Man gives controversial domain name to Beck after proving a point.

Isaac Eiland-Hall just won a highly publicized case against Glenn Beck over the domain name glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com. As soon as he won, he did something surprising: he offered the domain name to Beck for free.

In a letter (pdf) to Beck, Eiland-Hall explained that he has met his objectives with the domain name and web site, and points out to Beck that bringing the case made things worse for Beck.

It bears observing that by bringing the WIPO complaint, you took what was merely one small critique meme, in a sea of internet memes, and turned it into a super-meme. Then, in pressing forward (by not withdrawing the complaint and instead filing additional briefs), you turned the super-meme into an object lesson in First Amendment principles.”

In explaining his reason for voluntarily handing over the domain, Eiland-Hall wrote:

“…I want to demonstrate to you that I had my lawyer fight this battle only to help preserve the First Amendment. Now that it is safe, at least from you (for the time being), I have no more use for the actual scrap of digital real estate you sought…

Tags: glenn beck, udrp, wipo

Letter insinuates that CADNA does not take a balanced approach to intellectual property rights.

The ICANN IP Constituency is distancing itself from the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA).

In a letter to ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom, J. Scott Evans, President of the Intellectual Property Constituency, referred to a recent discussion in which CADNA was referred to as being a member of the constituency.

During our presentation, Mike Silba made a reference to the recent Congressional hearings held on new gTLDs. Specifically, Mike stated that “one of your members” had instigated these hearings and was the only party to file negative comments on the Affirmation of Commitments that ICANN recently signed with the U.S. Department of Commerce. Later that same day, Nick Wood, a representative of IPC member Marques, quered Mike about his comment. Mike explained that he was referring to the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) in his comments during the IPC meeting.

I want to clarifiy for the record that CADNA is not now nor has it ever been a member of the IPC. Additionally, I want you and the rest of the Board to know that Yahoo! resigned from CADNA in January 2008, shortly after I joined the company. The IPC has historically worked very hard to present a balanced view of IP protection in the DNS and, for this reason, I felt compelled to correct the public record and to ensure that the other Board members present at the meeting receive this information.

Note the explanation for how the IP constituency is different from CADNA: it tries to take a balanced approach. Apparently CADNA does not.

Tags: CADNA, icann, ip constituency

Glenn Beck loses challenge to parody web site.

Conservative TV personality Glenn Beck has lost his dispute over the domain name glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com. (See Domain Owner Respond to Glenn Beck.)

In order to win the domain name, Beck had to prove three things to an arbitrator:

1. The domain name was confusingly similar to Beck’s mark, i.e. Glenn Beck

2. The domain’s registrant did not have rights or legitimate interests in the domain name

3. The domain was registered and used in bad faith

The arbitrator for the case, Frederick M. Abbott, decided that the domain name was confusingly similar to the Glenn Beck mark, although he explained in detail how some panelists may think otherwise. But it didn’t ultimately matter, as Abbott found that the registrant did have legitimate interests in the domain:

Respondent appears to the Panel to be engaged in a parody of the style or methodology that Respondent appears genuinely to believe is employed by Complainant in the provision of political commentary, and for that reason Respondent can be said to be making a political statement. This constitutes a legitimate non-commercial use of Complainant’s mark under the Policy.

Because the second element of the UDRP wasn’t met, Abbott decided to not issue a ruling on the third element. But he also noted that it is unlikely the complainant would have prevailed on the issue of registration in bad faith anyway.

Abbott noted that whether or not the web site is defamatory could be an issue for the courts.

Review Abbott’s decision here (pdf).

Considering .asia and .tel results, how many domains can a new TLD expect to register?

What makes a top level domain name successful?

If you compare any top level domain to .com, they are all failures. But if you look at it from the registry’s perspective, the number required to be profitable isn’t that much.

.Biz brings in about $12 million a year to registry Neustar even though .biz is only tiny sliver of the domain market at two million domains. That’s not bad.

I’ve been told that some business plans for new top level domains anticipate registration levels of only about 35,000. That’s not much, and I suspect many general domains can get that many registrations in defensive registrations alone. But if it’s marketed to a niche community, that can be profitable.

So let’s look at numbers for a couple recent top level domains, .asia and .tel (I’ve already written about .mobi).

In its latest public ICANN report, .tel registry Telnic reported a total of 221,616 domains registered in July. The number seems to be growing 5,000-15,000 names a month. Recent estimates I’ve heard are that there are about 250,000 .tel domains registered, which jives with the current growth rate. But keep in mind .tel will take a hit after initial registration periods lapse.

.Asia has already seen its first round of drops from its land rush, and is now hovering at about 215,000 domains registered.

Neither of these TLDs faced intense competition when they were launched, and they are also fairly generic in nature. When new TLDs are launched en masse, they’ll face stiff competition with other similar TLDs. That means they’ll be lucky to approach the numbers .asia and .tel have, unless they manage to score good shelf space at a registrar like GoDaddy (or are launched by a registrar for that matter).

I’ve never had a first hand look at a business plan for a new TLD, but I hope their backers are being cautious with their forecasts.

Registered base of .mobi domains is sinking.

The total number of .mobi domain names registered fell to 850,712 in July 2009, the latest number available through ICANN. That represents a 10% drop from the same month in 2008 when the total base was 946,357.

The number of .mobi domains registered has held stagnate this year, hanging around 850,000 domains.

.Mobi has been one of the best marketed new top level domain names to ever be released. A couple months ago I was surprised to see people calling out mTLD for not promoting the domain more. I suspect these people are more frustrated about resale values of the domain than mTLD’s marketing. mTLD has marketed the heck out of the domain, released software to support domain registrants, hooked up with GoDaddy (which has registered about half of all .mobi domains) and forged alliances with mobile device makers.

That said, it looks like 850,000 may be the ongoing magic number for .mobi domain registrations. A lot of people bought .mobi domain names for speculation, and with the resale market faltering, it’s unlikely to see a surge in new registrations for the domain.

Later today I’ll post numbers from .asia and .tel to show how those domains are performing.

[Update: as one reader pointed out, .mobi got a boost of about 100,000 domains recently with the launch of certain IDN domains. See comments.]

Tags: mobi, mtld