News
NTIA head: No Whois is “unmitigated victory for the spammers and scammers”
Redl says U.S. government continues to fight for access to Whois information.
This morning at the Internet Governance Forum in Washington, D.C., NTIA Assistant Secretary David Redl spoke about the impact of the EU’s GDPR on Whois.
He said the lack of public Whois is an “unmitigated victory for the spammers and scammers that plague consumers and businesses” and that the U.S. government is working with the European Data Protection Board and other groups to address it.
Here are his full comments about GDPR and Whois:
The most pressing issue facing ICANN right now is updating the WHOIS service in light of the European General Data Protection Regulation, or “GDPR.” The WHOIS is a service that, prior the GDPR’s effective date in May, provided public access to domain name registration information, including contact information for the entity or person registering the domain name.
This WHOIS information is a critical tool that helps keep people accountable for what they put online. Law enforcement uses WHOIS to shut down criminal enterprises and malicious websites. Cybersecurity researchers use it to track bad actors. And it is a first line in the defense of intellectual property.
Unfortunately, European authorities have indicated that the collection and public provision of domain name registration data violates the GDPR. Because of this, as of late May, domain name registries and registrars have stopped providing important domain name registration information contained in the WHOIS. This is an unmitigated victory for the spammers and scammers that plague consumers and businesses.
NTIA and the highest levels of the U.S. government are engaging with the European Data Protection Board, the European Commission, and European Member States to provide clarity and guidance to the community as it works to facilitate access and accreditation to WHOIS information, which is now private. This access mechanism is critical to meeting the needs of law enforcement, cybersecurity, and rights protection. NTIA will take a lead role in the process to develop this access mechanism and will fight hard for the important governmental and commercial equities in the WHOIS service.
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Nestle let Ozarka(.)com expire in 2002. Now it’s getting the domain name back.
Current owner was using the domain name in a bad way.
Don’t visit Ozarka(.)com…at least not yet.
Nestle Waters, through its entity Perrier, inadvertently let the domain name Ozarka(.)com expire way back in 2002. 16 years later, a National Arbitration Forum panelist has ordered the domain name to be transferred back to the water company.
Ozarka is a bottled water brand sold mostly in the south-central United States.
16 years is a long time to wait, and the domain has been transferred to many different people since then. So the reason Nestle decided to go after the name now might have something to do with how the domain name is being used by its current owner. When I visited the domain name, my antivirus software started throwing off alarm bells about a large amount of data being transferred from my computer. I don’t recommend visiting the domain.
According to Nestle, the current owner began forwarding the domain name to the typo ozaraspringwater(.)com in 2013, and the page had sponsored links to water companies.
The official site for Ozarka Water is OzarkaWater.com.
The full case decision is here.
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Categories: Domains
Verisign earnings: 149.7 million total .com/.net base, $302 million revenue
Verisign continues to show growth in .com domains.
Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) reported earnings for the second quarter of 2018 after the bell today.
The company generated $302 million in revenue and $128 million net income for Q2 2018.
There were 149.7 million .com and .net domains registered at the end of the quarter. That’s an increase of 1.39 million domains from the end of Q1, ahead of the company’s expectations of 0.7 to 1.2 million. (As I’ve pointed out before, it’s fairly easy for the company to his its domain base targets.)
There were 9.6 million new domain name registrations for .com and .net domains in the quarter.
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UDRP Complainants should stop misusing the UDRP for business disputes and trademark infringement disputes
UDRP was designed for cybersquatting, not business disputes and trademark infringement challenges.
This post is part of a series on UDRP issues by the Internet Commerce Association.
Misguided trademark owners are wasting their time and money on UDRP complaints which wrongly attempt to resolve business disputes or allegations of trademark infringement. The UDRP’s power to order a domain name to be transferred often attracts companies who wish to seize coveted and commercially valuable domain names even when the circumstances fall well outside the limited scope of the UDRP. Two recent cases make this clear. The first case involves a business dispute that is outside the scope of the Policy. The second case involves a trademark dispute, which is also outside the scope of the Policy. Both cases were properly dismissed by the Panel.
Business Disputes Outside Scope of UDRP
In Patrick Shawn O’Grady v. Sam Mckinley / cti ind,inc, NAF Claim Number: FA1806001790052 (June 22, 2018), NAF Panelist Debrett G. Lyons denied the complaint and correctly determined that there was no evidence of bad faith registration in an apparent business dispute. The Panelist found that the domain name (PKLures.com) was registered almost a decade ago by the Respondent, likely on behalf of a company that was subsequently incorporated by both the Complainant and Respondent. The Complainant in 2017 then registered a matching trademark in his own name, and demanded that the Respondent transfer the domain to him. When that didn’t work, the Complainant brought a UDRP, in order to solve what amounts to a business dispute between related parties, and not a case of cybersquatting that the UDRP was intended to address.
Such business disputes are clearly outside of the limited and narrow scope of the Policy (See Everingham Bros. Bait Co. v. Contigo Visual, FA 440219 (Nat. Arb. Forum Apr. 27, 2005) (“The Panel finds that this matter is outside the scope of the Policy because it involves a business dispute between two parties. The UDRP was implemented to address abusive cybersquatting, not contractual or legitimate business disputes.”); see also Fuze Beverage, LLC v. CGEYE, Inc., FA 844252 (Nat. Arb. Forum Jan. 8, 2007) (“The Complaint before us describes what appears to be a common-form claim of breach of contract or breach of fiduciary duty. It is not the kind of controversy, grounded exclusively in abusive cyber-squatting, that the Policy was designed to address.”); see also Frazier Winery LLC v. Hernandez, FA 841081 (Nat. Arb. Forum Dec. 27, 2006) (holding that disputes arising out of a business relationship between the complainant and respondent regarding control over the domain name registration are outside the scope of the UDRP Policy). As in Thread.com, LLC v. Poploff, D2000-1470 (WIPO Jan. 5, 2001), complainants must not attempt to shoehorn what is essentially a business dispute involving contractual relations into a proceeding to adjudicate cybersquatting. This is misguided, if not a misuse of the Policy.
Trademark Dispute Outside Scope of UDRP
In MOD Super Fast Pizza, LLC v. MOD Restaurant, MOD Restaurant & Social, WIPO Case No. D2018-0903 (June 22, 2018), WIPO Panelist Georges Nahitchevansky denied the Complaint, and correctly determined that a trademark dispute belongs in court and is beyond the scope of a UDRP proceeding. The Panelist found that the registrant registered mod.restaurant because it had since 2015 operated a restaurant in Arkansas called MOD. The Panelist noted that although the Complainant may have trademark registrations which include the word MOD for its chain of pizza restaurants, there was no evidence of bad faith registration and use. The Panel noted that although it may have been improvident to have adopted the MOD domain name given the Complainant’s alleged trademark rights, the evidence did not support a claim of bad faith registration by the Respondent. Rather, the evidence was that the Respondent had used MOD for its own restaurant which was in a geographic area where the Complainant did not operate, and did not serve pizza. This therefore did not appear to be a situation of opportunistic exploitation of the Complainant’s mark, but rather, at most, a trademark dispute.
Such cases where the complainant relies on allegations of trademark infringement or unfair competition do not belong in the UDRP in the absence of evidence of cybersquatting. As held in Edelgard & Horst Liebl v. Drug-Aware Ltd., NAF Claim Number: FA1106001395617 (August 8, 2011), “the present proceedings must be considered summary proceedings that were never intended to serve as a vehicle for adjudication of traditional trademark disputes.” A similar conclusion was reached in Intel Corporation v. Intelsitio Mexico, WIPO Case No. D2012-0718 (June 21, 2012):
“It should be remembered that the Policy is of narrow compass and is intended to deal with cases of abusive cybersquatting. The present case strikes the Panel as a trademark infringement or unfair competition dispute rather than a complaint of abusive cybersquatting. As such, the proper forum is a court of competent jurisdiction.”
The Limited Scope of the UDRPThe limited scope of the UDRP was discussed by ICANN staff in its Second Staff Report on Implementation Documents for the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy, October 24, 1999, at paragraph 4.1(c) as follows:
“The Recommended Policy Is Minimalist in its Resort to Mandatory Resolution….The adopted policy establishes a streamlined, inexpensive administrative dispute-resolution procedure intended only for the relatively narrow class of cases of “abusive registrations”. Thus, the fact that the policy’s administrative dispute-resolution procedure does not extend to cases where a registered domain name is subject to a legitimate dispute (and may ultimately be found to violate the challenger’s trademark) is a feature of the policy, not a flaw. The policy relegates all “legitimate” disputes–such as those where both disputants had longstanding trademark rights in the name when it was registered as a domain name to the courts; only cases of abusive registrations are intended to be subject to the streamlined administrative dispute-resolution procedure.”
Consistent with the Second Staff Report, in Love v. Barnett, FA 944826 (Nat. Arb. Forum May 14, 2007), the Panel denied the complaint while citing the Final Report of the WIPO Internet Domain Name Process (April 30, 1999), stating that the scope of the UDRP procedure “is limited so that it is available only in respect of deliberate, bad faith, abusive, domain name registrations or “cybersquatting” and is not applicable to disputes between parties with competing rights acting in good faith”. The “narrow focus” of the UDRP has been confirmed many times by numerous UDRP Panels. The panels in the following cases denied the complaints because they were inappropriate attempts to use the UDRP to resolve business disputes: Quarterview v. Quarterview Co. Ltd., eResolution Case Numbers AF-0209a and AF-0209b, Thump Records, Inc. v. WebPros, NAF Claim No. FA0503000446911, Carol Shedrick d/b/a Stanford Limousine LLC v. Charles Princeton d/b/a Net Solutions, NAF Claim Number: FA0402000236575, and LIBRO AG v. NA Global Link Limited, WIPO Case No. D2000-0186).
Greater awareness on the part of complainants’ counsel as to the role and scope of the UDRP may reduce efforts to misuse the UDRP for purposes for which the Policy was not intended. The UDRP can be an effective tool for dealing with cybersquatting, but it is an ineffective and inappropriate tool for dealing with any dispute involving matters outside of its limited scope. Those disputes are best dealt with in courts which are properly equipped to address them. The Internet Commerce Association takes this opportunity to commend Panelists Lyons and Nahitchevansky for following the Policy and adhering to its spirit and intent in the above-mentioned cases.
Zak Muscovitch is General Counsel to the Internet Commerce Association, a group that advocates on behalf of domain name investors.
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How to set up URL forwarding with Wix (step-by-step)
Move a site to Wix? Here’s how to forward old URLs to new ones.
I recently wrote about how I moved Comptroller.com to the Wix platform.
Unfortunately, I could not set up the URL structure on Wix the same way it was on the old site. That meant that Google had indexed pages that no longer existed and I need to let Google know the new URLs for these pages.
Fortunately, Wix has a URL forwarding tool to add 301 redirects. My site was fairly small, so the “manual” tool worked well for adding these redirects.
Here’s how to do it.
1. Log in to your Wix dashboard and select the site you’d like to add forwards for.
2. Click on “Manage Website” in the left column.
3. Click on “SEO”.
4. Scroll down to “Manage 301 Redirects”.
5. Insert the URL (after the top level domain) of the old page in the box on the left, and select the page it should link to on the new site from the dropdown box on the right.
Note: If you don’t see the page in the dropdown box (perhaps because it’s a dynamic page), click “Add it Manually” and paste the page hosted on Wix in the box:
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Wix posts $146.1 million revenue, 205k net new paying customers in Q2
Company posts impressive year-over-year numbers but net paying customer growth rate lower than in Q1.
Website builder Wix (NASDAQ:WIX) released earnings for the second quarter of 2018 today.
The company reported $146.1 million revenue for the quarter, up 41% year-over-year. It was up from $137.8 million in Q1.
Collections–a measure of sales not considering subscription revenue recognition practices–were $159.9 million.
Free cash flow hit $23.9 million, up 37% year-over-year and a new record.
Wix added a net 205,000 paying customers in the quarter. That brings the total to 3.7 million paying customers. The net adds were lower than in Q1, but many people start new businesses at the beginning of the year.
The company also added 5.8 million registered users in the quarter, bringing the total to 131 million. Comparing the 3.7 million customers to the total registered user base gives an idea of conversion rates from free to paid accounts.
Yesterday, I wrote a Wix review about my experience building a website on Wix.
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TajMahal.com sells for $30k on NameJet, down 40% from 2009
Someone took a bath on this domain name.
TajMahal.com sold for $29,999 on NameJet yesterday. The last public sale record was for $50,000 in 2009–also on NameJet.
The domain name TajMahal.com sold on NameJet yesterday for $29,999. That’s down 40% from 2009 when the domain name sold for $50,000 on NameJet.
TajMahal.com has been passed around many times. According to DomainTools historical Whois, Internet REIT acquired the domain in 2007. It sold the domain to Daniel Negari’s Cyber2Media in 2008. The domain went under Whois privacy just before the 2009 sale for $50,000, so it was either Negari’s company that sold it for $50,000 or someone made a quick flip.
It’s been under Whois privacy ever since, so it’s possible the 2009 buyer took a $20,000 bath. It’s also possible they sold it to someone else.
While many domains like this have dropped in value over the past ten years, a Domain Name Wire reader pointed out that there’s a bit of controversy around the name Taj Mahal and a push to change the name. According to this BBC fact check, it’s a right-wing push based on Hindu nationalism. I can’t tell how serious it is, but from what I’ve read it seems unlikely the name will change.
Nonetheless, location and tourism names can be affected by external forces. I bought EgyptianPyramids.com before the unrest in Egypt; I have no doubt its value was negatively impacted by a decline in tourism to Egypt.
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13 end user domain name sales
A mosquito control system manufacturer, robotics company and Spanish-language publisher bought domain names.
This week’s end user sales list of Sedo sales has a little something for everyone.
We’ve got a “country code upgrader” who bought the .com to match its .eu address, a payments company spending money to move from a horrible domain name, Some .com owners buying matching ccTLDs, a company paying to drop the ‘the’, and even a new top level domain name sale.
Let’s get right into the list…(see other end user sales columns here)
IvyPay.com $22,000 – The domain is still pending transfer the buyer is likely Ivy, a company that offers a “Square for therapists” credit card solution. It uses the domain name TalkToIvy.com, so this is a big improvement.
LocalHero.com €16,000 – Weerts Online is an appliance seller. Right now the domain has a simple page with the hashtag #shoppinglandscaperedefined.
RazerPay.com $9,449 – Razer (Razer.com) makes gaming electronics. I assume this domain will be used for a game payments service.
Hola.me $8,500 and Hola.net $5,000 – HOLA, S.L. in Madrid is now the listed owner of Hola.net. I’m assuming it was also the buyer of Hola.me but that domain is still being transferred. The company produces a Spanish-language magazine and owns Hola.com.
IESI.com $8,000 – This is a huge upgrade from The-IESI.com for Institute for Social + Emotional Intelligence.
Fragrancenet.mx $6,999 – TeleScents, Inc., which sells perfumes and colognes at Fragrancenet.com.
KNPCDom.net $5,000 – KNPC is Kuwait’s oil refining company. It uses the domain name KMPC.com.
ServiceRobots.com $4,500 – Warrington Robotics Ltd. They own the domain bots.co.uk.
Qista.com $4,000 – Qista offers a mosquito control system and uses the domain Qista.eu.
Store.dental €3,490 – Blue Safety is a water testing/filter company. One of their verticals is dental practices. They also use the domain water.foundation for their charitable giving.
Tectonix.com $2,200 – Tectonix is a data company.
WVL.be €2,199 – Westvlees is a pork producer.
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Sedo .Co auction begins on 8th anniversary of .co relaunch
Good .co domains are up for grabs in auction.
.Co was relaunched as more than just a country code domain name for Colombia eight years ago. It is one of, if not the most successful ccTLD rebrands in history.
Sedo is running an auction from now until August 2 featuring 163 .co domain names. All but one of the domains have reserves of at least $500, so I went to NameBio to see how frequently .co domains sell for at least this much. So far this year, NameBio reports 80 public .co sales of $500 or more. Feed.co leads the list at $85,000 (a sale made at Sedo).
On the lower end of the range are names like vested.co, fact.co and rom.co, all for less than $1,000.
Here are some of the .co domains in the Sedo auction with reserves of no more than $5,000 that I like:
Survey.co
Holiday.co
Answer.co
Text.co
Winner.co
Wealth.co
Restaurant.co
Cool.co
Weather.co
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Building a website on Wix
My experience building a website using Wix.
Wix is a heavyweight in the site builder market with 3.4 million paying customers with websites.
It is also an innovator when it comes to extending the functionality of sites beyond a typical small business website with a product it calls Wix Code.
Building
The typical Wix user will begin with the company’s “Artificial Design Intelligence” system. That’s marketing-speak for a system that takes user-defined inputs and spits out a basic website based on those choices. For example, what is the topic of your website? Do you want a site that’s fancy or contemporary?
Although it’s far from artificial intelligence, it’s a decent launchpad for a website.
My goal with Wix wasn’t so much on the design side. Like Squarespace, it’s easy to create a site and edit the design. Instead, I wanted to test its Wix Code functionality, especially as it relates to databases and dynamic pages. The promise is that it makes dynamic and database-drive sites easier to create.
To test Wix code, I decided to rebuild my comptroller website that I haven’t touched in nearly a decade. It was built with a now-defunct website builder and was in serious need of updating. It still gets traffic and earns about $20 a month on Adsense, but the data was out-of-date. This site is essentially a state-by-state guide to comptrollers in states which have a public official or office of that title.
Each page of the site contains the same type of information, which makes it perfect for Wix’s database collections and dynamic pages. As an example, here’s a page for the Texas Comptroller.
It contains the following fields:
- Office name
- Responsibilities
- Phone
- Address
- Comptroller name
- Comptroller bio
Although I have a page like this for 17 states, I only had to create one template. The data is pulled from a database to create each page.
I created the database with a simple Excel sheet containing all of the fields. I imported this into Wix:
Database view in Wix Code
Then I created hooks for each of these fields in my template. The process of adding hooks was a bit disappointing. I thought I’d be able to just insert tokens where I wanted the database information inserted.
For example, for “Office name: Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts”, I thought I’d be able to just type:
Office name: <office name>
since the corresponding field in the database is called office name. This would allow me to create one text box and pull in all of the data for the content section of the page.
Instead, I had to insert 12 elements for each of these pages: one for each of the field labels and one for each of the data elements. In addition to being a lot more work to set up, there are two drawbacks to this:
1. Because each block is drag-and-drop and can be placed anywhere, there’s some seriously bloated HTML on my pages.
2. It’s not as intuitive for mobile conversion, especially if data elements are placed side-by-side. I had to change the design to work better on mobile. Even then, some elements had to be shifted on the mobile editor. That was a tedious process.
It’s also possible to add the text and fields using javascript, but at that point I think it’s beyond the reach of people who can’t code more than basic HTML.
Creating menus containing links to each dynamic page wasn’t intuitive, either.
I think Wix could be extremely powerful for non-coders to create database-driven sites, but the process will need to be easier.
Wix offers a lot of apps that can be “installed” on your site. The one I installed was Adsense, and it falls quite short. It only lets you select from a few ad sizes and the app has to be installed for each individual ad. I had difficulty installing more than one ad per page. Google Auto Ads seems to work if you put the code in the header, which is designed to allow you to play analytics code.
To be fair, most people creating sites on Wix won’t want to place ads on their site.
It’s also worth pointing out that Wix Code lets you create your own apps and use APIs.
Packages
Wix offers a basic plan on a Wix subdomain with Wix branding for free. If you want to connect your own domain, it’s going to cost you. Here are the packages and prices.
Connect Domain – $7.50 a month or $60.00 a year (connect a domain)
Combo – $14.50 a month or $132 a year (remove Wix branding and get free domain on annual plan)
Unlimited – $17.50 a month or $168 a year (additional apps and more bandwidth)
eCommerce $21.50 a month or $204 a year (online store)
VIP – $30 a month or $300 a year (get better support)
Like Squarespace, Wix has partnered with Google to offer G Suite for email for an additional charge.
Publishing and Promoting
Wix is proud of its relationship with Google for search, and I have to give the company good marks on the SEO front. Like Squarespace, Wix has an integration with Google Search Console. But Wix’s integration seems to be more friendly to someone who doesn’t understand search and Search Console.
Wix promises instant indexing of your site in Google. While super-fast indexing can be done with Google Search Console, it’s a smart integration that many SMBs will find valuable.
The company even sends an email to you when you get your first click from Google. Last time I logged in to the search section, I saw this:
There’s also a step-by-step checklist to optimize all of your pages. (This is white hat stuff like meta tags.)
Overall
Wix extends the functionality of typical website builders with Wix Code. While Wix Code could use some improvements to make it easier to use, the overall site builder will work well for the typical user.
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Charles Gottdiener replaces Lisa Hook as CEO of Neustar
Hook, who has been CEO since 2010, will remain on the board.
Neustar has appointed Charles Gottdiener its new President and CEO, replacing Lisa Hook.
Hook had been in her role since 2010 and was COO for two years before that.
She managed the company during tumultuous times. It lost its Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC) contact, which was the company’s main revenue base. She worked to diversify revenue ahead of the contract bidding, mostly by acquiring companies.
Two years ago the company announced that it planned to split into two companies, with one handling what was left of the NPAC contract and the other managing the rest of its businesses.
Instead, it went private in a $2.9 billion buyout from private equity firm Golden Gate Capital.
Gottdiener comes from private equity. As COO at Providence Equity Partners, he often stepped in as interim CEO of portfolio companies.
Hook will remain on Neustar’s board.
Neustar is a big player in the domain name registry business, managing the .biz, .co and .us domains as well as many new top level domains. Earlier this year it lost a key contract to manage Australia’s .Au namespace.
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Groups tell U.S. Gov what its internet priorities should be
Companies weigh in on IANA transition, Whois access and more.
Last month, the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) asked stakeholders to comment on the government’s internet policy priorities for 2018 and beyond.
The NTIA has now published the responses.
87 companies, organizations and individuals submitted responses.
Most of the comments are not surprising. For example, groups including GoDaddy (pdf), Google (pdf) and even CIRA (pdf) (in Canada) expressed support for the NTIA removing its role in the IANA functions two years ago.
Internet Commerce Association (pdf) weighed in with concerns about the NTIA’s Cooperative Agreement with Verisign and what this could mean for .com pricing.
Lots of copyright and trademark groups lobbied the government to push for access to Whois records in light of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Oh, and Planet.ECO still wants .eco (pdf).
You can view all of the submissions here.
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Checking in with Escrow.com – DNW Podcast #195
Jackson Elsegood provides an update on the domain market and Escrow.com’s service.
Escrow.com has been in the news a lot over the past week thanks to its role as the escrow agent on several big deals. It handled the $3.5 million ICE.com deal, the $1 million snoring.com/sleeping.com deal and Crypto.com. Today I chat with Jackson Elsegood, GM of Escrow.com, to get his take on the market. We also discuss the progress the company has made on account verification and new features, as well as why the escrow business is challenging.
Also: Big domain sales, CentralNic to buy KeyDrive, and .best sells.
Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play below or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)
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Maryland roofing company attempts reverse domain name hijacking
After unsuccessfully trying to buy a domain name for a decade, company files UDRP.
A Maryland roofing company has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name RoofPro.com.
RoofPro, LLC uses the domain name MarylandRoofers.com, which is a nice domain in at of itself. But the company wanted the domain that matches its business name, RoofPro.com.
The problem for the roofing company was that RoofPro.com was registered before it existed. So, starting in 2005, the company attempted to buy the domain name from its owner. Those attempts were not fruitful and it sent a demand letter in 2016.
Finally, in April this year, it decided to try its hand at the UDRP to get the domain name.
The World Intellectual Property Organization panel was not amused. It found RoofPro to have filed the case in abuse of the policy, aka attempting reverse domain name hijacking. The panel called the complainant’s reliance on its own unsuccessful attempts to buy or lease the domain in its arguments to the panel “wrong-headed”.
Taft, Stettinius & Hollister, LLP represented RoofPro, LLC. ESQwire.com represented the domain name owner.
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.Best top level domain sold to entrepreneur who wants to make it a cryptocurrency play
Adding crypto to a new TLD? Why not.
PeopleBrowsr has sold the top level domain name .best to The Best SAS, a Paris based company led by Cyril Fremont.
According to a release, .best will become “a core component of a core component of a decentralized search optimized social network, where participants will be rewarded with .Best cryptocurrency for reviewing best in class products and services.:
“We are giving the consumer their own domain name, an integrated website where they own the data, and rewards for their contribution to the community. Platforms like ours continue to move negotiating power between reviewers and sellers,” said Cyril Fremont.
It seems that the goal is to have people review products on .best domain names and reward them with the company’s cryptocurrency.
The Best SAS is owned in part by PREMLEAD, an online marketing company creates leads using a network of over 50,000 websites.
I’ll give this idea points for innovation, something that has mostly been lacking when it comes to new top level domain names.
PeopleBrowsr also runs the .CEO domain name and the “dot brand” domain .kred. None of its top level domains have proven successful, with both .CEO and .Best having about 2,500 names in their zone files.
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ICANN Working Group: Registrants Must Retain the Right to Defend Their Domains in Court
In this post, the Internet Commerce Association provides an update on a plan to give IGOs special privileges related to domain names.
Should domain name registrants’ fundamental right, the right to go to court to overrule a UDRP decision transferring their domain name, be taken away? That was one of the primary questions that an ICANN Working Group was mandated to answer. The confusingly named ICANN IGO-INGO Access to Curative Rights Protection Mechanisms (the “Working Group”) has been examining and reviewing this issue since 2013 and just issued its Final Report.
ICANN had been considering creating a new dispute resolution system, just for Intergovernmental Organizations (IGO’s) such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and the World Customs Organization, and also for International Non-governmental Organizations (INGO’s), such as Good Neighbours International (GNI), CARE, and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWFN). These organizations and many others who use acronyms and common words in their names, would be interested in any new system that would allow them to take away corresponding domain names from registrants. Some IGOs believed that they should have first right to domains that matched their acronym, even in .com, such as to the domain WHO.com.
The Working Group was presented with, as one option, a new dispute resolution system that would be “final”, without recourse by a registrant to go to court to overturn an unfair decision. Although such a proposal has been previously raised and rejected, the Government Advisory Committee (GAC), pushed hard for it to be reconsidered. IGOs in particular argued that they currently enjoy immunity from going to court for most kinds of disputes, and wanted that immunity extended to domain name disputes. Their rationale was that as intergovernmental organizations, their immunity from being subjected to courts of any particular nation was imperative, and the UDRP as currently enacted requires all complainants to submit to a court’s jurisdiction for any dispute challenging a UDRP transfer order. Accordingly, IGOs claimed that they could not effectively use the UDRP as it would require them to waive their immunity.
It was pointed out to them, however, that they can and should be able to bring a UDRP via an agent or licensee, rather than directly themselves, in order to avoid having to submit to a court’s jurisdiction, and as such, the UDRP was perfectly equipped to handle a dispute involving an IGO.
The prospect of a new UDRP specifically for IGOs, which would enable them to target acronym domains and/or single word domains, without the right of appeal to the courts, was very concerning to domain registrants. The ICA engaged in the Working Group reviewing the IGO UDRP proposal since 2013, first represented by former ICA General Counsel, Phil Corwin, who also served as a neutral co-Chair, and then recently by Zak Muscovitch, current General Counsel. Also participating and providing long-term support to the Working Group, were ICA Board members, Nat Cohen and Jay Chapman.
Due in large part to the ICA efforts, and due also to fierce advocacy from George Kirikos, a non-ICA member of the Working Group, the Consensus recommendation of the Working Group was not to create any new system for IGOs and INGOs which would take away a registrant’s right to go to court. The ICA is pleased that the Working Group reached Consensus on this issue, amongst several other important issues, including inter alia:
a) that no substantive changes to the UDRP or URS are to be made, and no new dispute resolution procedures are to be created, for INGOs;
b) that IGOs can avail themselves of the UDRP and URS by way of filing a Complaint through an agent or licensee so as to not have to submit to jurisdiction of courts;
c) that no subsidies are to be provided to IGOs or INGOs; and
d) when a domain owner challenges a UDRP or URS decision in court and an IGO responds by successfully asserting to the court that it is immune from any court proceedings and thereby avoids having the UDRP or URS decision challenged under national law, that the original UDRP or URS will be set aside, so that registrant’s right to judicial review is not taken away.
While the final decision is up to the GNSO council, it is hoped and expected that GNSO will adopt the Consensus recommendations of its Working Group who has carefully studied the issues for years.
It is just this kind of sustained, multi-year effort to engage in ICANN’s policy making process that is required to protect registrants and the domain industry from damaging policies that are continually proposed at ICANN. The ICA is the only association that engaged in this process to protect the interests of registrants and the domain name investment industry. The ICA wishes to acknowledge and thank the Working Group’s Chair, Petter Rindforth, and the Working Group’s former Chair, Phil Corwin (formerly ICA General Counsel), for their longstanding dedication to Working Group and its efforts to review and develop policy on this important subject matter. The ICA wishes to also thank ICANN staff, Mary Wong and Steve Chan, for their longstanding support of the Working Group, as well as Susan Kawaguchi who has served as GNSO liaison to the Working Group. The ICA wishes to extend its particular gratitude to its General Counsel, Zak Muscovitch, as well as ICA Board Members Nat Cohen and Jay Chapman, who each have admirably and extensively participated in and contributed to the WG’s achievements.
The ICA will continue to vigorously represent domain name registrants and protect their rights, including the right to go to court to overturn an errant URS or UDRP decision. When the UDRP was originally established in 1999, there was a “grand bargain” wherein trademark owners would be able to avail themselves of a streamlined and low-cost dispute resolution system for clear cut cases of abusive domain name registrations, but domain name owners would not have to give up their right to go to a national court in order to overturn a wrongly decided UDRP case. Over the years, we have seen the UDRP successfully adjudicate thousands of clear cut cases. But we have also, with unfortunate regularity, seen the UDRP abused by trademark owners and errant panelists, to take away lawfully and fairly registered domain names. Concerningly, instances of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking against registrants is on the rise. These valid concerns exist irrespective of whether the registrant’s ownership of its domain is challenged by a trademark owner or an IGO. Under such circumstances, the registrant’s fundamental right to go to court must be protected.
Zak Muscovitch is General Counsel to the Internet Commerce Association, a group that advocates on behalf of domain name investors.
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Building a site on Squarespace
Hopefully you read my overview of sitebuilders including Wix, Weebly and Squarespace. In today’s post, I’m going to explain how I built a site on Squarespace.
(I want to be clear up front that I’m not ranking the site builders. I built different types of sites on each service, and my goal is to explain how the process worked for me.)
I used a newly-registered domain name for my site: Bartending.school. It was a premium domain name, but the $220-a-year price tag seemed reasonable given the high search volumes for bartending school topics.
Like the other site builders, Squarespace didn’t ask me about a domain name before I got started. Instead, I selected a template and started building the site. It wasn’t until I was ready to publish that I had to select my domain and pay for anything.
Building
I selected a template and started building out my site. Overall, Squarespace was extremely easy to learn and use. There were a couple of site design procedures that confused me a bit, such as editing the top menu and the sections of the website. In one instance, I couldn’t figure out how to exit out of a screen and ended up hitting the back button. But Squarespace has good help pages that walked me through the few hurdles I faced.
I particularly like the ease of making sitewide changes to fonts and text sizes through the style editor.
Change text size, color and font sitewide through the Style Editor.
My site takes advantage of regular pages as well as blog pages. Squarespace’s built-in blog system has few of the bells and whistles you get with WordPress. But, keeping with the simplicity, it’s easy to use.
The Squarespace blog editor.
Blog pages are also compatible with AMP, which could help you get more traffic for Google.
While Wix has “apps” that can be plugged into your site similar to what Shopify offers, all of Squarespace’s apps (called integrations) are available by default. You can see them here.
I spent quite a bit of time building the site because I drafted all of the content from scratch. But once I got the hang of Squarespace, adding new content was very easy.
Packages
Squarespace makes you pay before you can publish (some competitors let you published a branded-site on a subdomain without paying).
Here’s the pricing for regular (not e-commerce) websites:
Personal Plan – $16 a month or $144 a year.
Business Plan – $26 a month or $216 a year.
The business plan adds additional features including the ability to add some customized code to your header and in the site. It also comes with some ecommerce capabilities, although for those you might want to opt for one of the dedicated e-commerce packages.
The customized code injection and code blocks in the business plan will be necessary if you want to add third-party javascript widgets such as Adsense. But, as with all of these site builders, you can’t edit code line-by-line.
It’s worth noting that Squarespace doesn’t offer email. Instead, it has a partnership with Google to offer G Suite’s basic plan. This is typical for site builders.
After selecting a plan, I connected my domain bartending.school to the website by adding DNS records at my domain registrars. A free domain comes with all annual packages. (Of course, not a premium one like bartending.school.)
Publishing and Promoting
Once your site is built, any changes you make to the site will instantly be published when you save them.
Squarespace integrates directly with Google Search Console. Once your site is built you can click a few buttons to add it to Search Console. Your sitemap will automatically be submitted as well.
Once nice feature is that you can access much of your Search Console data from directly within the Analytics section of Squarespace.
Overall
I am very impressed by Squarespace. Just looking at my site, It’s much more professional looking that something I could have created in the same amount of time with WordPress. I can see why a small business would opt to use Squarespace as opposed to WordPress.
© 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.
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Win free tickets to Merge
Want to go to MERGE! in September? Here are some free tickets.
The second annual MERGE! show takes place September 14-19 in Orlando at the Disney Springs Hilton.
Fabulous is sponsoring the hospitality suite this year, and as part of its sponsorship, it has some free tickets to giveaway. I’m helping them give away four of these tickets to DNW readers. Tickets currently cost $499.
You have to do a little bit of sleuthing to win.
To win, you need to be the first person to correctly answer any of the questions below by posting a comment. Only the first person to answer the question wins.
To be clear, there are four tickets and four questions. You win by answering one of them correctly, but you need to be the first person to answer that question correctly.
If you know you can’t go to the conference or already have a ticket, please don’t answer the questions. Also, please only answer one of the questions (unless you find out you answered one incorrectly).
Ready? Here are the questions:
X Which DNW Podcast guest is a Grammy Award winner? ANSWERED: David Ellefson of Megadeth
X What year did Fabulous launch? ANSWERED: 2002
X Which DNW Podcast guest was involved with domain names from the earliest date? ANSWERED: Paul Mockapetris, inventor of the DNS
X What extremely valuable domain names that was previously under management at Fabulous.com sold to Amazon this year? ANSWERED: Prime.com
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Testing out the website builders: Wix, Weebly and Squarespace
In the coming days I will review my experience building sites with several popular website builders.
The way in which small businesses get online has changed. It used to be that everyone searched for a domain name as a starting point. Once they registered a domain, they’d build a website.
A handful of web presence companies have turned that model on its head. Wix, Squarespace and Weebly take a site-first approach. They help customers design a website and then link them to a domain name later.
The model is working.
Wix is publicly traded on the Nasdaq (WIX) and has a market cap of nearly $5 billion. In May it reported Q1 revenue of $137.8 million, up 49% year-over-year. It had 3.4 million paying customers at the end of Q1.
There’s not much public data available about Weebly and Squarespace. There will soon be more data about Weebly because it was acquired by publicly-traded Square (NASDAQ: SQ) earlier this year for $365 million.
It’s clear that people are gravitating toward these company’s site-first onramps.
In many ways, it’s not a battle of domain name registrars like GoDaddy (which mostly focus on the domain as the starting point) vs. the site builders. Instead, it’s a battle of WordPress vs. the site builders.
Over the past month or so I’ve tested each of these company’s site builders by building a site on them. I’ve reflected on the experience compared to creating sites on WordPress–something I’ve done since 2005. Here are the advantages of the site builders:
1. Easy to start – it’s incredibly easy to start creating a site on one of the site builders. In some cases, you can proceed with multiple steps before even registering.
2. Easy to design – designing a site on WordPress usually requires installing a third-party theme or framework. This is too technical for most people creating a website. The site builders give themes to choose from as a start point. More importantly, everything is drag-and-drop and WYSIWYG. It’s dead simple. (The WordPress onramp at many registrars is improving, and I’ll write about that as well.)
3. Security and peace of mind – The site builders take care of upkeep and maintenance. WordPress users are used to getting hacked. There are tools they can use to limit these chances. But with the site builders, the security is built in and invisible. Business owners don’t even need to think about it. (The hosted WordPress.com takes care of much of this too, and could be considered a site builder like the Wix, Squarespace and Weebly.)
These benefits come with drawbacks.
1. Very limited customization – True, you can drag and drop your content just about anywhere. But the site builders are walled gardens. Want to install a third-party widget on a Wix site? You better hope it has been built into a Wix app. You can customize WordPress however you want; the same can’t be said for the site builders.
2. Lock-in – The site builders are designed to lock you in. If you’re on WordPress you can easily switch webhosts. Switching from a site builder that provides both the CMS and the hosting is much harder. Squarespace offers limited exporting if you want to move to WordPress. So does Weebly. Wix does not, although there are third-party tools for doing this.
In my following posts, I’ll explain how I built sites with the three big site builders.
© 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.
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20 end user domain name sales up to $55,000
A cryptocurrency exchange, clothing designer and customized apparel company bought domain names.
Blockchain and cryptocurrency companies continue to buy domain names, and this week’s chart-leader at Sedo was BTCExchange.com for $55,000.
This was one of 20 end user sales I uncovered by reviewing Sedo’s weekly list of sales over $2,000.
Also notable is that a .co.uk domain sold for £22,500–a high amount for a .co.uk–but the buyer isn’t known yet.
Here are the end user domain name sales I uncovered in Sedo’s list this week.
(You can view previous lists like this here.)
BTCExchange.com $55,000 – Someone in Romania bought this domain name for cryptocurrency site. BTC is the ‘symbol’ for bitcoin.
Park.co.uk £22,500 – The buyer has a fun coming soon page, but their identity isn’t yet known.
LauraGarcia.com $11,000 – Clothing designer Laura Garcia had been using the domain name LauraGarciaCollection.com. She also uses an email address ending in .nyc.
Qness.com €10,000 – Qness does hardness testing of materials. It uses the domain name Qness.at.
TomorrowIsYou.com $8,500 – A CSC client bought this domain name.
GBLife.com £7,500 – Global Bankers Insurance Group in North Carolina.
Digitique.com €5,500 – AV company HUB Telluride in Colorado rebranded as Digitiqe. Note the spelling difference here; the company name definitely failed the radio test.
StormAid.com $5,500 – The buyer runs several companies including OneName Global and Eclipse Solutions. I’m not sure what the domain is for.
Mufan.com $5,000 – Chengdu Mufan Technology Co., Ltd., which uses the domain name Mufan.io, acquired the matching .com domain.
JoyLabs.com $3,950 – The owner isn’t known yet but a coming soon page states “We are working very hard to push the boundaries of computer science and happiness.”
VOIPAdvisor.com $3,499 – The buyer is creating “The site for VOIP best practice advice and resources from industry experts.”
LovedBy.com £3,000 – Loved By Ltd in London plans to launch on August 18.
AHO.org $3,000 – Africa Health Organisation, or AHO, bought the acronym of its organization in .org.
DigitalPioneers.org $2,788 – CODE Education GmbH is a private university in Berlin. A slogan on its website is “A new kind of university for the Digital Pioneers of tomorrow”. It uses the domain code.berlin.
Trusty.de €2,700 – The buyer owns Trusty.ag. A Google translation of its site states: “TRUSTY creates digital identities that are transparently evaluated, certified and protected, and serves to cumulate and trade the most valuable and scarce commodities: Trust and capacity.” I’m not sure what they do.
Spreadshirt.org $2,500 – Spreadshirt sells customized shirts and other apparel. It also owns the matching .com and .net. This company previously bought TeamShirts.com for $89,000 and TeamShirt.com for $23,000.
KidzKare.com $2,500 – Kidz Kare is a childcare company that uses the domain name KidzKare.ca.
Martesana.com €2,200 – Martesana srl owns the Italian country code domain name martesanasrl.it
TeaBags.com $2,150 – The domain now forwards to chaitea.com. Is this a shockingly low price or is it just me?
Pro-Mining.com $2,000 – ProMiner is a cryptocurrency mining company.
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