Company continues push to make NBC honor sale of Women.com and .net.

DONE! Ventures has filed an opposition (pdf) to NBC Universal’s Motion to Dismiss its lawsuit over a failed transaction for Women.com and Women.net.

DONE! had agreed to purchase the two domain names through NBC’s broker Sedo for $1 million. However, NBC backed out of the deal after it was allegedly vetoed by NBC Universal President & CEO Jeff Zucker. DONE! sued to force NBC to complete the deal.

NBC then filed a Motion to Dismiss, arguing that a contract for the deal had not been formed. Its chief reason was that there was no “meeting of the minds” since DONE!’s communication with Sedo mostly referred to Women.com and not the .com and .net.

This is rather suspicious given that NBC pulled completely out of the deal rather than going ahead and suggesting they complete the deal at $1M for just women.com.

In its response to NBC’s Motion to Dismiss, DONE! says that both domains were marketed as a pair throughout the process. Sedo’s sales page for Women.com even mentioned that a sale included the .net version. DONE! drew an analogy to buying a house:

By analogy, a real estate broker may market a picture of a home on the Internet as being for sale but the detail page includes a reference to the home, a garage, and a yard. The real estate buyer is purchasing the entire package, not just the home in the picture. Here, defendants’ detail page made clear that something more then Women.com was included: two domain names were part of the offer.

Along with opposing the motion to dismiss, DONE! filed declarations (pdf) from its founder Ben Padnos (an early Yahoo! employee) and domain broker Alan Hack, who assisted Padnos with the transaction.

Networking and partying gets underway in a couple weeks in Czech Republic.

DOMAINfest has announced that it will hold networking events and parties at two exclusive locations during October’s event in Prague.

On October 6, Moniker and SnapNames have obtained exclusive use of the National Museum in Prague’s Vaclavske Square for a dinner party. It’s the oldest and largest museum in the Czech Republic.

On October 7, DomainSponsor will host a dinner and party at Duplex Club & Café. Guests will have exclusive use of the this rooftop lounge and dance club. It overlooks Wenceslas Square in Prague’s city center.

Of course we might be very tired by the time we head to the Duplex Club. Thursday will be sans sessions and focus exclusively on fun networking: from Grand Prix Go Kart Racing and a Pub Hunt Contest to AK47 and M16 Shooting Contests or a walking tour of Prague Castle and area churches and cathedrals.

Registration is available through the end of the month for only $595.

There may already be 200M domains registered.

It’s possible that the total number of domain names currently registered has already exceeded 200 million.

In VeriSign’s latest Domain Industry Brief (pdf), the company says June ended with a total of 196.3 million domains registered across gTLDs and ccTLDs. That’s up about 3 million from the first quarter. The second quarter is generally a little slow for domain registrations, so we might see the increase more this quarter. That means that, at the time you’re reading this, we might have already crossed the 200 million plateau.

Other factoids from the latest brief:

-Based of ccTLDs was about even compared to last quarter at 76.3 million

-New .com and .net registrations totaled 7.9 million over past quarter, down 2% from Q1 (but the company says this is usual for the second quarter). This is 13% better than the same quarter last year.

-China’s .cn continues to slip thanks to heavy registration restrictions

.Jobs expansion plans hit a snag, but it’s probably minor.

Following an outcry from the online job board industry, ICANN’s Board Governance Committee (BGC) agreed to reconsider opening up the .jobs space carte blanche.

I doubt anything will come of this reconsideration request, even if the BGC recommends to the Board that it reverse its decision. We all know what happened after ICANN’s board reversed its original decision on .xxx. That issue is still carrying on today.

What it could do, however, is slow down the .jobs expansion.

The controversial .jobs plan allows the .jobs registry to offer generic second level domain names. Currently only companies can register their exact second level domain name in .jobs, e.g. att.jobs. That means we could see Nursing.jobs and NYC.jobs.

(via DomainIncite)

Good intentions and a couple big problems.

Kevin Murphy spotted a new bill that, if passed in its current form, would give the U.S. government more powers to shut down domain names used for piracy and counterfeiting.

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act would make it easier for the government to shut down sites with pirated movies and music or selling counterfeit goods.

On the surface that doesn’t sound too bad. But there are a couple things that make me wary:

1. In addition to domains with a registrar or registry located in the U.S., the bill enables the government to go after domains in other countries and force them to be blocked in the U.S. (Interestingly, it says nothing of the location of the registrant.)

Why is this a problem? Well, what if Saudi Arabia suddenly passed a bill requiring sites about womens’ rights to be blocked? I suppose China and Iran already has similar rules though.

2. It’s a slippery slope. What exactly is promoting counterfeit goods? I can envision circumstances where this bill is twisted to go after legitimate domain names. In general I’m not a fan of slippery slope arguments. But if this passes, be aware that similar — and perhaps overreaching — bills could follow.