Kevin Ohashi - Entrepreneur I Love Learning New Things.

Meet a guy who has leveraged the value of good domain names and learn what he is investing in now.

Bill Karamouzis, also known as Bill Kara, has made a lot of hefty domain name investments. Some of them have been for businesses. He bought CookingGames.com for $350,000 and paid $725,000 for MathGames.com for his latest venture, TeachMe. Bill shares data from these domain purchases and also explains why he thinks there’s an opportunity to buy outdated websites and fix them up. You’ll get a lot of business ideas from this episode. Also: Make Your Own Way, Purple.com, Radix data, and an airline’s domain name troubles.

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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1. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times – DNW Podcast #131
2. Frank Schilling explains price hike – DNW Podcast #127
3. How to Sell More Domains with Adam Strong – DNW Podcast #158

Alvin Brown considers the impact Whois changes will have on domain sales.

Over the last few weeks, a number of industry blogs have shared their insight pertaining to the impact of GDPR, the data protection law set to launch in late May, to the domain industry. GDPR applies to any companies that have data on EU residents.

As it pertains to the domain industry, one of the glaring areas of GDPR impact is the game-changing action companies are choosing to take in regards to Whois.

Many companies industry-wide are taking the stance of obfuscating all of Whois domain information to comply with GDPR, although it’s not completely necessary.

Let that sink in for a moment.

As a domain investor, if your domain selling strategy depends on buyers using Whois to make contact, then you’ll likely want to consider a different approach moving forward due to the GDPR reaction by companies.

I can’t tell you how many times in a given day I execute Whois inquiries for myself or on the behalf of clients in search of owning a particular domain.

A lack of public Whois is not only going to impact domain sales for domain investors, but possibly introduces changes in the Escrow process for domain ownership verification and the increased number of UDRP cases — no public access to Whois phone or mailing address.

There will likely remains a forwarding email address associated with the Whois record, but how likely is the general public to email a domain that looks like domain.com@domainsbyproxy.com?

Whether a pro or con, not having access to public Whois also rules out the opportunity for all parties involved to research a contact person or company — which can be a big deal when negotiating a domain transaction.

But one of the most intriguing thoughts that comes to mind was GDPR increasing the use of parking services and sales landers by domain owners.  Domain owners are likely forced to take one of the following actions to keep realizing domain inquiries:

• Redirect domains to website or social platform profiles (i.e., Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc.)
• Create and redirect to custom landing pages with contact form or seller contact information, or domain marketplaces using 3rd-party solutions (e.g., Efty, Sedo, etc.)
• Use domain parking services like Efty, Sedo, ParkLogic, Voodoo, ParkingCrew, DomainNameSales, or RookMedia to name a few
• Use domain registrar parking services in conjunction with for-sale links/forms.

Of course, domain parking revenues are not what they once were a decade or so ago, but sales landing and marketplace services like Efty and Sedo stand to benefit as an affordable alternative.

And as many domain investors weigh the consequences of no longer having access to public Whois, the same could be said for domain registrars and domain parking providers.

Have you considered how GDPR impacts future business?

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Related posts:

1. How GDPR will affect you – DNW Podcast #152
2. Wow: this is what public Whois could look like in 2018
3. Domain investors risk being left out of Whois discussion

Company files UDRP after failed attempts to buy domain and threaten GoDaddy.

CSP International Fashion Group S.p.A., a fashion company in Italy, has failed to get a domain name owned by GoDaddy through a UDRP.

The company operates a site at MyBoutique.it and filed a cybersquatting dispute against MyBoutique.com. GoDdddy’s NameFind subsidiary acquired the domain name when it bought Marchex’s domain portfolio.

Implausibly, the fashion company said it only discovered that the .com was registered many years after it registered the .it domain in 2011:

The Complainant says because its domain name myboutique.it had become an important asset it recently decided to register the trademark MYBOUTIQUE and the disputed domain name, and only then discovered the latter had been registered.

Panelist Dr. Clive N.A. Trotman pointed out that companies are free to trade in generic domain names:

Trading in domain names happens in a marketplace. Prices are struck between buyer and seller and it is not a function of the Policy to interfere in people’s bargains. Absent registration and use of a domain name in bad faith, such as the targeting of trademark holders, a respondent may monetise its stock of domain names by way of advertising and may set the asking prices for them.

He also summarized the case nicely:

In sum, this dispute follows an increasingly common pattern. First, the Complainant tries to buy the disputed domain name anonymously. The next step is commonly a lawyer’s letter setting out the intending purchaser’s registered trademark rights, which was not open to this Complainant. The third step is to bring a proceeding under the Policy. As the Respondent’s Declaration put it, “Evidentially [sic], finding the price too high and believing it could get it more cheaply, Complainant initiated this proceeding. As I understand it, this qualifies for reverse domain name hijacking”.

Surprisingly, Trotman did not find RDNH. He wrote that he was “not persuaded that the Complaint was insincere or malicious”.

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Related posts:

1. GoDaddy Charges Own Customers with Cybersquatting
2. GoDaddy Gets Split Decision in Domain Dispute
3. Nintendo loses domain dispute for WiiU.com domain name

Company files trademark and acquires domain name for Make Your Own Way.

Back in 2013 I wrote a post titled “Is this GoDaddy’s new slogan?”

The company had filed two intent-to-use trademark applications. One was for “Name It. Make It. Own It.” and the other for “It’s Go Time”.

GoDaddy ended up adopting “It’s Go Time”.

The slogan was a nice play on the Go in GoDaddy but was fairly generic. So generic, in fact, that another hosting company sued GoDaddy because it said it had been using the phrase before GoDaddy. (The two parties settled in 2016.)

Now it seems that GoDaddy is getting ready to unveil a new tagline. On Sunday the company filed an intent-to-use trademark application for “Make Your Own Way” that covers many goods and services.

GoDaddy also acquired the domain name MakeYourOwnWay.com from domain investor Mike Mann. The domain has been transferred to Carlos Becerra, Senior IP Enforcement Manager for GoDaddy. The domain was listed for sale for $19,888.

Make Your Own Way is a nice tagline that fits GoDaddy’s stated mission of helping solopreneurs and very small businesses.

 

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Related posts:

1. GoDaddy has a $12,500 price tag for Donuts’ Early Access Program
2. GoDaddy sold $1.4 million of domain names from Marchex portfolio last quarter
3. GoDaddy (GDDY) reports earnings, domain revenue of $263.3 million

Crypto domain names and more.

Sedo’s end user sales this week were headlined by a $500,000 sale. Although the buyer isn’t known yet, it is likely in the cryptocurrency space and almost certainly in finance.

Speaking of cryptocurrency, Crypto.club exchanged hands for $10,000.

Here’s a list of some of the end user domain name sales that took place at Sedo over the past week:

(You can view previous lists like this here.)

Dax.com $500,000 – The domain name has not transferred yet but this is an end user price. Given the X at the end, the use of DAX to refer to Digital Asset Exchange, and the number of crypto-related domain purchases lately, this is more than likely a cryptocurrency buyer. One other possibility is the German stock market index.

RockSecure.com $10,000 – RockIT is an IT outsourcing firm that uses the domain name RockIT.com.

Crypto.club $10,000 – AstraStudio is a Russian-language game developer.

MySnacks.com $7,499 – The Hut Group offers many products and brands across beauty, wellness, luxury and lifestyle.

FRMN.com £7,390 – Formation offers a “Customer Goal Management platform” and uses the domain name Formation.ai. It forwards this abbreviated version to the .ai domain.

Logik.de €6,666 – LOGIK Business GmbH uses the domain name Logik.biz.

IngestibleSensor.com $5,000 – Proteus Digital Health Inc. Ingestible sensors are awesome and could transform healthcare.

MTD.org $4,995 – Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District

FRT.org $4,995 – Frontier Research Today, which is coming soon.

TheNextBigThing.com $4,777 – The buyers are anonymous (although they have a nifty stock photo purportedly showing them) but have started a site with content about new technologies.

APIproxy.com $3,800 – Tech company CDATA. It forwards to cdata.com/apiserver/, which does not yet resolve.

BudgetMotels.com.au $3,500 – Budget Motel Chain in Australia.

SQRZ.com €3,000 – SQRX divides geographic maps into squares. It appears to be a social network with emergency service applications.

WindBonds.com $2,999 – One Energy offers wind bonds to finance wind energy projects.

Syngentech.com $2,500 – Beijing SyngenTech Co., LTD. owns the domain name Syngen.tech but decided it was wise to also buy Syngentech.com. I don’t blame it.

RMAInsurance.com $2,399 – An insurance company that went by the name AAMDC rebranded to Rural Municipalities of Alberta, or RMA.

GG.FI €2,100 – Gold&Green Foods Oy in Helsinki Finland.

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Related posts:

1. End user domain name sales up to $195,000
2. What domain names Goldman Sachs and others bought this week
3. More end user domain name sales

CryptoSecurities.com was registered in 2013 and the plaintiff’s business was just created this year.

A law firm that created a business on the domain name CryptoSecurities.exchange has filed a lawsuit (pdf) against the owner of the CryptoSecurities.com domain name

In the suit, plaintiff Castro & Co claims to have “a federal trademark registration, no. 87756075, for the mark CRYPTOSECURITIES”. It also says “Plaintiff has engaged in extensive marketing activities in connection with its mark CRYPTOSECURITIES, and has expended significant resources to develop its goodwill in and
consumer identification with the mark.”

There are a few things that might give you pause.

First, the “federal trademark registration” is an application and it was only filed on January 16, 2018. It was also filed on an intent-to-use basis.

It appears that the plaintiff has now started the business on Cryptosecurities.exchange, a domain name that was just registered on February 20 of this year.

Yet Cryptosecurities.com was registered way back in 2013. It’s been under the same Whois privacy service since at least 2014.

The cryptosecurities.exchange website even has a handy timeline explaining that the idea for the business was created on January 2, 2018:

“The Genesis of CSX. Dr. Castro texts Mo Iqbal at 11:41pm stating “You can basically create a stock exchange that’s blockchain-based.”

I’m intrigued how the plaintiffs are going to argue that the domain was registered in bad faith to target its trademark given that the domain was registered so many years before its business was created.

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Related posts:

1. Hospitality Company Claims Leisure.com Infringes Its Trademarks
2. Owner of HighbrowMagazine.com demands Highbrow.com domain name
3. Weed control company files lawsuit claiming Weeds.com is cybersquatting

Airline alleges that former contractors are holding its domain names hostage.

Flair Airlines alleges that former contracts are holding its domain names hostage, forcing it to change its website address.

A small Canadian airline says that former contractors are holding its two main domain name hostage, causing the company to lose substantial sales. It’s yet another example of why a company must be the registered owner of its domain names rather than letting a third party be the registrant.

In a lawsuit (pdf) filed in Illinois yesterday, Flair Airlines Ltd claims that former customer service and website services contractors were supposed to register FlairAirlines.com and FlairAirlines.ca in the airline’s name.

When the relationship soured and was terminated, the airline found out that the domains were not in its control. The airline could not get control of the domains or make changes to them at GoDaddy because it wasn’t the official registrant.

In its suit, the airline says that it was forced to switch its domain name to FlairAir.ca. On the day of the switch the company’s sales went from $64k to $29k, it says. It had to spend money for Google Adwords to direct customers to the “correct” website.

Regardless of who is at fault for the termination of the business relationship, this is just another example of why a company must be the registrant of its domain names. It should also have the master registrar controls for the domain name.

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Related posts:

1. ICANN files motion to dismiss Donuts’ .Web lawsuit
2. Nat Cohen’s Telepathy sues for reverse domain name hijacking
3. Breaking: Verisign loses appeal in .XYZ lawsuit

How to protect your valuable domains using Keyword Lock.

If you own a good dictionary word domain name then there’s a good chance a company has adopted this word as part of its brand. This could cause an issue for you if you park the domain and show ads related to the brand instead of the dictionary definition.

It’s fine to own a domain like Apple.com and show ads for fruit. It’s problematic if you own Apple.com and show ads for phones and computers.

Uniregistry offers a way to make sure that your domain names don’t show ads that you are not intending. It’s called keyword lock. Here’s how to implement it.

1. Go to the domain name in Uniregistry Market and click on the settings tab.

2. Scroll down to keyword lock and click the slider.

3. Select the category and subcategory that matches your domain name.

There are quite a few categories to choose from. Unfortunately, there’s not a search functionality.

Be sure to click save after selecting your category and subcategory. Within a few minutes your parked page should show topic links related only to the category.

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2. First signs of Google’s new domain parking client identification program…
3. Domain inquiries could drop next month. Blame SSL.

High renewal rates and revenues for premium domains.

On this week’s podcast I spoke with Tobias Sattler, the CIO of domain name registrar United Domains. He talked about the technical struggles of selling premium domains in new top level domain names. Despite all of these struggles, he said offering premium domains was well worth it.

New data provided to Domain Name Wire from new TLD registry Radix put the revenue opportunity in perspective.

Last year Radix generated $1.1 million in revenue just on premium renewals. (The company reported $1.76M in total premium revenue last year through November). Radix charges a premium price both for the initial registration and the renewal. This is a similar model to Donuts, but different from some registrars that charge only a one-time premium (e.g. .Club).

Only 1,348 premium Radix domains were renewed last year, so this is an average of $816 per domain. A registrar can sell 41 domains at $20 each and get the same revenue as selling just one premium.

Radix has millions of domains under management, but premium domains renewals (not even counting new premium registrations) made up about 10% of the company’s revenue last year.

Premium domains also tend to renew at high rates despite their higher costs.

Radix reports that 68% of premium domains that were due for renewal last year were renewed. If you look at it from a revenue perspective, 71% of premium renewal revenue was “renewed” last year. This measure puts additional weight on more expensive domains.

As with most domains, premium domains that were renewed once are more likely to be renewed again. 75% of premium domains entering their second or later renewal cycle were renewed. 79% of the premium revenue coming up for renewal a second time or later was renewed.

While premiums and premium renewals have been hotly debated, it clearly generates goodincome for registrars and registries. Radix is particularly keen on the premium renewal model.

Radix CEO Sandeep Ramchandani noted, “The renewal performance of 2017 has validated our decision [to charge annual premiums rather than one-time premiums]. The model also provides the entire value chain, including registrars, resellers and brokers; the opportunity to deliver long-term value vs a one-time transactional sale.”

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Related posts:

1. Great premium domain data from Radix
2. Donuts’ next 7 sunrises: only 2 top 100 domain names
3. .Guru rockets to over 10,000 domain names

Here are some things I’m thinking about…

I’m amused by some of the reactions to the $900,000 sale of Purple.com. A lot of people are saying that the seller should have held out for more. I suspect that, for most commenters, $900,000 would have a significant impact on their lives. They probably would have accepted much less.

Keep in mind that there are only so many companies in the world that would have an interest in this domain name and also have the ability to spend close to $1 million for it. The seller has owned the domain since the 1990s and was very familiar with the offers/market landscape for this domain.

…I’ve been using the GoDaddy Domain Listing Service beta for a while now. It’s going to make listing domains for sale much easier than before. It’s a true beta with some kinks to work out, but once it’s all buttoned up it’s going to be really nice. I especially like how you can easily point your domains to a “For Sale” only lander.

One note about those For Sale landers–it would be nice if they could be branded with GoDaddy rather than Afternic. The general trusts buying a domain name through GoDaddy, not necessarily Afternic.

…I love the fast transfer programs that Afternic and Sedo offer. It would be nice if the automated transfer out could be enacted even when the domain buyer cannot receive a fast transfer. For example, last week I sold a domain through the Afternic network in which the transaction was not fast transfer. The domain was opted in to fast transfer, so it would be more convenient if the domain would at least fast transfer to Afternic’s holding account so I didn’t have to do the work of pushing the domain.

…I’m really distressed about the impact GDPR is going to have on Whois. Actually, a more accurate description is that I’m distressed about the actions companies are choosing to take in regards to Whois because of GDPR. Companies do not need to obfuscate all of Whois for every domain in order to comply, but that’s the choice they’re making. I rely on Whois for much of my business and this will certainly be negatively impacted. The only way I can see to reverse course here is for the U.S. to pass a law mandating that domains have public Whois. That would balance the conversation and stop companies from taking the nuclear option they are taking.

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Related posts:

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2. Top 5 Domain Name Stories from August
3. Verisign files patent app for Thick Whois with privacy compliance

Court enters default judgment and domain is transferred back to the prior owner.

In November I wrote about a lawsuit for Roxi.com.

The owner of the domain name since 1999 claimed the domain name was stolen from him after his email account was compromised. Although this apparently happened back in 2015, the owner became aware of the theft much later and filed a lawsuit to try to recover the domain name.

As is usually the case, the thief didn’t show up to defend the domain name. So the court ordered the domain name to be transferred back to the prior owner John Lee of Precision Telephone Services, Inc. The transfer has been completed.

Stevan Lieberman represented the plaintiff.

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2. VL.com Domain Name Stolen, Too. Here’s the Inside Story.
3. 8 Clues a Domain Name is Stolen

A first-hand account of selling new top level domains.

What is it like integrating and selling new top level domain names as a registrar? On today’s podcast we talk with Tobias Sattler, the CIO for United Domains, a registrar with 1.6 million domains under management and around 10% of these in new TLDs. Tobias talks about some of the challenges his company faced onboarding new TLDs, dealing with different backend systems, handling premium domains and more. Given the headaches, you might be surprised by his response to the question if premium domains were worth it. Also: Merger time, .Boats, Wes Anderson’s domain, a nice brandable sale and Whois.

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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Related posts:

1. WordPress.com and domain names – DNW Podcast #169
2. How End User Domain Buyers Think – DNW Podcast #134
3. The value of a category killer domain – DNW Podcast #176

SEC filing discloses domain name purchase price.

Back in November 2017, Elliot Silver noticed that the mattress company Purple acquired the domain name Purple.com. Now we know how much it paid.

Domain name investor George Kirikos reviewed Purple’s most recent SEC filing on March 15, which shows a domain name intangible asset of $900,000 on the books:

We now know the transaction price for https://t.co/3Z4Feeh4ia in 2017, namely USD $900,000, as reported in the SEC filing at: https://t.co/ljxFKXceao (Note 5, Page 14) #bargain https://t.co/uO9Knjv29H

— George Kirikos (@GeorgeKirikos) March 17, 2018

Buying a mattress online requires a level of confidence and upgrading from the subpar domain name OnPurple.com to Purple.com will likely pay off many times over for the mattress company.

The seller had owned the domain name since 1994.

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No related posts.

Companies decide against operating dot-brand top level domains.

Two more companies have requested to cancel their registry contracts with ICANN after abandoning plans to operate their dot-brand top level domain names.

Sony Mobile Communications AB has decided to abandon .xperia. Xperia is a line of mobile phones. The company is still releasing phones under this brand but probably doesn’t need a top level domain name for it.

Portuguese communications company MEO Servicos de Comunicacoes e Multimedia, S.A. has notified ICANN it is abandoning its namesake .Meo as well as .sapo. Sapo is the name of the company’s content portal.

None of the three domains have public second level domains other than nic.”brand”

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Related posts:

1. As many as 1,409 top level domains on the way
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3. Sony creates new sites on .Sony top level domain name

ccTLD will treat personal and corporate data differently.

A common interpretation of The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is that it applies to individuals who live in Europe but not businesses there. Still, most models I’ve seen for Whois compliance post-GDPR treat all types of registrants the same.

Austria’s .at top level domain is taking a different approach. As a result of GDPR, it will obfuscate natural person’s information, but not company info. According to the group:

In future the data shown for domains owned by natural persons will only include the domain name, the registrar responsible and necessary technical information. If a company or organisation owns the domain, the holder’s name and address will still be published, although contact data like e-mail address, telephone and fax number can be hidden upon request. The registrar submits information on whether a domain is held by a natural or legal person when registering the domain. If a private individual requests that their data be displayed, the registrar can also arrange this. “There will certainly be a lot of cases where people will definitely want to show that a real, trustworthy person is responsible for a particular website,” explains [head of nic.at’s legal department Barbara] Schlossbauer.

For example, I register my domains under a company name, so my Whois records would remain public.

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Related posts:

1. Will May 2018 be the death of Whois?
2. Sedo sells more than $1 million of .AT domains in auction
3. #3 in 2017: GDPR and the death of Whois

Now anyone can register .boats domains, and the same will be true for Dominion Domains’ other four TLDs.

Dominion Domains–the company behind the .boats, .autos, .homes, .yachts and .motorcycles domains–is removing eligibility restrictions on its top level domains and is reengaging with the traditional domain name registrar channel.

Eligibility restrictions have already been eliminated on .boats and the company plans to remove the restrictions on its other domains during the first half of the year.

The company initially limited second level domain registrations to groups with a bona fide connection to the TLD’s industry. The restrictions and verification process meant that only four domain name registrars were on board at launch. It also meant that registration volume has been stuck in the hundreds per top level domain, if not less.

Dominion had its reasons for initially restricting the domain names (listen to podcast) but has now reversed course in light of experience.

“Right now all of the new TLDs need more awareness and recognition, and we realized that the more .boats names there are out in the market, the better it is for our clients in the boating industry,” said Jim Schrand, General Manager of Dominion Domains.

Registrars shunned the domains thanks to a post-registration verification process that could take weeks to complete. During this time domains were in a server hold status.

Dominion Domain’s Registry-Registrar Agreement (RRA) also turned off registrars because of onboarding fees and high insurance requirements. It seemed that Dominion’s initial approach was to sell domains directly to the existing customers of its publishing arm rather than through a vast network of registrars. That is changing.

“Up until this point, our domains haven’t been available most places where people buy names. In order to build awareness and sales, we need to leverage the registrar channel and their access to buyers, which meant that we need to remove restrictions,” said Schrand. “It also expands our serviceable market significantly and opens it up to domain investors who previously expressed interest in purchasing names.”

To court domain name registrars, Dominion Domains is starting to promote registrars that carry its TLDs and is offering significant wholesale discounts. 25 registrars have now signed the .boats RRA, including Key-Systems and Dynadot.

Opening the domains to more people should provide a nice boost. The company reports that it has already seen more adoption of .boats in light of the change.

According to NameStat.org, Dynadot currently has the lowest first-year price for .boats domains at $59.99.

 

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Pet hygiene company, ad optimizer andtobaccoo machinery companies bought domain names.

Sunday evening at SXSW I chatted with a few people from Sweden. After I told them what I did, I asked them what top level domain people in Sweden register.

Their first response was .com, which surprised me. They then clarified that people use .se for local business but also need to have .com for non-local business.

One of the end user sales at Sedo this past week was exactly that: a Swedish company that uses .se buying the matching .com. This company was not the only one on the list to buy a .com to go with its ccTLD.

I identified 17 sales at Sedo that were to end users. There are more but they are still in escrow or are protected by Whois proxy services. Here’s the list:

(You can view previous lists like this here.)

Garbuio.com €45,000 – Garbuio Dickinson is a tobacco machinery company.

MissMary.com $20,000 – Miss Mary of Sweden AB is a lingerie company that uses the domain name MissMary.se.

Konzept.com €8,000 – Konzept GMBH is an Italian IT shop that uses the domain name Konzept.it.

CannaMedical.com $7,000 – I imagine you can figure out what this company does from its name: Cannamedical Pharma GmbH. It uses the matching .de domain name.

Sanicat.com $4,400 – Tolsa is Europe’s largest manufacturer of pet-hygiene products, one of which is marketed as Sanicat.

Instart.com $4,000 – Instart Logic is an ad revenue optimization company that uses the domain name InstartLogic.com.

Forest.tv $4,000 – The new site says it will be “An incentivized, blockchain enabled media network, that lets you control what you watch and when you watch it.”

Materiae.com €3,900- David Pirrotta is a branding company. The website features lots of beauty brands. I suspect Materiae is one such brand.

UCG.co $3,200 – United Crypto Group’s website is coming soon.

CatChip.com $3,000 – Microchip ID Systems, Inc. makes pet identification microchips.

Galaxy.xyz $2,800 – This will be an online gaming site. It appears to be cryptocurrency-fueled.

GPHotel.com €2,700 – Hotel Powers SAS in Paris, owner of the Grand Powers hotel.

Aurora.cc $2,500 – This is a clever use of .cc. It was purchased by Aurora Construction Company.

CentralToronto.com $2,499 – IntelliMarketing Corp is a Toronto web development and marketing shop.

BitcoinGratis.com $2,499 – The domain is framing Freebitcoin.in using a referral code.

GuardianSports.com $2,463 – Guardian Innovations, LLC uses the domain name GuardianSports.org.

EUX.co $2,200 – The domain name forwards to an active business at EUX.com.hr.

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Related posts:

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Domain name was registered to someone in Los Angeles.

Image for The Grand Budapest Hotel, one of Wes Anderson’s films.

Wes Anderson, director of films such as Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, has won a cybersquatting dispute for the domain name WesAnderson.com.

The domain name was registered by someone who had a parked page on it. The page also noted that the domain name was for sale with an asking price of $10,000.

The owner of the domain name did not respond to the dispute that Anderson filed with World Intellectual Property Organization.

Although Anderson does not currently have a federally-registered trademark for his name, he successfully argued that he has common law rights in Wes Anderson.

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Buying and selling domain names might be much harder this year.

Major changes are coming to Whois and domain name investors might end up holding the short end of the stick.

The impetus for change came not from the community, but from the European Union and its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

ICANN only belatedly started to address the real challenges of this law that will fine companies for disclosing personal information (among many other possible infractions).

The law only applies to European residents’ personal data. But changes to Whois will likely be enacted across the board rather than with precision.

(For background, read this story and listen to this podcast.)

As of right now, it seems that the likely model will be to obscure all Whois data across the globe, not just for individuals in the EU. There will be some sort of gating in which people can request full Whois data.

You can expect law enforcement, intellectual property interests and security firms to get access. They have the deepest pockets or the most influence to push for this access.

What exactly qualifies as an IP interest or security researcher is still up in the air and might require accreditation. Do I qualify as a security researcher when I use Whois history to connect the dots between domains being used for bad activities?

Domain investors don’t have much of a seat at the table. Even though domain investors fund much of ICANN’s budget (which is currently under pressure), domain investors don’t pay the money directly. They pay it to the companies that pay ICANN.

Among the problems domain investors will face from obscured Whois data are:

• Using historical Whois to verify valid ownership of domains before buying them
• Using current Whois info to verify ownership
• Using historical Whois to help recover stolen domains
• Using reverse Whois to understand domain portfolios they are purchasing
• Viewing single Whois records to make purchase inquiries

There are some limited workarounds to these. For example, an obscured Whois record might have a forwarding email address. But any veteran domain investor will tell you that a phone call is often required to connect with someone about selling a domain.

The Whois changes could throw a massive wrinkle in the domain name aftermarket, reducing the ease with which domains are sold and transferred.

All of these details might be resolved in the long run. But the deadline for GDPR compliance is in just two months. And if Whois data looks like this, we’re in trouble.

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Related posts:

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2. If ICANN and WIPO can’t comply with WHOIS, who can?
3. Will WHOIS be assassinated?

Two domain companies in talks to combine.

CentralNic and KeyDrive are in merger talks, CentralNic disclosed today.

CentralNic is both a registry services provider and a registrar, which owns Instra and Internet.bs. It is one of (if not the) largest new top level domain name back end by domain volume thanks to .xyz and Radix. KeyDrive is the parent company of Key-Systems, Moniker, BrandShelter and other domain name brands.

The goal is to complete a merger by the end of next quarter.

It would qualify as a “reverse takeover” on London AIM rules. As a result of the news, trading in CentralNic’s stock (AIM) has been suspended.

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Latest domain news at DNW.com: Domain Name Wire.

© 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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2. CentralNic reports 2016 earnings and growth driven by Instra
3. GoDaddy made the right move by booting domain name used for white supremacist site