Domain Name, Internet, News Blog

In what many see as a record ruling in Belgium last week, EURid was ordered unfroze 74,000 domains held over dispute against warehousers. EURid suspended registrations of 74,000 domains in July due to what it referred to as abuse by certain registrars. The registrars were accused of registering domains directly not on behalf of their clients.

But last week, according to an article published in the HT, EURid was ordered to pay $32,000 fine per hour for each domain per hour, unless it allowed the registrars to transfer the domains to the businesses

After the decision, EURid released the domains but refused to discuss the matter further citing a possible appeal. Since the introduction of the dot eu 2.1m domains have been registered and 210 domain disputes have been settled through arbitration. Among the landmark losers there is Oxford university which lost its domain oxford.eu to a small  trademarked business Ox&Ford!

In last week’s decision Cyprus based companies- Ovidio Ltd., Fausto Ltd. and Gabino Ltd– won square and fit. Arguing their case, they defended that they legitimately registered the domains so as to benefit from direct navigation. Direct navigation works under the principle that some internet users usually type web addresses eg. traveltickets.com. directly onto the url without making use the search engine (Yahoo and Google).

This is a big victory for Registrars indeed and a terrible loss for the dot EU registry!

According to an article published by Circle ID, notes Afnic, there has been a significant increase in the number of cases of slamming since the beginning of this year.
Consequently the french domain registrar, Afnic, has issued a guide to fight against these practices. AFNIC defines “slamming” as “a variety of illicit practices … based on deception and … aimed at getting owners of domain names or brands to subscribe to unsolicited services related with their presence on the Internet” such as false renewal invoice, false register, or even psychological pressure. Just to give you an update, Afnic mid this year liberalized .fr allowing individuals from France to register domain names. Therefore Afnic limited private registrations by asking registrants for a siren number only issued to companies residence in France.

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.

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.

According to one article that I came across at DomainNameWire, search spam blogs might in the near future eclipse the relevance of .info domain extension.
Apparently what many spammers have been doing, says the article, is to buy .info domains which sell cheap and transform them into transportals or blogs. A transportal is defined as Web page consisting almost entirely of pay-per-click links…
This description defines exactly what is a parked webpage. The author of the article tends not to differentiate transportals from parked pages. While his argument gets smashed in his face there is the underlying point which might hold some truth in the near future. .info domains might be soon be discounted by ranking companies to give credit ranking to legitimate websites as opposed to spam search generated for monetization purposes through a PPC services company. Consequently as time goes by .info might loose its special status among search engines which might shun it for fear of spam search. Therefore I agree with this author that spam, indeed is a major threat to the .info domain extension!

Spainless
Today Tuesday all the domains using the Spanish extension .es went offline for at least 2 hours. The failure by Esnic, Spanish registry due to technical problems reinforces the need for stable registries with good technology backbone, reports Domainnamewire.
From news reports:

Madrid, Aug 30 (DPA) The biggest blackout in Spain’s internet history had shut down websites, e-mail and other services using the domains for at least two hours.

ICANN was today lampasted with an avalanche of emails from internet users, mostly domain owners and other key businesses over proposed changes in pricing. ICANN has announced through a statement posted on its website that unlike in the past when it regulated .biz/.info/.org domain pricing, it would abandon such practice to the registrars. If you know what this means, then you are with me in challenging such arbitrary decisions. This means that registrars can charge domain buyers as much as it pleases them in terms of renewal and purchase fees.Publish

For instance, going by the current price of a .info @ $1.50, it could be inflated to $15 within a year or so which represents a massive 900% increase.
I would be addressing three points that I complained about in an email sent to ICANN today.

First, if the proposed changes are effected, registrars would effectively raise domain prices by a hundred forth percentage points. It would not be a surprise in the future when one is asked for a $1bn as renewal fee for a domain.
Second, registrar will have unprecedented pricing powers on the internet, something that has always been and remain a reserve for ICANN. ICANN is abdicating its important overarching role when it leaves it up to registrars to decide on domain prices.
Third, small business holders or better still domain owners would be be steadily squeezed out of business due to unaffordable domain renewal fees.
Last but not least, the ICANN recommendation that domain owners may pay renewal fees for up to 10 years based on existing domain prices is flawed at best. Such an assumption does not recognize other market factors like inflation and deflation. Not only might domains renewed in advance might depreciate in value but also not many businesses can afford to do so.

I believe that ICANN needs to change its position regarding this proposed policy that if it succeeds would only unfairly place the internet in the hands of a few individuals.

If you care about the sustainability of the domain industry, please address your complaints to the following email addresses today before midnight.