Domain Name Wire » Andrew Allemann

Altria Gets a Hit with Marijuana Domain Name Dispute

Andrew Allemann — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:38:43 +0000

Tobacco company scores a hit with marijuana domains.

In December I wrote about how Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, had filed a complaint to get the domain names AltriaCannabis.com and AltriaMarijuana.com. The company won the case at World Intellectual Property Forum against Daniel Cheng of Washington, D.C., and the domain names should be transferred to Altria’s possession shortly.

As I noted in the earlier article, the domain names each had web sites speaking out against the legalization of marijuana. But it turns out those sites weren’t posted until after Altria initially contacted the owner asking him to refrain from using the Altria marks. That might explain the hasty nature of the web sites, which each had links to both pro and anti marijuana legalization sites.

Now for the big question: what will Altria do with these domain names now that it owns them?

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Altria Gearing Up to Sell Marijuana?

Verizon Sues DirectNIC for Parking Expired Domain Names

Andrew Allemann — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:29:56 +0000

Suit claims registrar parked trademarked domain names for the period between expiration and deletion.

Verizon has a filed a lawsuit (pdf) against domain name registrar DirectNIC and related companies, alleging that the defendants parked expired domain names infringing on Verizon’s trademarks in the period between expiration and deletion.

The lawsuit also names directors of DirectNIC and related companies as defendants, and uses a gripe site and UDRP decisions as part of the basis for linking together the company with a number of other entities, which the suit calls “shell companies”.

Verizon claims that the defendants have registered 288 domain names that infringe on its marks. But the crux of its argument is that DirectNIC became, in effect, the registrant of these domain names for the period between when the domain names expired and were deleted. The Verizon lawsuit also claims that the defendants then transferred some of these expired domains to other entities for a fee prior to deletion.

Most major registrars replace the whois information for expired domain names with their own information or domain privacy, and often times display some sort of message about the domain being expired. During this period, the registrar places a parked page on the domain name. The domains are later auctioned off or transferred to other entities.

For example, Network Solutions places a notice and parked page on expired domain names. It then sends the domain name to an auction on NameJet. If there’s a buyer, the domain is then transferred to the new owner. Some domain registrars also have deals with buyers to sell domains to them outside of the auction process.

It’s not clear why Verizon sued DirectNIC and related other companies rather than a competitor. Verizon makes a lot of allegations in the lawsuit linking the defendants together, even though the point of the lawsuit doesn’t seem to address these linked entities and instead goes after the practice of parking expired domain names.

Depending on the outcome, this suit could have ramifications for most major domain name registrars and their expired domain parking practices, let alone “coming soon” placeholder pages.

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The Six Flags Approach to Domain Selling

Andrew Allemann — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:33:18 +0000

Turn that small purchase into a bigger one.

Yesterday I took my three-year-old daughter to Six Flags in San Antonio. She loves amusement rides, and probably can handle more thrill rides than most adults.

There are a few things Six Flags does well, including cross sells and up sells. Using behavioral economics, Six Flags presents you with a number of “no-brainer” upgrades.

-Buying a one day ticket for $35? Get a season pass for only $15 more.

-Getting that season pass? For $10 more, get a deluxe season pass with $300 in coupons, free tickets for friends, and more.

But it goes beyond just tickets. Like the $9.99 all-you-can-drink today cup. Spend a few bucks more and it’s all you can drink all season long. As long as you remember to bring your special cup with you.

3 balls for $2 in the ball toss? Or $5 for a bucket of about 15 balls? Who wouldn’t take that deal?

Buy our overpriced roller coaster picture of you looking freaked out for $15. Just $5 more gets you twice as many copies.

In all of these cases, the incremental cost to Six Flags is nominal. They have a customer, and they want to squeeze more out of him.

It’s a beautiful model. The domain name company that does the best job of this is Go Daddy. Try to register a .com and what do you see?

Go Daddy makes very little getting you to buy these alternate TLDs. But the odds of someone else coming along and buying them are low. They have a targeted customer. And even if they don’t make much this year, hopefully you’ll renew all of those domains at full price next year. Perhaps you need to buy some extras for them, too?

Six Flags sells you a season pass for $15 more than a ticket because it wants you to get suckered into $10 hamburgers and carny games.

Don’t knock the model. It works. You should consider how you can apply some of this same logic in your business. You can get some good ideas from this book.

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Go Daddy Takes Different Approach to Apps

Mashable Duped by Fake News

Andrew Allemann — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:40:22 +0000

Popular blog repeats bogus information without fact checking.

Yesterday DomainGang, a sometimes satire/sometimes not domain web site, wrote a piece titled “BullWhip to Fight PETA over ownership of Sex.com!”

It was based on real “news”, that PETA sent out a press release asking Sex.com’s creditors to give it the domain name so it could help get its message out. Of course PETA was joking and doing it for the publicity.

But the story also mentioned a meat company “Bullwhip”, and said that Bullwhip sent out a press release saying it should get the Sex.com domain name. This latter part was completely made up. There is not Bullwhip, no Executive Vice President Dick James, and no press release.

That didn’t stop another media outlet (if you can call it that) from picking up and running with it. Take a guess? Yes, Mashable.

Mashable wrote an article citing DomainGang and didn’t do any fact checking. Sure, it’s a funny article. But did the author think to do a quick search for “bullwhip co” or its executive vice president? Or perhaps tried to find the actual press release that DomainGang was referring to? It wouldn’t have found anything.

I’ve gotten on Mashable’s case before for being inaccurate, but at least that time it was a complicated issue.

The real problem is that Mashable has turned into a content mill, churning out as much crap content as it can to take advantage of its army of retweeters and Diggers. Fact checking is out the window. It’s a volume game.

And as Mashable goes, so go the others. Just do a Google search for “Bullwhip to Fight PETA over ownership of Sex.com”.

Because Mashable is popular, people trust it. So what was fake news is now real news in the eyes of thousands.

Should Theo and DomainGang also take some responsibility for this? Satire is difficult to pull off. It’s not like the DomainGang is The Onion. The domain name community has gotten on Theo’s case in the past, such as when one of his writers suggested that Adam Dicker was shutting down DNForum. I’m not going to blame DomainGang for this one, although I do think the site should carry a prominent disclaimer that it is satire.

[Update: Theo has posted his version of yesterday's events.]

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How to Buy Expired Domains Before they Get Auctioned

Andrew Allemann — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:02:32 +0000

Do a little leg work and you can nab expiring domains for a fraction of the price.

Competition for top expired domain names on NameJet and Snapnames is fierce, and auction prices go sky high. What if there was a way to usurp the auction process and buy premium expired domains at fixed prices? There is. It takes a little work, but your smarter domainer friends are already doing it.

When a domain name expires, it gets added to the queue at partner expired domain services (e.g. Network Solutions to NameJet). You can take the easy way out and backorder the domain, only to face off against 100 people in an expired domain auction…

Or you can contact the previous owner and buy it at a fraction of the price. People have been doing this for years, and I ran an experiment last year to see if it was worthwhile.

Now, the expired domain companies and their partner registrars aren’t dummies. That’s why they switch whois information to private and often block archive.org access as soon as a domain expires. That makes it harder to find the owner. So you need to sign up for an account at DomainTools to look at historical contact for the domain.

Once you get the email address from the historical record, you send an email to the owner:

“I noticed you let domain name xyz expire. I might be interested in buying it…”

99% of the time your email will bounce. If it’s a good domain and expiring, odds are the owner has outdated email information. So your next step is to pick up the phone and call the number in historical whois.

I tried buying about 50 domains this way last year, focusing on three letter domains and other high value domains identified by FreshDrop. Here was my experience:

1. Received response from 5 out of about 50 domain owners. Majority of others had no valid contact info.
2. 3 of 5 said they planned to renew the domain and just hadn’t gotten around to it.
3. 2 others engaged with me. On one I thought I had a deal, but someone else was also playing this game and convinced the owner to sell to him instead before I had a chance to counter. It was a good three character domain that also was a word. (The owner of that domain told me “man, you’re like the third person to call me today about this domain”.) The other was a three character domain that I nabbed for $2,500.

As an individual, it may not be worth your time to contact 50 people manually to acquire one three character domain at a good price. But if you systematize it, and perhaps outsource some of the contact legwork, it could be very profitable.

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VeriSign Drops Prices on Premium .TV Domain Names

Andrew Allemann — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:43:18 +0000

Cost to register premium .tv domains just dropped — including renewal fees.

Since its beginning, .TV’s commercialization was anything but a hit with domain investors. With steep, registry-set prices for premium domain names, the potential for investment returns was essentially wiped out by the registry. Not to mention that you had to renew at premium prices each year.

I just received an email from eNom — a partner of VeriSign’s with regards to .tv — saying that prices on premium .tv domains have been reduced:

Sshhh… we wanted to let you in on a little known secret!

Today, all Premium .tv domains were re-launched with a drastically reduced pricing structure and offered to a broader audience. A savvy audience looking to invest in prime internet real estate dedicated to interactive, new media such as video, streaming media, interactive games, and more!

What does this mean for you? This is a perfect opportunity for you to secure your premium .tv name before it’s too late!

Here are some prices for ‘premium’ .tv domains:

Irish.tv $500
Any.tv $2,060
Touch.tv $810
Yearbook.tv $250
Bad.tv $880
Careers.tv $590
Winners.tv $410

Additionally, any premium .tv domain name registered on or after March 19 will renew at standard prices rather than premium.

Some of these domains at the lower prices seem like they might be good development opportunities. However, the lower registry prices may put a damper on existing .tv portfolios, and the timing could lower expectations for Sedo’s upcoming .tv auction. Additionally, those that registered premium .tv domains prior to now and still have to pay premium renewal fees might protest.

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Prevent another Parava By Mining Domain Registry Reports

Andrew Allemann — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:43:44 +0000

Data mining could identify problem registrars before it’s too late.

It’s always a headache when an ICANN-accredited domain name registrar loses its accreditation. But often times that’s just the beginning, as customers of Parava Networks learned last year.

Parava was allegedly bilking its customers by accepting payments for multi-year renewals, and then only renewing the domain names a year at a time.

This becomes fairly evident when you look at VeriSign’s monthly registrar reports. Without doing a statistical analysis, you’ll still see that Parava has an higher percentage of one year renewals vs. longer term renewals when compared to other registrars.

In order to prevent the next Parava, RegisterFly, etc., ICANN should mine these reports for anomalies. Of course, you need to take into consideration some registrars that are owned by domain investors. They’re likely to renew a year at a time.

But retail registrars should have a fairly consistent percentage across all type of registrations. If not, ICANN should flag the registrars and see if it can understand why. Is it because the registrar doesn’t promote multi-year renewals, or doesn’t offer a price break?

Either way, I’d love to see a statistician analyze this information for any red flags. It would save a lot of heartache in the future.

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