomorrow!

An announcement made this week by Apple’s CEO that it plans to sell full length downloadable movies online is soon or later bound to spark controversy. Apple has until now been selling mp3 music though its popular site itunes and boasts of over 40% control of all mp3 players through its now famous ipod. But this week’s revelation is bound to spark a controversy between Apple and retailer chain stores like Walmart which normally sell DVDs. Walmart, the largest supermarket chain store, accounts for 40% of all the $40bn DVDs to be sold this year. As the rumour mongering goes on that itunes will make online movie downloads legal, the Hollywood has remained silent neither without an official comment nor position.

However, the question of pricing is bound to make neither Apple nor Walmart a winner, according to analysts who say that both will offer nearly the same prices. Apple will sell a single flick for $15 and $11 for old movies. While Walmart currently charges $17 for each DVD, there seems to be no clear cut price difference separating the two.

I recently read an article published on eWeek.com that I found a bit stingy. The article entitled “Typosquatting, DNS Wildcards and sucky state of domain affairs” addressed several points about the internet that I found very controversial. According to the author of the articled, which can be found here, the domain industry is a lawless world where, unless you’re a large company with a trademark being violated, the system is set up to the advantage of fast-moving speculators with no sense of respect for rights of authors.

According to him, it is only the strong muscled internet companies like Google, Ebay, Amazon among others which could seriously fight off any violations on their trademarks. I would disagree with the part the article claims that those who capitalize on website typos. In my opinion, the owners of typo do not mislead internet users through ads on typo webpages but rather offer leads to a variety of other goods within the related category!
While I agree that this author knows what he is talking about, indeed he has a point that he is making. It is important to note his wishful thinking of a day when the internet will be free of speculators who in my humble opinion are what makes the bulk of the online business success story.
However, I acknowledge when he rebukes rogue domain registries, like Cameroon whose CTLD incidentally squats on the .com TLD, over their overly handy decisions to wildcard all domains with the .cm extension last month.

In a similar vein the article challenges a proposed tiered pricing of domains with .biz/.org/.info extensions which will obviously give registrars unprecedented powers.     Says the article “ICANN is famously uninterested in protecting the rights of ordinary people. And now it has shown a renewed interest in making things worse”.

In the ensuing blah blah and meandering, the author ends up discussing the controversy surrounding the .eu phony registrars during the landrush mid this year.
TO sum it up, the article correctly acknowledges George Kiriko’s credit for raising amongst domain owners and other internet entrepreneurs about the proposed unfair pricing by ICANN.