NameMedia’s withdrawn IPO more painful than it looks.

It may appear that NameMedia’s decision last week to to drop its planned initial public offering is just a temporary setback. Aside from the costs of filing its S-1 to go public, going on the investor roadshow, and obliging quite period regulations, did it really cost the company anything? The answer is yes. And it’s not the time, money, or decreased morale that hurts the most. It’s the disclosure.

By filing to go public, NameMedia’s competitor’s were basically handed the company’s playbook. Competitors know how the company operates. How much it pays key employees. How much debt it has and when it is due. And how much it paid for acquisitions including Afternic, SmartName, and GoldKey. While some information in NameMedia’s S-1 filing was redacted, such as its payout percentage with Google, it still disclosed much more than any private company would ever offer up.

NameMedia isn’t the first company to file for and subsequently back out of going public. The Go Daddy Group, parent company of GoDaddy.com, filed to go public in 2006. It’s filing included a wealth of insider information. In fact, it was the S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that provided the definitive link between the company and Standard Tactics. Trying to go public also stifled out-spoken founder Bob Parsons, who had to limit his company talk during the so-called quiet period.

There are a handful of other public companies in the domain industry. They each have to disclose information about their operations that they’d prefer to keep private. We know how much Fabulous pays out to its parking customers. We have a good idea how much money Sedo makes from domain parking. And we know exactly how much compensation the CEO of Tucows gets.

This is information that competitors such as Oversee.net, Thought Convergence, and eNom get to keep private. And it gives these private companies a competitive advantage.

A look at domain name blogs I read frequently.

Earlier this year I published a list of blogs that I subscribe to. That list has changed somewhat over the year because some blogs have disappeared and others emerged.

I generally subscribe to a domain blog’s RSS feed if I find it insightful. A rehash of news articles does little for me. Analysis or an interesting angle is important. I also require a blog to be around for more than a few months before I subscribe, because I don’t want to “invest” in a blog that disappears. Most blogs go inactive within 6 months or so of launching.

Of course there are a number of other good domain blogs out there, and I don’t mean to disrespect them. This is just a list of what I currently subscribe to.

Conceptualist – Sahar Sarid took a hiatus late this year, but recently started blogging again. This haitus may have been good. For a while Conceptualist became a sales pitch for Bido, but with Bido currently back in development Sarid is again blogging about domain names in general. That’s a good thing.

Domain Name News – Adam Strong, Frank Michlick, and Chad Kettner do a good job rounding up the latest news stories and provide good analysis (not to mention scooping some good stories). After they picked up the domain DNN.com earlier this year, I got envious and bought DNW.com.

Elliot’s Blog – Elliot Silver chronicles his experiences buying and selling domains and building out his network of geo domain sites. Elliot has another thing going for him — he’s an all around nice guy who doesn’t hesitate to lend a hand.

Is It Me or is Everyone Else Stupid? – Julia MacKenzie writes about domains with sharp wit and doesn’t hesitate to ruffle feathers. She provides good analysis of all things domaining and seems to get the inside track on events before they happen. Now if she’d only answer the question I posed on her site last week: why does the initial registration record for her blog show Google’s Matt Cutts?

Predictive Domaining – this blog provides ideas for looking into the future and hand registering domain names before the keywords become popular.

SimplyGeo – Steven Morales started blogging furiously about geo domains but has slowed down considerably. It’s hard to keep it up when you get called away on military missions. Morales has served in Iraq and is heading back there in 2009.

TheDomains – Michael Berkens writes about trademark infringement, registrar wrong-doing, and opines on the domain industry and economy at large.

Whizzbangsblog.com – Australian Michael Gilmour dishes up his analytical view of the domain world. Gilmour runs domain parking optimization company ParkLogic.

Of course, to discover new domain blogs I visit Domaining.com.

.Gov domain names are highly restricted domains. Here’s how they work.

Yes, it’s a slow newsweek. Save for a $33 million cybersquatting judgment and NameMedia pulling its IPO, not much goes on in a holiday week.

So here’s another post I saved for a slow newsweek like this. Earlier this week I reviewed .edu domain names including who could register them. In this article we’ll take a look at .gov.

.Gov is a top level domain name reserved exclusively for qualified United States government organizations and programs. The key idea behind .gov domain names is that, because of its exclusivity and registration requirements, visitors immediately know that the web site they are visiting is truly a government entity.

Administrator: GSA Federal Acquisition Service manages .gov as well as two second level domains discussed later.

Annual registration fee: $125

Requirements and policies:
Who’s eligible to register .gov top level domains:
-U.S. Governmental departments, programs, and agencies on the federal level
-State governmental entities/programs
-Cities and townships represented by an elected body of officials
-Counties and parishes represented by an elected body of officials
-U.S. territories

Who’s not eligible:
-International organizations
-Commercial firms
-Privately owned organizations
-Military entities (except in special cases)
-Local (e.g., city, county, township, or parish) government programs or initiatives
-Cities, townships, counties, and other local entities that are not represented by an elected body of officials

There are also a number of naming conventions. For example, state entities must use their full state name or abbreviation in the domain, such as virginia.gov and nmparks.gov.

GSA encourages cities to register for third level domains underneath their state’s second level domain.

It also manages two second level domains: NSN.gov and fed.us. NSN.gov is for federally recognized Indian tribes and .fed.us is restricted to U.S. Federal Government cabinet-level agencies.

More information about .gov is available at dotgov.gov.

Verizon wins default judgment against top 15 domain registrar.

Customers of OnlineNic, Inc., a top 15 domain registrar with over 1,000,000 domains registered, should be concerned about the state of the registrar after a judge ordered the company to pay $33 million to Verizon (NYSE: VZ).

A judge entered the default judgment of $50,000 for each of the 663 domain names OnlineNic owned that allegedly infringed Verizon’s trademarks. OnlineNic didn’t respond to the lawsuit, which was filed back in June.

Verizon has lodged a number of trademark lawsuits, including against Houston based iREIT (which it settled) and Navigation Catalyst (which was also settled). Verizon is also a member of Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA).

Although aggressive itself in filing domain name trademark suits, Verizon and other CADNA members seem to be hypocritical as they use “error services” to show ads on typo domains. In fact, Navigation Catalyst counter-sued based on this error service. It appears that the countersuit may have helped Navigation Catalyst, as it settlement basically says that it can no longer cybersquat on Verizon’s trademarks. Perhaps Verizon didn’t want to deal with the embarrassment of its typo redirect service.

This case brings up an important question and a reminder.

First, what non-financial penalty could a registrar face for participating in cybersquatting? I assume the $33 million judgment, if ever collected, would doom OnlineNic. But what role and under what timeline should ICANN step in to protect customers of OnlineNic?

Second, this case should serve as a stark reminder to trademark infringers that they have more to lose than just a UDRP. They can lose up to $100,000 per infringing domain under the Lanham Act.

Actress wins domain name at WIPO.

Actress Scarlett Johansson has won rights to the domain name ScarlettJohansson.com in an arbitration decision at World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Johansson has starred in numerous movies including Lost in Translation, Match Point, and The Ghost Whisperer and been nominated for several Golden Globe Awards.

The details of the domain name arbitration case are rather interesting. Apparently the owner of the domain, Tristan Dare, set up a contest on the site that invited people to win a shot at a “threesome” with Johansson. However, the threesome was actually just the chance to go to Johansson’s movie Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona with two other people. Contestants had to send an e-mail explaining why they should be the winner.

As an indication of how much traffic the domain received, Dare said the site had 100,000 visits over 4 days and 10,000 people entered the contest. It also received media attention.

Johansson had nothing to do with the contest, but Dare said an “anonymous” person e-mailed him offering $10,000 to run a campaign promoting the movie. When Dare declined, he claims the person offered $20,000. He said he wouldn’t take money because he’s an artist, but created the site as a parody for non-commercial gain. Dare didn’t provide the e-mails to the WIPO panel.

Dare is certainly a creative artist if his explanation to the panel is any indication. Among his claims were that “The “contest” reflected the Respondent’s “nihilistic” approach, and was intended to question, examine, and highlight the nature of corporate greed, whereby an “anything goes” attitude trumps anything else as long as it serves a bottom-line agenda”. He also registered the domain name with an address of “900 Pound Guerrilla Way”.

The panel didn’t buy it and handed the domain over to Johansson.

Photo from Wikipedia Commons.