All the domain name news that’s fit to print.

Here are few domain name stories and tidbits for your Wednesday evening.

…Don’t look now, but Live Current Media’s stock price has broken the dime. On the downside. Shares closed today at $.0915. Ouch.

…an oldie-but-goodie from The Onion about .xxx not being approved (in 2006).

…VeriSign reported earnings after the bell. It added a record 8.1 million domain names in the first quarter — a record. That’s good news for domainers.

…DNN has the tally from today’s auction at TRAFFIC in Milan. The site calculates just over 400,000 EUR in sales. Latona better collect those Euros quickly and convert them to dollars before the exchange rate continues to slip

…Latonas.com is hosting a .tv auction where every domain starts at $49. Some good keyword domains to be had, including Coeds.tv, Skateboarders.tv, and Kate.tv.

…Epik is buying product domains thanks to the success of its product portals. Details here.

…As TRAFFIC Milan winds down, GeoDomain Expo is kicking off in New Orleans. I’m not there, but look for daily updates here.

Running a whois privacy or proxy service costs money.

In the recent uproar about Name.com introducing a fee for whois privacy, a number of people have said that such a service costs the provider essentially nothing.

Without discussing the merits of Name.com’s new fee and how it communicated it, it’s worth pointing out that whois privacy does cost the registrar money.

First, there’s the legal set up fee and structure of an entity to act at the proxy. (There are two types of whois privacy services. Most are actually “proxy” services, which register the domain name and license it to the registrant.) That’s no small potatoes if done correctly. Then there’s the technology aspect.

But a bigger cost for domain privacy services is ongoing legal headaches. When a domain using a proxy service is served with a UDRP, the proxy service generally unmasks the whois information. But complainants sometimes argue that the proxy provider is actually the domain owner. Some panelists agree. Add to that frequent requests from law enforcement agencies and courts.

I was reminded of this today when I saw that a Florida man just filed a complaint in U.S. District Court against both GoDaddy and its Domains by Proxy, Inc. subsidiary. The man is claiming defamation because someone used Domains by Proxy to register a domain name that he says is being used to bad mouth his services.

So while the incremental cost of providing whois privacy for a domain name may be small, there are certainly costs.

When will Washington decide to screw domain investors?

When the U.S. health care bill passed, one of the provisions that got some attention is a tax on indoor tanning salons. The 10% tax goes into effect in July.

When I saw this provision, I realized right away why this particular provision was added. Sure, it raises some money (defrays the cost of the health care bill). And it is somewhat related to health, since tanning can have some negative health consequences. But the first thing that popped into my mind was how the tanning salon business got picked on because it’s not big enough to put up a good defense.

Just about everyone else in the health care debate threw millions of dollars at shaping the policy. But the Indoor Tanning Association couldn’t keep up with that. It reminds me of the domain name industry, which can’t beat the big pockets of sometimes competing interests.

Last night I read an article in Forbes (Pole Dancing and Other Sins, May 10) that shows how another medical interest threw the tanning salons under the bus:

Dermatologists, arguing that heavy use of indoor tanning has been linked to a higher risk of deadly skin cancer, convinced the Senate that revenues from the tanning tax should replace a tax on cosmetic surgery (the so-called Bo-Tax) adopted by the House. “We were rolled by the doctors,” laments John Overstreet, executive director of the Indoor Tanning Association.

That’s how Washington works.

The domain industry doesn’t have a lot of money, but fortunately it still has a presence in Washington. We should support that.

There are lots of auction opportunities. How can auction houses differentiate themselves?

Yesterday’s Domain Name Wire “blogger” auction ended with 32% of domains selling. It was lower than what I had hoped, although there were some good bidding wars at the end. I was also happy that all but one domain that received bids ended up meeting their reserves.

There are several things I did right selecting domains for and running the auction, and several things I could have done better. It’s always easy to blame outside forces. As many people pointed out to me, there are a number of auctions going on and two conferences this week.

But blaming the volume of domain auctions isn’t something auction organizers will be able to do for long. Let’s face the facts — there are an increasing number of domain auctions at any given time, and you have to do something to rise to the top.

Looking back one month and forward one month, we’ve had:

-Domain Madness
-Multiple Sedo Great Domains auctions
-Sedo .tv auction
-Multiple Rick Latona auctions (first for a day, now a week)
-TRAFFIC auctions, both live and extended, no/low reserve and premium
-Moniker DomainFest auction
-SnapNames auctions
-Others that escape my mind

That’s not to mention the daily auctions at SnapNames, NameJet, Sedo, and even BargainDomains.

So how can companies make their auctions stand out? Beyond “offer good domains at good prices”, Here are some ideas:

-Everything’s a dollar – Rick Latona has held a number of auctions with $1 reserves. Talk about creating buzz. At a minimum, the auction starts with some real bargains. Whether or not it ends that way as domains get bid up is a different matter. But starting at a baseline of “everything is a bargain” is a good way to start.

-Create a hook – make something interesting, such as a timely theme or gimmick. This will get attention, not the least of which by bloggers. With so many auctions going on, it’s impossible for me to write about each one. Heck, there could probably be a domain blog covering nothing but domain auctions.

-Be consistent – if you change the rules of your auctions every day, people will get annoyed. People like to know what they’re getting in to.

-Make it transparent – every time a name sells for more than some people think it’s worth, you’ll hear complaints about auction improprieties. People wish to remain anonymous, but you can do other things to make bidders comfortable (e.g. bidder certification).

Any other ideas?

Media company wins four typo domain names through arbitration.

The New York Times Company has won a National Arbitration Forum case for four domain name typos of its NewYorkTimes.com web address.

The company filed the case in March to get the domain names newyourktimes.com, newyortimes.com, neyyorktimes.com, and newyoktimes.com. Although the domain names showed different owners, a previous case brought by Microsoft against the same person tied the identity of all of the owners together. Microsoft won its case against the same person last year for 48 typo domain names of its Hotmail and MSN properties.

This case appears to be only the second time The New York Times Company has used Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) to obtain a domain name. Its first case was back in 2000, when it fought a company calling itself “New York Internet Services” for a very important domain name: NewYorkTimes.com. It won the case, and the domain now forwards to the company’s main web site NYTimes.com. The company also owns NYT.com, which also forwards to NYTimes.com.