Kevin Ohashi - Entrepreneur I Love Learning New Things.

Sedo’s CEO explains how the domain parking and domain sales business has performed so far in 2018.

Sedo CEO Tobias Flaitz is our guest this week. We discuss what’s happening in domain parking and the aftermarket, and he explains where the company gets most of its sales. We also discuss the international market for domains.

Also: Atallah likes Donuts, Uniregistry’s UnPerks, domains under USMCA, CrowdSignal, Web.com goes private and more.

Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play above or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)

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1. Frank Schilling explains price hike – DNW Podcast #127
2. How to Sell More Domains with Adam Strong – DNW Podcast #158
3. Reviewing this year’s predictions – DNW Podcast #161

Turakhia steps aside at ad tech company he founded.

Vaibhav Arya has been named CEO of Media.net.

Div Turakhia, the billionaire co-founder of Directi and founder of ad tech company Media.net, is stepping down from the CEO role at Media.net. The company announced today that current CTO Vaibhav Arya has been promoted to CEO.

Turakhia founded the digital advertising company with knowledge and partnerships gained in the domain parking business. He turned this into an ad tech powerhouse that grossed $232 million in 2015. Shuzhi (formerly known as Miteno) bought the business for $900 million in 2016. (You can hear about Div’s journey and Media.net on DNW Podcast #139.)

After the acquisition, Turakhia stayed on in the CEO role while grooming his senior management team for a planned transition. Now, one of the people who has been with Media.net from the beginning is stepping up as CEO.

Arya has worked with Turakhia for a decade. While Arya has technically been the CTO, I know from my time working with Arya and Div at Media.net that Arya has a strong business acumen.

Turakhia has been appointed Strategic Advisor to the Shuzhi board.

Update: I have received a copy of the email Turakhia sent to the 1,300 employees of Media.net today. It is below.

Friends and colleagues:

Today, I find myself overwhelmed with emotion. I am — excited, grateful, euphoric, inspired, proud, humbled, tearful, and other things that I do not know how to put into words — all at the same time!

My duties as CEO of Media.net will be assumed by my friend, trusted advisor, and your long-time CTO, Vaibhav Arya (being officially announced in a few hours). This transition has been in the works for years. Arya and I have worked closely together since 2008. First, when he joined us to be the CTO for Skenzo, and then at Media.net where Arya has been our CTO from day zero. Arya equally represents continuity, AND the necessary tech capabilities and world-class leadership required to continue the next phase of growth.

Further, the ENTIRE core team at Media.net across all our offices worldwide have already committed to continuing with Arya, and are going to be dedicated to expanding the overall business.

I am excited to see where all of you take Media.net from here! I will be cheering you on!

Online Advertising is a massive industry. At the same time, it is very confusing and fragmented with hundreds, if not thousands, of vendors. There is an incredible amount of inefficiency in the industry. Our goal should continue to be to help simplify it for all the stakeholders and to help optimize. Publishers need to make more and more money, with lesser ads. You can only do this by making the ads much better — that way the users like them because they are relevant & better, the advertiser prefers the better targeted and engaged users and are willing to pay premium rates for them, and publishers like the additional revenue.

Our industry has helped the world become a better place. The Internet and the world would be very different without online advertising in its current form. Imagine if only the rich could afford to search on a search engine, or consume high-quality content, or stay connected with all their friends no matter where they are, or a million other things that everyone does online without having to pay for each use. All of us simply take this for granted. Empowering publishers and app owners with the monetization tools that allow users to consume content and navigate the universe of knowledge for free – without having to pay “tolls” makes the user experience far better and easier.  Creating revenue for publishers and app owners by efficiently connecting advertisers and relevant users, significantly improves the investments that these publishers can make. Hence, what you do makes a BIG difference in the world.

That said, if you don’t do it, someone else will — as it also is a $300 billion per year industry with double digit growth

Report explains what NTIA is doing about GDPR/Whois.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has submitted its first report (pdf) to Congress about adopted ICANN policies.

Congress required NTIA to start providing a semiannual report as part of Senate Report 115-139, which accompanied the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2018.

The reports must include “adopted ICANN policies, including whether or not NTIA supported any changes, and to report on any changes that affect the .gov, .mil, .edu, and .us domains.”

In its first report, NTIA discusses the impact of GDPR on Whois and explains that it is continuing to work to ensure that the final Whois specification “balances data protection with the needs to access WHOIS information for legitimate and lawful purposes”.

NTIA also stated that it is pushing back against ICANN’s proposal to delay the third Accountability and Transparency Review.

Finally, NTIA confirmed that no ICANN Board Resolutions or policy changes have affected the .gov, .mil, .edu, or .us domains.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

1. Judge issues order on IANA transition
2. ICANN files legal action against Tucows registrar over GDPR
3. ICANN appeals German court ruling as it seeks definitive ruling on GDPR and Whois data collection

Domain companies that have fanatical customers often have these shared traits.

This morning I was reading a thread on NamePros about domain registrars. Someone was asking for recommendations on which registrar to choose. Some names kept coming up including Epik and NameSilo. Others mentioned GoDaddy, Namecheap and Dynadot.

Having someone recommend your company to potential customers is the holy grail of marketing. And it’s not really marketing. It’s just about offering a great product or service at a good price.

There are some domain name companies that come up often as recommendations. Here are some things these companies typically have in common:

• They are active on domain forums and blogs, responding to both praise and criticism.
• They have easy-to-contact point people to help customers when they experience a problem.
• They do some level of marketing in the industry.
• They go to industry conferences.
• They offer a good customer experience.
• They have reasonable prices (not necessarily the lowest).
• They don’t bait-and-switch, which leads to lost goodwill.
• They help customers achieve their goals–whether that is to sell more domains, more easily manage their portfolio or something else.
• They recognize that their product/service isn’t flawless and are open to ideas on how to fix it.

Am I missing anything?

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This story is brought to you by the letter H.

Domain name financing firm Domain Capital has sucessfully defended (pdf) its domain names H.co.uk and H.uk in a cybersquatting dispute.

.UK manager Nominet auctioned off many valuable one letter domains in 2011 and a Domain Capital Client bought H.co.uk in the auction for £16,000. The buyer later defaulted and Domain Capital took over the domain.

The cybersquatting complaint was filed by a UK company called H Limited. The company seems to believe it is the only company in the UK that could legitimately use the domain.

This runs contrary to what the Complainant stated in correspondence with the Respondent in 2015, when the Complainant’s representative proposed splitting the .CO.UK and .UK domain names among different purchasers, stating, “I can imagine a number of individuals to whom ‘H.UK’ would have the numerical value you describe”.

Attorney John Berryhill, who represented Domain Capital, noted that the Complainant’s imagination has become much more limited in the intervening several years.

(The Complainant replied to this assertion with an explanation I don’t really understand.)

The Nominet panelist noted:

[T]he Complainant cannot claim all-encompassing rights in the letter H on the basis of the evidence put forth (and indeed it is highly unlikely that any brand owner could ever claim exclusive rights in a single letter of the alphabet, even a huge conglomerate), and the Respondent certainly does have a reasonable justification for having registered the Domain Names, namely resale.

and

Trading in domain names can be lawful, and indeed there is a thriving domain name aftermarket. What is prohibited is attempting to profit from another’s goodwill and reputation in a name and, as explained above, the shorter that name, the more difficult it is to convincingly evidence abuse. In the case at hand, the letter H could relate to just about anything, hence its value when used as a .CO.UK or a .UK domain name.

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1. Marchex Wins UDRP for Walkaway.com
2. Marchex defends EuroBaby.com against Irish company
3. Michael Berkens defends RoadWatch.com domain name in UDRP

It’s a curious time in the financial markets. What about the domain market?

It’s hard to believe that the greatest stock market crash and economic recession of our generation is now a decade old. Since then, at least as far as the stock market is concerned, it’s been nowhere but up. There have been some blips, such as this week, that serve as a reminder. But those have usually been followed by a continued march upward.

It can be easy to become complacent in such environments. I personally like to keep cash on the sidelines to buy into opportunities when the market dips–whether that’s for stocks or domain names. Unfortunately, you can’t time these things. I ended up keeping way to much cash on the sidelines over the past five years as the market soared.

That said, some of the best domain investments I made were when people were hungry for cash during the great recession.

Although the domainer-to-domainer market is a bit soft right now, it seems like some of the valuations people are putting on domains in the expiry stream are rather frothy. The prices don’t seem sustainable when you consider the typical domain investment practice of selling 1%-2% of a portfolio per year. That doesn’t work if you buy at prices that you can only get a 5x return on when the domains finally sell.

I’m continuing to hold cash on the sidelines for the true buying opportunities. But my conservative approach is probably why I don’t drive a Bugatti.

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Domain name stocks haven’t been immune to the market rout.

It’s been a rough week in the stock market, especially yesterday and today. The NASDAQ shed 4.7% in the past two days.

There aren’t that many publicly traded domain companies anymore on the big exchanges, but here’s a look at how the remaining ones fared over the past two days:

Endurance International Group (NASDAQ:EIGI) -0.9%

GoDaddy (NYSE:GDDY) -3.9%

Tucows (NASDAQ:TCX) -3.9%

Verisign (NASDAQ:VRSN) -5.7%

Overall, the domain stocks did better than the markets as a whole. It’s worth noting that GoDaddy, Tucows and Verisign have had significant gains over the past couple of years.

Web.com officially went private this week. What timing!

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1. Tucows and Marchex See Shares Bounce on Earnings
2. Domain stocks doing very well this year
3. Marchex Lays Off 10%

Company acquires CrowdSignal.com and applies for trademarks.

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, is getting ready to launch an online polling/survey platform.

The company recently acquired The CrowdSignal.com domain name and has registered many variants of domains with “CrowdSignal” in them. CrowdSignal.com currently resolves to a WordPress site that is protected.

At the end of September, Automattic applied for two intent-to-use trademarks for ‘CrowdSignal’. The Goods and services are listed as:

Application service provider (ASP) featuring software in the field of online voting, surveys, polls, quizzes, questionnaires, assessments, and ratings for use with websites, blogs, email and social media.

It will be interesting to see if CrowdSignal is primarily a tool for use with WordPress or if it’s a standalone survey and polling solution.

The CrowdSignal.com domain name was listed on domain sales platform Undeveloped.com with a $25,000 asking price prior to its transfer to Automattic.

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1. Q&A with Matt Mazur, who just sold his domain name search company to Automattic
2. What WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg said about domain names at NamesCon
3. VaultPress drops its price for WordPress security and backup

A clothing Designer, a project management company and a discount travel site bought domain names last week.

This week we have a rarity: a .net domain name was the second highest sale among end user sales I found at Sedo. Mahjong.net sold for $10K.

That and B13.com were the only 5-figure sales from last week that I was able to find. There were several sales at $5K and above including UHive.com, a social network with an interesting twist. Uhive has been using a new TLD.

Take a look at some of the end user sales at Sedo this past week, and you can view previous weeks’ lists here.

B13.com €13,000 – This domain forwards to the .DE version of the site for a German online digital communications agency. The agency’s name is b:dreizehn; dreizehn translates to “thirteen”, so they now own the shorter numeric .com version of their domain.

Mahjong.net $10,000 – This forwards to the .Com version of this gaming site that offers free Mahjong games online playable on desktop, tablet and mobile.

UHive.com $9,999 – This site forwards to UHive.life. It claims to be a comprehensive social network, the “World’s First Social Network With Physical Dimensions. Combining technology with Human psychology to deliver a new, remarkable and unique user experience.”

Norlha.com $5,500- Norlha is a clothing company based in China that works with high-end Paris fashion houses. They use the domain NorlhaTextiles.com, so this shorter domain was a nice pickup for the company.

TheWorldTour.com $5,000 – This looks like the landing page for a travel adventure club. Their tagline is “A social, member driven, international travel club of fun people. Awesome trips since 2000!”.

QUWI.com €5,000- This 4L .com has a preview page with the message: “World’s easiest project management system with screenshots.”

Viagens.com.br $3,300 – Forwards to Leblon.com.br, a travel booking site for Brazil where you can reserve discounted hotels, cars and airline tickets. Viagens translates to travels so this is a  keyword term.

ConnectingHelp.com $3,000 – This site is in development for a Montessori school in London called Over the Rainbow.

MyFellow.com €3,000 – This domain was purchased by Towerview Health, which also operates PillBox.com, a prescription medication subscription service and “personal assistant” for medications. Perhaps My Fellow will be an offshoot service for this company.

Inlogy.com $2,500 – Forwards to the .DE version of this site for a German software engineering company.

MachineCafe.fr $2,000 – This site operates as a French music forum where users can make comments on albums.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

1. What domain names Mozilla and others bought last week
2. What domain names Goldman Sachs and others bought this week
3. More end user domain name sales

Siris Capital takes Web.com private.

It’s official: Web.com is now a private company.

Shareholders approved an acquisition by Siris Capital Group yesterday. They got a bit of a bump from when the deal was originally announced at $25.00 per share; all shareholders received $28.00 per share. The deal was about $2 billion including debt.

Web.com owns Network Solutions and Register.com, two high-priced registrars. It also owns SnapNames and a 50% stake in rival expired domain service NameJet. Web.com owns a portfolio of domain names it has captured from the expiry stream as well.

The company has struggled to find its footing of late and was facing investor pressure.

Web.com traded under the symbol WEB on the NASDAQ.

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1. Web.com: WebLock program will be opt-in, not opt-out
2. Domain search progressing, but still not ready for new top level domain names
3. Web.com to go private in $2 billion acquisition

CENTR releases data on how ccTLD managers are treating Whois under GDPR.

The European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has had a big impact on the domain name business, particularly with the display of domain ownership information in WHOIS. While the long arm statutes of the law mean registries and registrars around the world must pay attention, European country code managers must be even more careful.

Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries (CENTR), an association for country code domain managers in Europe, published survey results today about how ccTLD managers are handling the law.

This chart shows how the ccTLDs handle collecting data and presenting it in Whois:

There is also a big difference between which data points within the contact types are published in Whois. For example, only 11% of the registries publish an individual registrant’s email address. 47% publish the email address if it’s a corporate registrant.

It’s worth noting that many EU ccTLD managers already had restricted Whois information prior to GDPR in order to conform with local laws.

The report can be downloaded here.

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1. I just fixed Whois and GDPR
2. ICANN files legal action against Tucows registrar over GDPR
3. ICANN appeals German court ruling as it seeks definitive ruling on GDPR and Whois data collection

Atallah moves from senior ICANN role to contracted party Donuts.

New top level domain name company Donuts has named Akram Atallah as its new CEO. The news was first reported on DomainIncite yesterday.

Atallah was President of ICANN’s Global Domains Division where he oversaw much of the new top level domain name program. It was Atallah who urged his former colleague Fadi Chehade to join ICANN as CEO. Chehade later left ICANN and joined Abry Partners, which acquired Donuts last month. Now Chehade had a chance to hire Atallah.

This will be the third CEO of Donuts in the past two years. Founder Paul Stahura stepped down at the beginning of 2017 and was replaced by Bruce Jaffe. Jaffe has a deal-making background. He helped Donuts acquire Rightside and a few other small businesses and facilitated the sale to Abry Partners.

It strikes me that Stahura, Jaffe and Atallah all have very different backgrounds and personalities. This latest change might be a bit jarring for Donuts staff. It will be interesting to see what changes the company makes under private equity ownership with Atallah at the helm.

There might also be a bit of controversy with this hiring given Atallah’s former role overseeing new TLDs at ICANN. There was a lot of pushback when MMX (then Top Level Domain Holdings) hired Peter Dengate-Thrush in 2011. Dengate-Thrush was the former Chairman of ICANN’s board. That hiring was particularly striking because Dengate-Thrush has just pushed through approval of the new TLD program and the application process was just beginning. I’m not sure it will be as big of an issue with Atallah given where the program is in 2018.

Atallah will join Donuts on November 12. That’s after this months ICANN meeting in Barcelona.

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1. Court denies Donuts’ request to delay .web auction
2. Donuts demands $22.5 million for .Web domain name
3. Donuts acquires BudURL, rebrands as BL.INK

Report looks and recent and historical data on domain registrations at the registrar.

Namecheap released a report today with data about its customers and their choice of top level domain names. The report includes data from the past ten years as well as more recent data incorporating new top level domains.

It can be difficult to compare registration data that doesn’t take into consideration the price of domain names; indeed, Namecheap excluded .xyz and Famous Four Media’s domains from some of its calculations.

Here’s what I found interesting:

1. .US was within the top three most-registered country code domains among Namecheaps customers from January 2017-June 2018. That’s not a huge surprise. The surprise is that it’s among the top three for registrants from Asia, Europe, Africa and South America in addition to the United States. It’s the #1 country code domain amongst Namecheap’s Asian customers. Perhaps promotions played a role.

2. Over the past ten years, June has been the most active month for domain registrations at Namecheap. November and October are #2 and #3, respectively.

3. Nearly half of Namecheap’s customers have registered just one domain with the company:

The full report is available to download on Namecheap’s website.

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1. NameCheap Sued Over WhoisGuard
2. Rightside and NameCheap ink longer term deal
3. Namecheap leaps up .com chart as PDR falls

New trade agreement includes provision for Whois of country code domain names.

The new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, includes a requirement that the three member countries provide public access to Whois data for their respective country code domain names. It also mandates that the country code domains have a UDRP-like mechanism for resolving cybersquatting disputes.

Chapter 20 of the USMCA on Intellectual Property states:

Article 20.C.11: Domain Names

In connection with each Party’s system for the management of its country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) domain names, the following shall be available:

(a) an appropriate procedure for the settlement of disputes that, based on, or modelled along the same lines as, the principles established in the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy or that:

(i) is designed to resolve disputes expeditiously and at low cost,
(ii) is fair and equitable,
(iii) is not overly burdensome, and
(iv) does not preclude resort to judicial proceedings, and

(b) online public access to a reliable and accurate database of contact information concerning domain name registrants, in accordance with each Party’s law and, if applicable, relevant administrator policies regarding protection of privacy and personal data.

In connection with each Party’s system for the management of ccTLD domain names, appropriate remedies shall be available at least in cases in which a person registers or holds, with a bad faith intent to profit, a domain name that is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark.

The part about a database of contact information does not seem to preclude allowing Whois privacy and proxy services.

The United State’s country code domain is .US, Mexico’s is .MX and Canada’s is .CA.

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I built USMCA.com easily thanks to GoDaddy’s wizard and Beaver Builder.

Last week I wrote about a problem with WordPress: it’s simply too difficult for the typical small business owner to figure out how to create a website using WordPress.

I mentioned that the best experience I’ve found for creating a WordPress site is GoDaddy’s managed WordPress hosting. The on-ramp has two key features that make it easy.

First, there’s a wizard that walks you through a quick start process that creates an initial site based on your industry.

Second, it uses Beaver Builder Lite to allow you to edit pre-designed templates to your liking without coding knowledge.

I created a site this way on USMCA.com over the weekend.

Last week the United States, Mexico and Canada announced a new trade agreement designed to replace NAFTA. It has a rather unimaginative name: United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. Shortly after the news was announced I looked up USMCA.com and found that it had a buy now price in GoDaddy’s NameFind inventory. I bought it.

This weekend I created a site on USMCA.com using GoDaddy’s managed WordPress hosting.

Within 10 minutes I already had a decent looking site shell that only needed me to add content and make minor adjustments:

To make what you see in the graphic above, all I needed to do was:

1. Select my industry
2. Give my site a name
3. Select from a handful of child themes under GoDaddy’s Primer theme
4. Choose from stock photos relevant to the industry I selected

From there, it’s easy to use the built-in Beaver Builder to make changes to the content blocks. Beaver Builder works similarly to many of the website builders on the market. You can make a lot of site changes without understanding how to code and without inserting widgets.

I don’t know if this is easy enough for someone who hasn’t used WordPress before, but it’s a heck of a lot easier than figuring out how to download and install a theme or framework. This is the sort of experience that needs to be offered to non-technical people creating a website. Ideally, this is combined with some sort of “WordPress lite” that doesn’t include so many options until the user is ready to unlock them.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

1. VaultPress drops its price for WordPress security and backup
2. How to reduce comment spam on your WordPress website
3. WP Engine acquires StudioPress, maker of the Genesis framework for WordPress

A lot of money is at stake in new TLD auction fund.

ICANN needs to figure out how to disburse $240M+ of auction proceeds.

How should ICANN disburse the $240 million+ it received in auction proceeds from selling off rights to new top level domain names? The working group in charge of figuring out the mechanism for doing so wants community input.

The new gTLD Auction Proceeds Cross Community Working Group (CCWG) has published its initial report and will hold a 40-day public comment period. The report doesn’t get into which specific organizations specifically should benefit, but instead on how to structure what will be a donor divvying up a large chunk of cash and general guidelines for the grants.

CCWG identified four possible mechanisms but thinks that two are the best options. One is to have a new department within ICANN handle doling out the money. The other is to set up an ICANN department that works with an existing charitable organization.

Whatever mechanism is chosen, the goals of the grants will be:

• Benefit the development, distribution, evolution and structures/projects that support the Internet’s unique identifier systems;
• Benefit capacity building and underserved populations, and;
• Benefit the open and interoperable Internet

One area that CCWG would like feedback on is if ICANN itself can be a recipient of any of the funds.

With so much money involved, this is sure to be a long process.

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1. It’s D-Day for ICANN Comments
2. ICANN Extends Public Comment Period for New TLD Guidebook
3. Four new top level domain name contracts signed

Unsurprisingly, it happens a lot.

GoDaddy has released new data on the prevalence of very small businesses being hacked, including having their website hacked.

The numbers are staggeringly high, but I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising. As someone who has operated WordPress websites since 2005, I’ve had my share of being hacked.

GoDaddy has unique data given its size. It analyzed 65,477 requests for help with hacked sites over one year. It found that over half of the cases of WordPress sites involved sites running outdated versions of the software. Of course, it’s not just WordPress sites that get hacked.

In 83% of cases, the hackers added backdoors that would let hackers back in even after cleaning up the offending files. As for the goal of the hackers, it seems like adding spammy/SEO pages is the most common.

The company’s average cleanup involved 110 files but reached as high as 35,057 for a single hack.

Having a technical expert available to quickly fix a hacked site is key. Not surprisingly, GoDaddy has security services including hack cleanup to sell. Personally, I have a web developer on call that can fix any issues like this. When you get hacked, time is of the essence.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

1. Security Software Every Domain Owner Should Use
2. SSL comes to landing page tools, but at a price
3. Google adds more of its top level domains to HSTS preload list

Some customers are told to pay plan fees in order to retain discounts.

Uniregistry Perks provides domain discounts in return for an annual account surcharge.

Domain name registrar Uniregistry rolled out a new discount plan at the beginning of the month that requires a monthly subscription.

I was alerted to the plan by a Uniregistry customer who says he was informed his prices would go up unless he subscribed to one of the plans. I have only 22 domains registered at Uniregistry and have not received any such notice.

The plans charge a fee to activate discounts on new and renewal billing. The cheapest plan is $108 per year.

It appears that the best plan offers .com domains for $8.59 compared to Uniregistry’s standard pricing of $10.88.

Interestingly, the plans are more expensive if you have more domains under management. GoDaddy has offered its Domain Discount Club for a long time and it charges the same fee no matter how many domains you have under management.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Uniregistry waives the discount fees on larger portfolios. I can’t imagine the company losing a 50,000 domain portfolio over a $219-per-month surcharge.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

1. Minds + Machines outsources to Nominet, deals registrar accounts to Uniregistry
2. Uniregistry backtracks on price hike on existing registrations
3. My thoughts on employee turnover at Uniregistry

What’s impacting the domain aftermarket in 2018?

Do people trust the domain name business? Does the industry market to people other than themselves? Not enough.

That’s what Marie Lanyon, VP of Marketing at domain registrar Hexonet, discovered when she entered the domain name world last year. Since then, she’s been working on ways to improve trust and knowledge of the industry. Find out what she’s doing (and what’s working) on today’s episode.

Also: Bob Parson bids adieu, Flying Dogs lie, petition against .com price increases.

Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play above or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

1. 2017 Predictions – DNW Podcast #116
2. Domain name due diligence – DNW Podcast #148
3. Soeren von Varchmin – DNW Podcast #165

Barcelona company files cybersquatting claim in abuse of the UDRP.

AUSACORP, S.L. has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking in a cybersquatting dispute it filed over the domain name Excelway.com.

The company started a brand called Excelway but didn’t inform the World Intellectual Property Organization panel about the date it originated the brand. It appears to have been sometime this decade but the owner of Excelway.com registered the domain in 2003.

AUSACORP tried to buy the domain and the domain owner responded with a counter-offer. The company then filed the UDRP but didn’t mention its overture to buy the domain. Instead, it said that the domain owner tried to sell it to them.

Given that the domain appears to have been registered before the brand existed, the domain couldn’t have been registered in bad faith. Furthermore, the panel found that AUSACORP filed the complaint in abuse of the policy (reverse domain name hijacking):

In this case, the Panel considers that the Complainant omitted or misrepresented key communications between the Complainant and the Respondent. The Complainant’s earlier offer to purchase the Disputed Domain Name was only disclosed by the Respondent. The Panel considers the Complainant filed the Complaint only after several failed attempts to purchase the Disputed Domain Name at what it considered to be a reasonable price.

The Panel considers the Complainant launched the proceedings out of desperation as its prior attempt to purchase the Disputed Domain Name from the Respondent were unsuccessful but without a reasonable chance of success and as such in the circumstances constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding.

The Complainant was represented by Herrero & Asociados. The domain name owner represented himself.

© DomainNameWire.com 2018. This is copyrighted content. Domain Name Wire full-text RSS feeds are made available for personal use only, and may not be published on any site without permission. If you see this message on a website, contact copyright (at) domainnamewire.com. Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

1. Wow: check out this panelist’s scathing finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking
2. Weeds, Inc, which is suing to get Weeds.com, engaged in reverse domain name hijacking
3. A reminder for UDRP filers: Mess up? You can always apologize