Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News

Domain Name Industry News

Featured Domains

GoDaddy finishes takeover of .Club, 19 more MMX domains

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

GoDaddy Registry adds 20 top level domains.

Logo for GoDaddy Registry

According to ICANN’s website, GoDaddy is now the official registry for .club and 19 of MMX’s (Minds + Machines) top level domains.

The company’s registry business, Registry Services, LLC, is now listed as the operator for .club and these 19 domains: Now , .abogado, .beer, .casa, .cooking, .dds, .fashion, .fishing, .garden, .fit, .horse, .law, .luxe, .rodeo, .surf, .VIP, .vodka, .wedding, .work, and .yoga.

Domain Incite reported that the four adult domains GoDaddy is acquiring from MMX (.xxx., .porn, .adults and .sex) switched to GoDaddy’s registry in the IANA database last week.

By my count, this leaves four domains from MMX’s stable still pending transfer: .NRW, .Miami, .Boston and .Bayern. I suspect MMX still needs to get buy-in from the local governments before these can be transferred.

GoDaddy is also acquiring .design from Top Level Design, but the assignment isn’t showing on ICANN’s website.

Judge temporarily locks down OnlineNIC’s assets

by — Domain Registrars 3 Comments

Judge issues temporary restraining order in OnlineNIC dispute.

onlinenic logo

A U.S. judge this afternoon granted (pdf) most of Facebook’s request for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against domain name registrar OnlineNIC.

The TRO prohibits the transfer of funds or assets “except to pay costs directly necessary to maintain the day-to-day operations of their business (e.g., renewing customer domain names, paying for servers, paying any employees).”

This includes moving any money in bank accounts. It also blocks OnlineNIC from transferring domain names it owns to another party unless approved by the court. (Note that this does not apply to customers transferring their domains.)

The judge also ordered the defendants in the case to provide a full accounting of their assets.

The TRO is in effect until August 6. A hearing on a preliminary injunction will be held on August 5.

Separately, a commenter on Domain Name Wire posted today that OnlineNIC informed him that it had reconciled with Facebook. I haven’t seen the email but sent my own message to OnlineNic with a link to my original article. The company responded:

“The information in the article is not true.Currently we will still keep onlinenic in operation. We value all partner’s business. As an ICANN-accredited registrar, all domains under OnlineNIC are safe.”

The information in the article is certainly true, but it’s also true that OnlineNIC is currently in operation. It’s also likely true that all domains at OnlineNIC are safe. There is a process in which ICANN transfers customer domains when a registrar closes.

OnlineNIC update: extends shutdown date, still hopes to be sold

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

Domain name registrar opposes Temporary Restraining Order and hopes to find a way for an orderly transition.

onlinenic logoDomain name registrar OnlineNIC has extended its timeframe for shutting down, and hopes to avoid it completely by selling the business as a going concern. It seems that decision is somewhat up to Facebook.

Yesterday, I wrote about how OnlineNIC told a court that it was shutting down July 26 because it doesn’t have the funds to continue defending against a cybersquatting lawsuit brought by Facebook.

It also started transferring some domains to another registrar, which led Facebook’s counsel to believe that it was trying to shift assets. OnlineNIC says that it was transferring domains to Ename to be sold to satisfy its debts. It says it has now found a buyer who will pay $70,000 for the domains, which will allow OnlineNIC to pay the Special Master in the case.

In a letter dated July 21 and filed with the court today, a lawyer for OnlineNIC stated that the company has extended its shutdown date to July 30, but hopes to extend it longer if the court considers payment plans.

The filing also includes an earlier letter, sent July 7, asking Facebook’s attorneys to let it continue as a going concern so the business could be sold. The lawyer stated that this might take 6 months. That letter notes that a transition letter was already sent to ICANN, so it was unclear if winding down the business could be halted.

In a response to Facebook’s Temporary Restraining Order that OnlineNIC filed today, it stated that a full asset freeze is against everyone’s interests:

OnlineNIC staff wish to stay together because they have worked together for years. In addition, selling the company as a going concern would be in the best interest of customers, since this would avoid transfers of registration data to new parties. For these reasons, in a letter to Plaintiffs sent on July 21, 2021, Defendants re-iterated their earlier proposal to Plaintiffs that Plaintiffs should allow OnlineNIC, Inc. to be sold as a going concern, which would maximize return for all parties…[language from July 21 letter linked above]…

Plaintiff’s have apparently not agreed with that proposal, because Plaintiffs’ proposed Asset Freeze would effectively block the sale of the company as a going concern, since few buyers would bother working through the legal constraints of an asset freeze to which the seller is subject.

OnlineNIC says it’s shutting down because of Facebook lawsuit

by — Domain Registrars 10 Comments

Registrar tells court it is ceasing business next week.

Image of Facebook with the words "Facebook Lawsuit" superimposed

ICANN-accredited domain name registrar OnlineNIC says it’s shutting down on July 26 after throwing in the towel in a lawsuit.

[See update, including new shutdown date.]

Facebook sued the registrar and its privacy service in October 2019, alleging that either OnlineNIC or its customers used domains such as www-facebook-login(.)com and login-lnstargram(.)com.

The social media company recently filed an unopposed motion for default judgment in the case. OnlineNIC told the court that it doesn’t have the funds to continue defending the case and will cease doing business on July 26, subject to any ICANN requirements.

Attorneys for Facebook say that OnlineNIC is trying to avoid paying the judgment. Its attorneys also filed for a Temporary Restraining Order (pdf), alleging that OnlineNIC is transferring some of its domain name assets (pdf) to another registrar. (When I looked up the same domains Wednesday evening, they showed they are now locked and not pending transfer.)

According to the most recent Verisign report filed with ICANN, OnlineNIC has many domains under management. It had over 500,000 .com domains at the end of March. It’s not clear how many of these are customers’ domains.

Update: on July 22, attorneys for OnlineNIC said they intend to fight the TRO. It said it indeed was transferring some domains to Ename, but with a goal of selling them to help pay the fees it owes the Special Master in the case. The attorney also mentioned a previous plan it had proffered to Facebook that would allow the company to be sold as a going concern to generate cash to settle the judgment. You can read OnlineNIC’s response here (pdf).

GoDaddy adds back Whois counts

by — Domain Registrars 2 Comments

You can now see how many times someone (or something) has looked up the Whois records for your domains.

A spreadsheet image showing the Whois counts for domain names registered at GoDaddy

GoDaddy has added Whois lookup counts to exported lists after removing them in a previous update.

The Whois counts tell domain name owners how many times people have looked up the Whois records for their domain names. Because .com is a “thin” Whois system, GoDaddy is pinged anytime someone does a Whois lookup for a domain registered there, regardless of where the Whois search takes place.

The data are nominally useful for determining interest in your domain names. However, given that GoDaddy no longer includes personal information in Whois lookups, the numbers probably don’t have much to do with humans checking a domain because they are interested in buying it. If they are interested, they can contact you through a form on GoDaddy’s website.

Nevertheless, this is still a signal that you can use as a domain name investor to gauge interest in your domains.

Here’s how to create an exportable list and download the data.

First, log in to the domain manager. Then click the “Export” box in the menu. You’ll see this menu:

Screenshot of menu for exportable lists on GoDaddy

Name your report whatever you want using alphanumeric characters and no spaces. Be sure to select “all columns” under Display columns or the list won’t include the Whois counts.

GoDaddy will email you when your list is available for download.

 

Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News