First .music, now .berlin wants extra credit for being early to the new TLD game.

I wrote previously about how one applicant for the .music top level domain name requested favored status since he had been working on the concept for so long. Now another group is asking for similar status.

dotBERLIN GmbH & Co., which hopes to release a .berlin top level domain name, has submitted a comment to ICANN asking that companies that have been involved in the new top level domain name process for a long time be given an extra point on their application:

Many of the recently emerged new gTLD applicants may take advantage of the immense delay the new gTLD program has been facing since its start in 2005. The tentative timeline published with the Board’s approval of the new gTLD program in June 2008 stated an application window for March 2009. We think that applicants which were planning with this timeline already had a ripe application, while a number of new applicants who came in during the last 18 month sometimes seem to rather copy existing concepts and projects or have questionable business models.

For this reason we claim:

> One extra point in the Community Priority Evaluation should be given if organization of an applicant was already established before the approval of the new gTLDs program by the ICANN Board on 26 June 2008 or before the first communicated application window in March 2009.

Of course, the idea behind new TLDs is that every possible applicant be made aware of the process with plenty of time to apply. Once the application guidebook is finalized there will be an official communication and marketing period to drum up interest. To suggest that groups that were involved prior to this official communication period should get favored status defeats the purpose.

Company files information with SEC regarding legal setback.

Shortly after receiving an adverse decision in appeals court last week regarding an anti-trust lawsuit, VeriSign filed an 8-K with the SEC explaining the opinion. The disclosure summarizes changes to the court’s original order, and says the allegations are without merit:

On July 9, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (the “Court”) issued an order (the “Amended Order”) which amends its June 5, 2009 order (the “Original Order”). The Original Order had reversed and remanded the district court’s dismissal of the second amended complaint filed by plaintiff Coalition for ICANN Transparency, Inc. (“CFIT”). The Amended Order denies VeriSign’s motion for rehearing and rehearing en banc and again states that Plaintiff CFIT’s complaint, assuming its material allegations to be true, plead plausible claims against VeriSign under Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act in connection with the 2006 .com registry agreement. The Court was reviewing matters of law at this stage as opposed to fact and, at this stage of the pleadings, is required to assume that all material allegations are true for purposes of assessing whether a valid claim has been plead. The amended opinion changes in two respects the Court’s earlier decision. First, the Court amended its opinion by explaining that, for purposes of reviewing the sufficiency of the complaint, it was not considering the role of the U.S. government in the 2006 .com registry agreement. The Court noted that “while CFIT stated plausible” claims, “proving” its claims “may be difficult in light of the amendments made by the Department of Commerce to its Cooperative Agreement with VeriSign,” in addition to the government’s role in connection with the provision of registry services. Second, the amended opinion changes the earlier decision by explaining that “competitive bidding is not required” as a predicate to complying with the antitrust laws. “So long as the agreement is the result of independent business judgment, is not the result of an intention to restrain trade, or does not actually injure competition, it is immaterial whether it was secured through a competitive bidding process.”

For a description of the procedural history of this litigation, see VeriSign’s most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 28, 2010.

Unless VeriSign seeks and is granted further appellate review, the case will be remanded to the district court for proceedings, likely within 90 days. While the Company cannot predict the outcome of these proceedings, it believes the allegations against it are without merit and intends to vigorously defend against them.

The lawsuit was filed mainly for two reasons: stop VeriSign from introducing its own waitlisting service for expired .com’s, and force some sort of competitive tender for managing .com. The waitlisting service was long ago shelved.

First diapers.com, now soap.com.

It’s been a couple months since I first became aware that the company that owns Diapers.com was getting ready to launch a new store at Soap.com. Today the store went live.

Soap.com is an online store for toiletries and other household products. Think of it as the section of Target that has the vitamins, detergent, and razors.

The idea is to make it easier, cheaper, and more convenient for people to get all of these products. In my part of the world it’s easy to buy these products at the grocery store or with a quick trip to Target. But anyone who lives in an urban area will tell you that trying to pick up these items and take them home on the subway is a real pain.

You may question the business sense in shipping a 2.95 liter bottle of Tide. Remind you of Pets.com shipping dog food? But remember, this company found a way to ship big boxes of diapers without breaking the bank.

And, if nothing else, you have to like the company’s use of category-killer domain names.

.Jobs debate “ends” Thursday.

I wrote last month about a move to open up the .jobs domain name. Currently only companies can register .jobs domains, and only with their company name (e.g. ATT.jobs). The group behind this sponsored TLD wants to open it up, with the idea of creating a ton of (million?) job boards using the domains. From Policy.jobs:

Previously, Employ Media [which runs .jobs under contract] began the process of creating a self-managed class of names in the .jobs tld. Called the shared domain beta test, many non-”companyname” .jobs domains were (and in many cases still are) registered to Employ Media. Employ Media “used” these domains in the DNS by redirecting them to a third party (the Direct Employers Association), who themselves “used” the domains by providing uniform, consistent content to all the domains in the shared beta test.

Essentially, .jobs has found a backdoor way to enter as an sTLD and create a structure that will allow it to operate as an open gTLD before other new gTLDs are launched, if its plans are approved. And, much like .travel, average joe’s probably won’t be able to get their hands on the good domain names because they will be kept under an arrangement with the registry to create job boards.

Plenty of people have voiced their opinions in a public comment period that ends tomorrow. It seems that most of the opposition is coming from job board owners, who complain both of new competition and lack of transparency. Those in favor include some members of Society for Human Resource Management, which makes policy decisions regarding .jobs under the .jobs charter. Of course, the .jobs registry and operator Employ Media stands to profit from this move.

VaultPress secures WordPress in a vault.

Backing up a WordPress blog has never been particularly easy or efficient. Earlier this year I wrote about the first truly “easy” backup tool. It works fine and costs me only 10 cents a month in hosting.

But now Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has launched an official backup tool called VaultPress. Although it costs money, it’s worth it for anyone who makes a business out of their WordPress site.

VaultPress is installed in the form of a WordPress plugin. Once you install it, it starts to backup everything on your blog — the database, graphics, comments, themes, posts, plugins, etc. All of this is stored and accessible form a web interface at VaultPress.com, making it easy to restore your site in the case of failure. Unlike every other backup tool I’ve used, VaultPress updates continuously whenever something new is added to blog, e.g. a comment.

So what does your $15-$40 monthly charge get you? Peace of mind, really. $40 a month to a blog like Domain Name Wire is nothing; even a short downtime costs more. It’s possible that there are solutions out there as good as VaultPress for less money, but it makes sense to use a service created by the same company that created WordPress. They know the ends-and-outs of the system and will keep the service up-to-date. They also maintain a network of 11 million hosted blogs.

The $40 package includes security monitoring in addition to the backup available in the $15 package. As of now the security system just scans your plugins to find any possible security issues, although it doesn’t provide actionable steps (or any indication about how serious the threats are) to remedy it. Soon it will include active monitoring for suspicious activity.

Perhaps the most important feature coming soon to VaultPress is a full restore. Imagine being about to restore your WordPress blog, completely from scratch, with just the click of a few buttons.

VaultPress is in limited beta right now, so you need to get on the waiting list if you want to buy your own peace of mind.