Registrar failing to escrow whois information.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has sent a breach notice (pdf) to Cheapies.com, threatening to de-accredit the domain name registrar.

Cheapies, which bills itself as “domain registrations for the cost conscious”, apparently hasn’t been escrowing its whois information.

ICANN has communicated with the company about the escrow problem since January of this year, with the registrar finally telling ICANN that it was recovering from a hardware failure. Cheapies then apparently tried to make escrow deposits but continued to face challenges, blaming manual processes due to the hardware failure.

Cheapies has 15 working days from October 18 to fix the problem or ICANN may proceed to terminate its accreditation.

The registrar has about 14,000 domain names under management according to webhosting.info.

Former contractor allegedly intercepted emails using .co domain names.

Validus Holdings, a publicly traded (NYSE: VR) reinsurance and insurance company, has filed a lawsuit against the owner of several .co domain names.

The company claims that the owner of some of the domains, Musa Kiana, previously was a third party contractor providing accounts services for Validus. In October of 2010 Validus discovered that Kiana had registered .co domain names including Validus’ trademarks.

Validus says that Kiana then tried to extort it, attaching an invoice for £1,100,000 to correspondence including (in part):

Please find attached an invoice for the procurement of all 12 domain names, you will naturally appreciate I have conducted market research into the valuations and this is reflected in the attached invoice and more importantly I feel this is a fair reflection.

Furthermore, Validus Holdings is listed with New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) this attracts a premium over the rest of the domains. Talbotuw, Validure, undriskserv, validusurs and validusresearch domain names are actual trading names and
also command a slight premium.

Kiana then sent a follow up email to Validus stating that £1,100,000 is “a small sum in comparison to the costs of a lengthy and embarrassing court case would cost the company to obtain the websites from a third party,” according to the suit.

Kiana allegedly sent emails to Validus informing it of many emails it had intercepted with the .co domain names because of the common typo of .com. (A research group recently studied the interception of emails thanks to typos). One of the emails included confidential financial information. He also sent notices about the number of emails he received.

Validus also says another domain name named in the lawsuit was used for adult-oriented content.

You can read the lawsuit here (pdf).

Movie studio registers Reddit related domain names as it works on movie suggested by Reddit commentor.

Reddit is certainly a powerful force on the internet. But is Warner Bros working on a movie about it?

The company just registered a number of domain names with the term “Reddit” in them, including RedditFilm.com, reddit-the-movie.com, RedditMovie.com, and ReddittheMovie.com.

It’s also possible (probable?) that the domains were registered as part of an interesting movie story involving the site. Warner Bros is supposedly working on a movie called Rome, Sweet Rome that is based on an idea originally posted in a Reddit comment.

Indeed, Warner Bros picked up some other domain names this week: RomeSweetRomeMovie.com and several related domain names.

TRAFFIC is over. Here’s how it stacked up.

Last Friday I asked five questions that would be answered at this week’s TRAFFIC conference. We now have answers:

1. How will the auction perform?

I’m going to give some credit to Rick on this one. The overall sales numbers were low, but there were a couple things I liked. First, Rick allowed people to pay to get their domains into the auction. I’m not sure if this is the right model but I do think there’s room for some sort of economic incentive control for submitting domains into auctions.

Second, before the auction Rick stood up in front of everyone and said he’d take full responsibility if the auction flopped. No blame on outside forces.

The auction room was packed. You couldn’t tell that on the internet broadcast because everyone sat in the back.

I was a little surprised by the low .xxx numbers given some of the prices paid for domains thus far.

At the end of the day there’s a reality to face here: some of the guys that would have combined to spend millions of dollars at auctions a few years ago aren’t buying any more.

2. Will the venue top last year’s?

This one is hard to judge because mother nature didn’t cooperate. I know that the promoters spent a lot of time decking out the cabanas overlooking the ocean…only to have it washed away. On the plus side it kept everyone around the hotel rather than spreading across town.

3. Will the event have class?

Yes. I’m not aware of any altercations and .xxx kept its event compelling yet inviting to all.

4. Any big news?

Yes. There was Afternic connecting with GoDaddy and Sedo signing deals with Moniker and Dotster.

5. What will attendance be?

I forgot to ask, but I’d say my original prediction of 250-300 was close. More tickets may have been sold but you always have a handful of people who don’t make it.

Do the 1% need their own top level domain name?

Just when you thought you’d seen it all…

A new offering from CentralNic called dotFamilyName proposes that the ultra rich should get their own top level domain name.

.Buffet, anyone?

The company pitches:

For as little as $500,000, prominent families will have access to the most prestigious and technologically advanced address located at the apex of the internet.

Hey, what else would you do with a spare half million dollars?

Although I think most of the value CentralNic will get out of this new offering is press, don’t be surprised if a couple people take them up on it — especially if they have a last name that could also be a brand.

I like the ring of .allemann, but I don’t fall into the ultra rich category.