Jordan meeting will be moved over security concerns.

On Tuesday I wrote about how ICANN was heading to another hot spot in June for a meeting in Jordan.

Now comes word via DomainIncite that ICANN is going to switch locations.

Kevin Murphy reports that ICANN vice president of policy development support David Olive sent an email to members of the Generic Names Supporting Organization earlier today informing them of the change to an as-yet-unnamed location.

Jordan is potentially next in line for a regime change after Tunisia and Egypt. Given the challenges ICANN has had getting people to other questionable locations of late, this was a smart move.

Hopefully ICANN can schedule another meeting in Jordan at a more stable time.

No longer just a “probably not”.

In case your glass-half-full optimism wouldn’t let go of the idea that ICANN’s Board of Directors would approve the new gTLD applicant guidebook at its March meeting in San Francisco, I’ve got news for you.

It’s not going to happen.

In a blog post today, ICANN outlines ongoing work with the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) on new TLDs.

ICANN and the GAC are meeting in Brussels next month. Then it will have a bylaws-defined consultation with the GAC during its San Francisco meeting on March 17, the day before the board holds its regularly scheduled meeting.

Just in case there’s still any question, the post says:

Because of the timing of the bylaws consultation, the Board will not approve or announce the new gTLD program at that Board Meeting.

Famous cookie goes up for sale.

Last April I paid what I believe to be a domainer record for a cookie: $127.50.

But this wasn’t just any cookie. It was a sugar cookie commemorating Tucows’ 10 millionth domain name registered. This is a limited edition cookie to be sure. And the proceeds from the cookie auction went to some Canadian charity that (I’m told) had nothing to do with ice hockey or Molson.

The cookie has been sitting in my office for the past 9 months. I wanted to eat it to see what $20-a-bite-cookie tastes like, but I had been hoodwinked.

You see, the back of the cookie package has a notice:

Not for Consumption

When I saw that notice I got the same feeling you get when you buy a domain name that supposedly earns $100/week only to find out it really doesn’t earn that much.

So what’s a domainer to do?

Flip it.

Now the two rules to flipping a domain name are 1) make sure no one knows how much you paid for it and 2) don’t let people know if you have damaged goods.

It’s too late for those.

But at the end of the day you aren’t really bidding on just a cookie. You’re helping out people in need as well.

I’m going to donate 100% of the proceeds from this cookie sale to Cheti School, an NGO in Tanzania.

Many of you met my new employee Mary Klingensmith at DOMAINfest. Prior to working with me she volunteered at Cheti School.

To give you an idea of how far your money goes at Cheti, consider these costs:

- $355 to send a child to Cheti for a year
- $100 feeds an entire class for a week
- $50 buys English books for a class

Not bad.

So regardless of your interest in a Tucows cookie, I ask that you participate in this auction.

If a non-Tucows employee wins the auction, Tucows will chip in some branded swag. If a Tucows employee wins and still wants the branded swag, you can still get it. But expect Elliot to deduct the cost from your next paycheck.

The winning bidder will also get publicity on Domain Name Wire.

Visit the auction on eBay right now. It closes on February 23.

Registrar’s General Counsel testifies on Capitol Hill.

Go Daddy Executive Vice-President, General Counsel, & Corporate Secretary Christine Jones testified before The United States Senate Committee On The Judiciary committee today.

The hearing was titled “Targeting Websites Dedicated To Stealing American Intellectual Property.”

While her testimony provided many examples of how domain name registrars such as Go Daddy fit into the enforcement puzzle, I found the numbers she provided very interesting:

- Go Daddy took down 36,000 rogue pharmacy sites in 2010 alone.

- It received 13,000 abuse/infringement claims last year

- It suspended 7,000 websites which were determined to contain content that infringed the rights of a trademark or copyright owners

- Go Daddy locked over 5,500 domain names that were the subject of trademark disputes or UDRP proceedings, and ultimately transferred more than 3,200 of those names

Jones noted that there are five groups that need to work together to keep infringers and counterfeiters off the internet: registrars, hosting service providers, payment card processors, Internet service providers,
and online advertising providers.

Without coordination with others, criminals can easily just switch to another registrar if they get shut down by Go Daddy.

Jones also said that Go Daddy would like orders for disabling a domain name to be directed first to registrars instead of registries. She said:

The registry in many instances has no knowledge of these highly confidential and sensitive matters, and we have experienced several occasions in which the sudden disabling of a domain name by a registry disrupted weeks or months of work by law enforcement agencies who were investigating serious criminal activity by the registrant.

Survey reveals favorite parking companies but continued downward trend in parking revenue.

A non-scientific survey of over 1,500 domain name industry participants shows that Sedo and Parked.com are still the top domain name parking companies.

Sedo received 30% of the votes as top parking company in Domain Name Wire’s sixth annual domain survey.

Parked came in a distant second place with 14% of the vote.

Last year Sedo took 23% of the vote and Parked brought home 18%.

The top five vote-getters in this year’s survey were:

1. Sedo 30%
2. Parked 14%
3. NameDrive 12%
4. Google Adsense for Domains 11%
5. SmartName 9%

Yet revenue from parked domains continues to decline, report the survey-takers.

46% reported earning less than $10 RPM (revenue per thousand) from their parked domains, up from 40% last year. 68% reported earning less than $20 RPM, compared to 60% last year.

Domain parkers are split on what will happen to parking revenue in 2011. 42% think it will be flat compared to 2010, while an even 29% think it will go up and 29% think it will go down.

You can see more survey results at DomainNameWire.com/survey.