ICANN #36 kicks off in Seoul.

Hundreds of domainers are gathering in New York this week for the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference. It should be a great time and good for business. But the conference that will have a bigger long term impact on domainers’ pocket books is going on some 7,000 miles away in Seoul, South Korea.

That’s where ICANN is holding its 36th international meeting. A number of game-changing decisions will be influenced or decided at the meeting:

-Registry/registrar separation
-Price caps on new top level domain names, which will eventually affect .com
-Rollout of IDN country code domain names
-Rollout, timeline, and policies for introduction of new top level domains
-New intellectual property protection measures for new TLDs…which will likely affect existing TLDs such as .com

Thanks to some of the work by ICANN staff (including Kieren McCarthy), you don’t have to be in Seoul to get in on the action. See live video feeds, download presentations, read transcripts, and even submit questions on ICANN’s event web site.

WIPO’s inconsistency called out at ICANN meeting.

Tucows CEO Elliot Noss seized an opportune moment to call out UDRP provider World Intellectual Property Organization during the first day of ICANN’s Seoul meetings.

During a session on Post-Expiration Domain Name Recovery, WIPO’s Eun-Joo Min commented that one of the problems with domain expiration is that registrars handle it inconsistently and in a non-transparent manner:

I think it is really important for the — not only for — especially for the registrants, but also for the general public to have some predictability about the life of that registration and not be subject to the whim of different registrars.

Anyone who reads some of WIPO’s panelist decisions in domain arbitration could flip that around on WIPO, and Noss did just that:

>>ELLIOT NOSS: Great. I find it ironic that comment is coming from WIPO. Having been a participant in a number of UDRP proceedings, there is an order of magnitude more transparency in registrars’ processes than there is in the UDRP process. In fact, we would see bordering on arbitrary decisions around time periods for submissions, the availability of submissions, things that would be found late an hour after a time period, things that would be allowed three weeks after a time period, and they all tended to go in a single direction.

So I would hope that WIPO could aspire to the level of transparency that registrars generally offer.

>>EUN-JOO MIN: Are published on the Internet.

>>ELLIOT NOSS: They’re published but not followed.

>>EUN-JOO MIN: They’re very transparent.

>>ELLIOT NOSS: And they say you may or may not allow extra time for submissions. You may or may not honor the time periods.

What’s frustrating to Noss and many domain owner is how WIPO and NAF arbitrators decide procedure inconsistently and are given the leeway to do so. Sometimes a response to a UDRP will be filed an hour late and the arbitrator will decide to consider it. Other times they don’t. Technically, complainants are only allowed to file a additional submission if the arbitrator asks for it, but this is rarely followed. When received, arbitrators usually take the additional submission into consideration; but sometimes they don’t. Even when they don’t, they usually note that “it didn’t add anything substantial”. This means they actually read the additional submission and considered it, but for the record they say they aren’t considering it.

So WIPO, here’s the message. Just publishing guidelines on your web site isn’t enough. You have to be consistent about them, and not favor the complainant. It’s like a registrar saying on its web site that you can usually renew your domain within a 30 day grace period, but giving some people only 10 days and others 50 days.

Actress files for arbitration to get domain name.

Actress Kate Hudson is fighting for the right to the domain name KateHudson.com. [Update: she won the case.]

The actress, famous for roles in Almost Famous, You, Me and Dupree, and My Best Friend’s Girl (pictured), has filed for arbitration at National Arbitration Forum to get the domain name.

The domain name is currently parked and shows links for “kate hudson pics”, “celebrity photos”, “kate hudson”, and “kate hudson biography”.

Whois records show that the domain name was registered to a woman named Kate Hudson (but not the address) from 2003-2005, but then the domain name expired. The domain has bounced around since then, landing with BWI Domains for a while until earlier this year, when the whois record changed to a man in Shanghai.

A National Arbitration Forum panelist should render a decision within a couple months.

Squatters picked up Google Listen names many years ago.

Google has launched a new music and audio servicecalled Google Listen, which was sometimes referred to as Google Audio as news about the launch leaked over the past couple days. Unfortunately for Google, relevant domain names have already been snatched up.

GoogleListen.com was originally registered back in 2005. The owner let the domain expire in 2006, and then the new owner let the domain name expire earlier this year. It was snapped up again, and the current owner uses whois privacy protection to protect his identity.

GoogleListen.com is parked with a Google advertising partner. This partner blocks ads from showing up on domain names that include “Google” in them, but the registrant has found a work around: the domain is entered at the parking company as a non existent typo Goolgelisten.com, which doesn’t get blocked.

GoogleAudio.com was registered back in April. It appears it was registered because an audio service was in the works, and Google launched an audio indexing tool earlier this year. The domain is parked at a the same Google advertising partner, but because it includes “Google” in the domain name, the parking company isn’t showing any ads.

Vulture.com now forwards to popular blog at New York Magazine.

New York Magazine has acquired the domain name Vulture.com for its popular entertainment and culture blog Vulture.

A review of historical whois records shows that Frank Schilling’s Name Administration sold the domain name to New York Magazine. Records indicate that the domain was transferred to New York Magazine around September 2.

This is an interesting example of a domain purchase by a major media outlet. What makes it interesting is that it acquired a domain name for a popular subsection of its web site, not just the main site. It’s a direct navigation play. The publication has a number of popular blogs, and owns the corresponding domain names for two others: TheCut.com and GrubStreet.com. It does not own the domain for four of its other key blogs:

-DailyIntel.com (parked)
-TheProjectionist.com (owned by Warner Bros.)
-TheSportsSection.com (owned by Upper Deck, which also owns SportsSection.com)
-Surf.com (owned by household products company)

I have no doubt New York Magazine paid dearly for Vulture.com. Not only is it a good domain, but Name Administration doesn’t sell domain names for cheap.

Incidentally, Vultures.com goes on the block in New York this week for $25,000-$50,000. Rest assured that Vulture.com sold for many times that amount.