.Ooo registry Infinibeam takes back 9-month-old domain names.
New top level domain names aren’t exactly flying off registrar’s shelves.
They face decades of head start from .com and county code domains, universal accessibility challenges, and problems getting slotted in registrar search results.
That’s bad enough, but some registries are giving the new domains an even bigger black eye.
Consider .ooo, the crazy registry that predicted 1 million registrations in the first year and couldn’t get any of its facts straight. Despite full page, front page newspaper ads in the Times of India, it has only about 10,000 registrations.
It took a step backward recently by cancelling the registrations of single letter .ooo domain names. Nine months after they were registered!
This creates credibility and image problems for the new domain names. Most registries have a clause in their contracts essentially letting them take back a domain at any time. But actually using this clause, especially 9 months later, is bad news.
Before new domain names launched, Frank Schilling said you should pay attention to the reputation of the registry before buying one of their domain names. I agree. Without price controls and with some registries taking back domains many months later, I wholeheartedly agree.
ada says
Frank Schilling also said that his newTLDs would have normal regular registration fee what later came no true.
Domenclature.com says
I gave 9 reasons why the newgTLD scheme will be hard to adopt by Business, and the Public in general in late 2013, complete with 3 mathematical theorems; I actually was able to predict the adoption rate then.
However, the most important observation then, in the column of impediments, was that the newgTLDs are unregulated. I urged them to find away to submit themselves to some kind of government regulation, if they were going to be viable. I recall getting some absolute Capitalists appalled at my call. I insisted then, as I do now that, I have two areas where I don’t trust market forces alone, hence US government oversight is a minimum requirement:
1. Climate/Environment change
2. ICANN/Internet governance.
I have offered in numerous blogs, what amounts to the condensed guide to of the future of the new gTLDs.
John says
Seems like your posts and sometimes winding up in the same blog thread with you is becoming “always a pleasure,” Domenclature.com. That was me around a year or more ago when we both dealt with Internet governance in a pretty heavy thread over at DomainIncite. Appreciate your thoughts here now.
Domenclature.com says
Yes.
Likewise, John.
Alan Aurmont says
Just stick to .com LOL
Brad Mugford says
This is far from an isolated incident. It has happened with multiple extensions and registry operators.
These actions, among others, are damaging the entire new gTLD program.
This is the end result of what happens when you lower the bar of what it takes to own & operate a registry. You end up with some shady companies who are blinded by their own greed.
Brad
John says
I agree with Domenclature.com. There should be some kind of government regulation. People may invest considerable time, money and energy into new TLD’s, while the registries benefit from the income and support. Time is something you can never get back.
As has already been pointed out, there is also the issue of credibility, and confidence. What incentive does anyone have to invest any of their time, energy and resources in a new TLD if there is no reason to consider it reliable and governed by a fair and reasonable degree of oversight and rights? Is that not one of the main reasons why people from other countries invest here in the US so much, because it’s a place where one is supposed to be able to rely on the American system and society to a reasonable and palatable degree when they can’t feel that way about much of the rest of world?
Just because businesses place heavy-handed lopsided statements in various documents and contracts doesn’t mean they are always ultimately deemed valid and enforceable. It seems to me that some of the more lopsidedly draconian and predatory terms statements and clauses like the one addressed here should be litigated when the time comes. It is my belief that such clauses should be deemed invalid, unreasonable, and unenforceable, and should “shock the conscience” of the court so to speak, at least here in the US if people are unwilling or too corrupt to do that elsewhere.
This also ties into the property vs. not property debate.
Do you want to live in a society where the typical clauses you see in various contracts which essentially state that “we can do anything we want, as much as we want, any time we want” are upheld and affirmed, or do you want a society in which people on the other side of the bargaining table actually have some rights regardless of what such selfish and self-interested documents say?
There is also the issue of price controls as touched on above. A registry may not take back a valuable domain per se, but what if they simply jack up the price to try to impose a de facto eviction? Or if they don’t succeed at that then it still becomes price gauging if someone has invested time and resources into a particular TLD, and the registry may perhaps also think they can essentially either “blackmail” the customer that way if not succeed at evicting without being seen to literally evict.
Yes indeed, all of this is definitely making me rethink any level of support I have had and have now for new TLD’s, and any recommendation I will make henceforward.
Let’s have some reasonableness and fairness put in writing instead of the usual draconian nonsense and indecency, and let’s have some degree of regulation and oversight of these matters that protects those who invest part of their life and livelihood in them. And if or when things go bad like the news report here, let’s have some nice healthy lawsuits flying. I can only speak for this country, and as a citizen of the US I say these types of clauses and actions, particularly for a US based registrar, are not only nothing less than disgusting no matter where you are but also plainly un-American and anti-American. Definitely sad to see it going on elsewhere as well.
Domenclature.com says
I agree 100%.
Great response.
Snoopy says
Verisign would do the same thing in .com if they could get away with it. New tlds are far closer to being “owned” by the registry than legacy tlds so registrants can expect to be getting a pretty poor deal out of it.
janedoe says
Good enough reason for me to avoid .ooo
abcbrand.com says
This clawback already happens with Verisign and .com
In mid-April 2014 I had 26 IDN.com domains snatched back by Verisign (via Name.com)
I bought most in May 2013, so it was eleven months – during which I’d developed all to some extent; most were on sale (and a sale would have been disastrous).
Worse, Verisign grabbed the property without discussion with me – a forced recall (later claiming as Character Variants they should not have been registered: they “experienced a temporary issue”). But Senior Corporate Counsel James T. Hubler of Verisign who eventually responded to my complaints offered no excuses or compensation, and very officiously told me anything further take it up with Name.com (who belatedly refunded purchase costs). Name.com offered bare minimal customer support, but in my opinion, Verisign acted like haughty scum.
John says
Check out #1 on the list here and then think of this issue in light of it:
“10 careers with the most psychopaths per capita”
salon . com/2015/06/23/10_careers_with_the_most_psychopaths_per_capita_partner/
Definitely no surprise.