Registry blames overwhelming demand and searches for .art domains.
[Update: .Art’s registration process is now back up as of about 2 PM ET Friday.]
The .Art domain name was supposed to launch a qualified launch phase earlier this week, but it has been shut down for technical reasons.
This phase of .art’s launch is for people with a verified connection to the art world. Registrants must get a token from .Art in order to register. It’s akin to a restricted landrush phase. But right now, if you go to art.art, you’ll see this:
“We launched at 2 pm UTC on February 8, and within the first 8 hours or so we saw an overwhelming volume of demand and searches,” said John Matson, CEO of UK Creative Ideas (the registry for .art). “We saw erroneous activity and decided to temporarily shut down the registry.”
Matson added, “We were quite pleased to see that volume of demand.”
Something about this doesn’t quite add up. .Art uses CentralNic for its backend. This is the same registry that handled over a million .xyz domain names within 24 hours, so it has the scale to handle lots of registrations.
Although Matson didn’t say how many registration requests and searches .art received, experience with other top level domain names suggests that it wasn’t all that much unless there was some sort of coordinated activity by a third party. Another explanation might be that the token process for verifying eligibility didn’t work as planned.
I am also reaching out to CentralNic for comment and will update this story if I hear back.
Andrew,
Many thanks for publishing the article relating to .ART’s release of domain names to professional members of the .ART industry and their extreme difficulties in operating that simple service, that has resulted in temporary closure.
I am having registration issues with them, as I’m sure other professional members are who have been granted exclusive access prior to the General Public.
Having accepted payment for £289 for a single keyword .ART registration, they have cancelled my registration, claiming it to be on an “unpublished list” of reserved keywords. I simply don’t believe them. They have had significant time to comply with ICANN policies and regulations in terms of pricing or reserving domain names and feel it is unprofessional of them to arbitrarily cancel purchases without specifying which T&C may have been breached, or as they have stated…a mistake on their end.
I have referred .ART to the case with .club in which .club honoured a $10.99 purchase and wish them to honour registrations, than likely price-hike in the future now they’re more informed of what professional members of the art industry are interested in. Reliability is one issue. Trust is another.
Kind regards,
Derrick Austin
CANVAS DOT BOUTIQUE LTD
@canvas_boutique
Perhaps an issue with domains that were supposed to be reserved but were being registered was part of the reason the registration system was taken down?
At any rate, if I were .art, I would let any of the qualified registrants keep their one word domain. If you’re qualified, you’re likely to use the domain name. And, if there’s one thing we’ve learned from new TLDs so far, it’s not easy to get people to use these new domains!
Who knows given how shy .Art are in being forthcoming about their issues but very unlikely, as I wrote down a list of domain names during my search and they either showed up as Reserved or Trademarked, although how a Bank has an Art trademark interest over the initials “CB” is beyond me, so some irrelevant generic Trademark registrations were blocked, as were certain industry keywords. That part of the service appeared to be working fine. I simply stumbled upon a word that I believe they thought was under-priced and should have been reserved hence their “unpublished” list claim. I therefore strongly believe there are other reasons other than claiming fault with reserved domain names. As indicated, CentralNIC operate the backend, where the .xyz Registry didn’t suffer the same problems.
Indeed, coming from a development and art background: Content Is King, so any registry should be grateful and seek to promote bona fide usage in developing their name-space. There’s still a common problem with the public that if I disclose my web address as something like example.art; they reply with exampleart… .com?
Yes, I was pre-approved as a registered Art business and granted an exclusive token for my own use. I’m not interested in domain name profit but the .art domain name that I registered would have been used as a short URL redirect on Twitter and used in conjunction with an another nTLD web address. It would also have been used as a free service to promote other artists who found the £289 price tag a barrier to entry. Dot Art / Instra have arbitrarily taken that away.
I have cited the case with .club where one apparent “reserved” domain was registered, and where the Registry was at fault : “The registry (.club) does not believe it is in our best interest nor the best interest of the registrant to pull the name back”
kind regards,
Derrick
Derrick, are you saying that you applied for a token to register a *specific* .Art domain, received the token, registered the *specific* domain, and then discovered that this registration was cancelled by the registry?
I am asking out of curiosity’s sake, not to challenge or argue with you.
Also, despite the .Art registry’s claim that they are back up and running, as of right now (3:51 PM EST on February 10, 2017) there is no (longer) any mechanism or place on the registry’s art.art Website whereby you can attempt to register a .Art domain (or request a token).
Tip: You can try registering a .Art domain at one of the handful of registrars that are supporting this new TLD. 101domain.com, for instance, is supporting it and — last I checked — processing registrations.
Bill,
Previously, prior to this launch phase for professionals in the art industry, I contacted art.art and expressed interest in regards to two *specific* domain names. They checked out my credentials and I was granted a token to be used for *any available* purchase on 8th Feb 2017.
One domain name that I had interest in had a pending Trademark against it (“CB” – the same initials of my UK registered company) and the other with a price tag of just under £5,100. I appreciate any two-letter domain name may have been unavailable due to ICANN’s restrictions on ccTLD-like names (uk, fr, de, us etc). However, it is my understanding the two-letter domain names are at the discretion of a registry to release or reserve. In any event, I recognised that one interest wasn’t possible and the other…a little beyond my planned budget.
Whether Art.Art priced my latter interest at £5.1k as a result of expressing pre-interest in the registry is unknown an not my current issue.
Subsequently, given the knowledge of pricing on the day, I looked at *alternatives* (priced from £289 to ~£5,100) and came across one 4 letter domain name in my search of about 20 that I thought warranted spending the asking price of £289 on. The order was processed, and paid in full. A few hours afterwards, the conflict of registration began and unbelievable claim of an “unpublished list” of reserved names…That makes no sense to me, where Art.Art have ample time to import resvered names from ICANN or industry keywords, which they have done with many…but my chosen word appears to have slipped through.
I may look at alternative methods of registration but to be honest, I’m slightly annoyed by the way Art.Art have conducted themselves so far and distrustful of their registration process, where a little good faith can go a long way. As you have stated, Art.Art are still suffering from other problems with their site closed to new business and rejecting previous business.
Derrick, thanks for that clarification. I’d be “slightly annoyed” if I was in your shoes too.
You are not alone in your frustration with how this week’s .Art launch has gone.
I wonder if and when we’ll ever get a clear explanation from the registry about what went wrong here and, more importantly, how they intend to address the ill-will they’ve created among those that hoped to become early adopters of this new TLD.
.art is looking a little iffy to me on the operational side of things.
I applied for a token for a domain. The domain was then listed as unavailable so on the face of it, it looked like it was linked to the token you would be sent.
When they sent out the token, they noted that domains were not reserved for you, so the requirement to nominate the domain you were interested in when requesting the domain was actually an opportunity to determine desirable domains to premium at a later date, especially if multiple requests were submitted.
Add in the mess of the last couple of days with the the failure to launch…
I figure that several domains were registered which they figured should be added to the reserved list and increased in price and they are playing catch up with their own best interests in mind.
There were three different messages plastered on their website highlighting the issue with the third requiring you to click through to a message saying the system wasn’t operational but hey, sign up to be alerted and now they have nothing up.
No email, no explanation on their website, no idea what is going on.
However, I have noticed several names which were previously listed as $200 or so in “landrush” are now listed with price tags in the thousands for “golive” while others are just listed as “unavailable” over at one registrar, but no idea if you can currently register because art.art isn’t saying and some registrars are simply saying “this domain can not be registered at this time” (trying an absolute junk name)
While I would like a .art, this current experience is confirming that my existing gtlds may be a more viable/reliable/affordable solution for me to focus on using.
I agree and also gave thought that it would come as no surprise that the domain names we expressed prior interest in whilst applying for a token was simply an opportunity to set a base price of ~£5,100 per interest.
I gave Art.Art no prior notice of my *alternative* domain name interests. When I found one that I very much liked that was *available to register* and bought at the apparent introductory price of £289 (I couldn’t find any cheaper) with no-expressed interest, they later decided in their wisdom after receiving payment that my choice existed on their “unpublished” list and likely going to be price-hiked. What absolute nonsense and appalling Registry behaviour.
Unless Art.Art make amends for their mistakes, extend an offer of good faith re-registrations to previous applicants and get their house in order, then I see no alternative but to continue to develop and promote in other name-spaces (.boutique in my case) where other Registry’s operate a professional, trusted and affordable solution. Where other Registries like .club make good on their errors.
Art.Art have an opportunity to correct *their* mistakes. Time will tell if they do…
Well, they are now up and running so see how well things go for them, but as there is existing competition such as .GRAPHICS, .DESIGN, .FASHION, .PICS, .PICTURES, .SHOW, .INK, .TATTOO and .GALLERY
There were some reported issues in some high volume TLD launches at CentralNIC, but the available information so far points more to eligibility / reserved names issues, not to issues caused by demand.
These problems are saving customers a fortune. Why would anyone spend money on these worthless extensions? Count yourselves lucky that you can’t register them.
The extensions are fine, the pricing and some of the tactics are questionable though.
Yeah, I’d put it in the top half of extensions. There was quite a bit of competition for this one amongst applicants.
That said, overall demand for every new TLD is rather limited, and registries would be wise to accept customers who want premium domains and want to develop them.
Agreed, Dot Art is one of the more competitively sought extensions but there is equally plenty of competition and alternatives too, should artists and tradesmen feel squeezed out by prohibitive pricing and questionable Registry tactics in revocations of domain name registrations.
I’m currently in negotiation (reluctant to accept “~no, it’s our fault, here’s a refund~”) with INSTRA and have escalated the difficulties caused by the confusion over which domains are Reserved and which domain names they claim should have been Reserved with the latter sounding like rhetoric from a used car salesman. They are now in receipt of the example of where .CLUB honoured a registration, where .CLUB accepted fault in making a reserved name… available. I am unhappy and frustrated having learned that this tactic of declining a paid domain name registration with switch and bait is also not that rare; that a Registry can discriminate at will upon who it leases it’s services to and whether it wishes to revalue any given name at it’s discretion…after interest has been shown.
I’m putting forward my case that I’m one of many registrants who are looking to (quickly) develop and promote the namespace but that requires co-operation from the Registry in recognising their own short-comings and demonstrating that they’re a trusted, reasonable and reliable provider for ALL of the art community and not just the established global Art Galleries who have likely paid significant amounts prior to this phase. I personally would expect to flood the namespace with relevant content from many other artists who find the introductory pricing prohibitive to entry, through bespoke URL vanity technology and allow for social media and marketing to expand viral awareness – if given the chance.
This launch phase has demonstrated that dot Art haven’t properly explained the cause of shutdown of service, their operational ability and in managing a simple checklist of domain name availability.
There have been one too many problems, where I hope that dot Art / Instra can redeem themselves in an appropriate manner in the coming week than simply re-opening business and sweeping past difficulties under the rug…
I have to say it..
Buy the time .Word registries realise that less is more, the domain system will be dead.
lol
O Dot Art, Dot Art, wherefore art thou Dysfunctional?
Deny thy customer and refuse thy name!
According to nTLDStats – https://ntldstats.com/tld/art – a grand total of 581 .art domains have been registered to date. I’m not sure if those numbers supports the “overwhelming volume of demand” story as told by the .art registry, but then again that number only reflects the number of people who were able to successfully register a .art domain as opposed to an unknown number of people whose interest in .art domains was thwarted and/or gave up in frustration last week. The registry may need to work harder now to win those potential customers back.
I gave up on the .art domain because of the .art mafia… It was and is a total fiasco built on pure greed. The domains I wanted would mean I would have to get a second mortgage because they were “premium” domains which one is, but the other isn’t and they wanted $4100 for it (the non-premium domain)… In any case, I think they successfully turned a lot of artists away from the .art domain. What a shame…