Domain registrar upsets group about its plans for .lac TLD.

There are a number of web sites accepting “pre-registrations” for new top level domain names. Since no one can apply for these new TLDs yet, it’s all speculative on the part of the services.

But domain name registrar United Domains recently launched a program that drew the ire of one possible new gTLD applicant.

The company’s pre-registration system offered .LAC and said it was being supported by Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC).

LACNIC subsequently emailed ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom, stating:

Yesterday, United Domains Inc, an ICANN accredited registrar, published on its website an announcement of preregistration under the domain .LAC This announcement suggests that LACNIC will apply for that domain and has used our name and logo without our authorization.

This information is incorrect and has created a lot of confusion within the community. LACNIC is analyzing legal responsibilities related to this situation. So far, we have sent a Cease and Desist letter to United Domains Inc. (attached).

This kind of irresponsible actions on the part of a formal player of the ICANN system have a very negative impact on the community as they affect the system’s prestige.

We suggest that ICANN evaluate the situation and determine whether any action is required.

Beckstrom responded that ICANN was investigating.

As of today the United Domains page resolves to information about .web instead of .lac. But you can see the original page here.

Honestly, it seems more like a situation where LACNIC should have just asked United Domains to take it down. It seems like an honest mistake.

Blogger doesn’t understand what Moniker Privacy Services is — and suggests the company is profiting off of child porn.

I’ve said many times that offering whois privacy or proxy services isn’t free. Here’s another example.

A blog post on Miami New Times says that Moniker Privacy Services:

has registered at least five porn sites still featuring the video and X-rated screenshots — seven months after a family member left comments on the sites warning: “This is child pornography and your site can and will face charges!”

The sites in question supposedly host a porn video with an underage star.

Of course Moniker Privacy Services is just a whois proxy service. But technically it is the registrant of the domain names.

The blog suggests that Moniker is a shady company, and says that it managed to “track down” the owners. The owners, of course, are Oversee.net.

It promises to expose more about the company:

Tomorrow, we’ll bring you more information on Moniker Privacy Services, one of the dirtiest internet-based companies we’ve encountered — and that’s saying a lot

My guess is the authors don’t realize what Moniker Privacy Services is.

That said, this is another example of how offering a privacy or proxy service isn’t free. It’s also a perfect example of why these services need to have a process for handling complaints. Go Daddy, for example, immediately unmasks the whois in the case of a dispute.

Moniker Privacy Services has been pulled into extensive lawsuits before, including one with Transamerica.

The ups, downs, and persistence of acquiring RunningShoes.com.

Some domain name purchases are easy. Others are a series of ups and downs and lengthy negotiations.

The latter describes Chesterfield, Mo-based Cat5 Commerce’s purchase of RunningShoes.com for $700,000. The company went head to head with a major sports equipment retailer and negotiated for six months before finally completing the deal.

The story starts in August 2010. Cat5 Commerce had a number of successful online stores based on category domain names already. CEO Chad Weinman was looking for more killer domain names he could acquire. He did a Google search for “running shoes”.

“I noticed that RunningShoes.com was ranking pretty well on the first page for running shoes,” he said.

“All the other sites that were surrounding it were like New Balance, Asics, and Zappos.”

In other words, RunningShoes.com was surrounded by huge brands. Weinman sensed opportunity.

He emailed the current owner of the domain name, who ran a bricks and mortar shoe store in addition to the web site, asking if he’d be interested in selling the domain name.

As it turns out the owner had just engaged a domain name broker to assist with a sale. This was good news and bad news. It was good that the owner was willing to sell, but bad that there would be competition.

Weinman started negotiating with the domain owner and got close a deal that involved paying for the domain over time. Then the competition came to the plate in the form of mega sports retailer The Sports Authority.

The company flew out to meet with the owner and struck a deal. It looked like Cat5 was out of the running.

But Sports Authority’s deal involved a payment plan and internal issues resulted in some delays.

So the owner of RunningShoes.com reached out to Weinman again. Rather than deal with payment plans, Weinman made a solid, fixed price offer.

“We just said we’d do it all upfront and make it a clean transaction,” Weinman explained. “That’s why he ultimately went with us.”

In a category competing with the likes of Amazon.com-owned Zappos, buying the domain name may prove to be the easy part.

“Zappos is a formidable competitor,” said Weinman. “They set the bar very high. We distinguish ourselves by having a more focused site; a niche e-commerce experience. If you’re looking for running shoes, you’ll appreciate the fact that we’re all about running shoes.”

Cat5 commerce has experience selling shoes online. It has existing relationships with manufacturers for its HuntingBoots.com store. This experience gave the company confidence to make the purchase.

“For us it feels like the store has the potential, based on the experience with our other ecommerce properties, to do 7 figures revenue or maybe 8 figures,” he explained. “So to make an investment of that size is a good decision provided we can put all the other pieces together.”

As Cat 5 works to put all those pieces together, it’s about to complete another high dollar domain name acquisition. Most of its purchases have been between $20,000-$30,000. RunningShoes.com is an obvious exception, and the company’s latest deal is six figures.

After that I get the sense that the company’s focus will be less on category killer domains and more on putting all the pieces together.

With domain names like RunningShoes.com, the foundation is certainly there.

Second premium liquor keyword in .co sells in as many weeks.

Sedo has brokered the sale of Vodka.com for $10,000 to the same person who bought Tequila.co for $14,500 just a week ago.

Of course Vodka.com was one of the most expensive domain names ever sold. Legendary domainer Roy Messer sold it to a Russian vodka company for $3 million.

So who’s the mystery buyer snapping up these liquor domains?

No, it’s not a liquor company. It’s someone in the Czech Republic who has a penchant for high quality keyword .co domain names. The same person owns both Auctions.co and Beauty.co. He also owns some generic keywords in .asia.

The seller of the two liquor domains is someone in Bogota, Colombia, who likely got the domain names through the grandfathering process when .co was opened up at the second level.

Panabee is a good domain name generator but users should beware that some suggestions are bad ideas.

There are a lot of domain name and brand name generators on the web but most of them stink.

So it was refreshing to come across Panabee.com today. Enter a couple words and it goes to work finding many alternatives, synonyms, and substitutions.

I like how it pulls in searches from Twitter, Facebook, and Google as well.

With close to 100 million .com domain names registered, it can certainly be hard for startups to find the right domain names. Sites such as Panabee can help.

My concern is that some of the suggestions Panabee makes would be catastrophic if someone followed them. For example, the site offers up these solutions when a name is taken:

swap ‘y’ for ‘i’
swap first letter for a substitute
double the last letter

These are all bad ideas that will make it difficult for consumers to find your site in the future.

Panabee was made for non-domainers. Here’s what the “about” page says:

Just when you have the perfect name, the one that makes your face smile and heart sing, you learn some guy parked the domain three years ago. With no intent to sell because he’s too busy buying the domain name for your next idea.

But domainers might find it useful…to find that next idea someone might be thinking about

Here are a couple suggestions for Panabee:

1. Say who you are. People need to trust your site. Not disclosing who you are, and worse, using a whois proxy service to hide your identity, is not a step in the right direction.

2. Put a warning next to potentially troublesome substitutions like the ones I point out in this post. If nothing else, publish tips that explain what people should look for in a domain name — e.g. the radio test, easy to spell, etc.