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Russian car cam company guilty of reverse domain name hijacking

by — Policy & Law 5 Comments

Company wanted .com domain to match its .ru website.

Screenshot of the website CarCam.ru

The owner of CarCam.ru tried to get the domain CarCam.com but was instead found to have attempted reverse domain name hijacking.

A Russian electronics seller known for its car cameras has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking by a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panelist.

Limited Liability Company AV 808, which uses the domain name CarCam.ru, filed a cybersquatting dispute against the domain name CarCam.com.

The owner of CarCam.com registered the domain in 1996, well before the Russian company existed. The Russian company tried to buy the domain and filed the cybersquatting dispute under UDRP after its purchase attempts were rebuffed. In other words, it was a classic “Plan B” reverse domain name hijacking.

In finding that the case was brought in abuse of the cybersquatting policy, WIPO panelist Marilena Comanescu determined that:

the Complainant should have appreciated that establishing registration and use in bad faith in respect of a domain name which had first been registered seventeen years ago was likely to involve difficult considerations.

Ron Jackson – DNW Podcast #237

by — Podcasts 1 Comment

Ron Jackson of DNJournal tells us what he’s seeing in the aftermarket.

dnw-podcastRon Jackson keeps tabs on domain name sales at DNJournal. On today’s show he discusses what he is seeing in the market, comparing .com to non-.com TLDs and country code domains. Ron answers the question on if he sees opportunity for domain investors in new TLDs.

Also: Escrow.com numbers, Wix, web browsing security, .Blog and Super Nanny

This week’s sponsor: Name.com.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:32 — 27.7MB) | Embed

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Subscribe via Apple Podcasts to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play above or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)

Amazon might give new TLDs a boost

by — Policy & Law 11 Comments

The company could drive awareness by using .Amazon.

Amazon.com logo

ICANN moved a big step closer to awarding the .Amazon top level domain name to Amazon.com Friday.

The non-profit domain overseer approved a resolution that moves the top level domain forward against the wishes of Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO). Two ACTO member states–Brazil and Peru–originally objected to Amazon’s 2012 application for the domain name. This kicked off a seven-year battle.

The Governmental Advisory Committee formally objected to .Amazon by unanimous consent even though the U.S. representative could have quashed the attempt.

Amazon.com challenged this decision with an Independent Review Process. It won the review in 2017 but it wasn’t over.

Since then it has tried to appease ACTO members to get the organization to drop its challenge. It offered them a $5 million gift card and lots of safeguards.

But ACTO has been stubborn. It often seemed as though it was fighting on principle rather than real concerns. This made it harder for Amazon to overcome objections that were difficult to define.

Amazon made a number of commitments to the member states as part of Public Interest Commitment. That will be open for public comment. Once the public comment period ends, .Amazon could see the light of day.

If Amazon.com uses .Amazon in a robust way it will give a shot in the arm to new top level domain name awareness. There’s a big ‘if’ there, though.

Amazon was one of the biggest applicants for new top level domains but hasn’t done much with the domains it acquired. But it has used .AWS in some advertising, and the thinking here is that it could do the same with .Amazon but at a bigger scale. It could go much bigger by putting products or categories on their own .Amazon pages. Millions of customers would then see a new top level domain.

Or maybe its seven-year battle was just a matter of securing an important piece of intellectual property.

CentralNic buys rest of Melbourne IT’s reseller business for AUD $24 million

by — Domain Registrars 3 Comments

CentralNic bulks up in Australia by acquiring carveout of what used to be Melbourne IT.

CentralNic logoDomain name company CentralNic (London AIM: CNIC) is acquiring TPP Wholesale from ARQ Group Limited (ASX: ARQ), formerly known as Melbourne IT. The company will pay total consideration of AUD $24 million (USD $16.6 million). CentralNic will pay AUD $21.3 million up front and the transaction is expected to close by the end of next month pending financing.

ARQ Group Limited sold the other part of its domain name and hosting reseller business to Tucows in 2016 for AUD $8.1 million. That transaction included 1.6 million domains under management.

CentralNic’s acquisition includes the rest of the domain and hosting reseller business, which is primarily Australian accounts. It includes 840,000 domains under management and about 14,000 resellers. The domains include 19% of all .com.au domains.

This business delivered AUD $17.0 million in revenue to ARQ last year and, by CentralNic’s accounting, had AUD $3.9 million adjusted EBITDA for the year.

The purchase price is therefore about 6x adjusted EBITDA.

Tucows paid about 4.5x-4.7x EBITDA for its 2016 acquisition.

CentralNic already has a big presence in Australia. It acquired local registrar Instra for AUD $33 million in 2015.

CentralNic is now positioning itself as a roll-up play in the domain business.

WordPress ditches grammar checker

by — Services 0 Comments

Automattic drops Proofreading tool from latest JetPack release.

Image showing WordPress JetPack Proofreading tool, which has been discontinued

WordPress has sunset its Proofreading tool in JetPack.

WordPress creator Automattic has ditched a great feature in the latest update to its JetPack plugin.

As of the newly released JetPack 7.3, Proofreading is no longer supported.

The proofreading tool checked posts for grammar and spelling prior to publishing them. I found it to be a good tool that often caught stuff that other grammar checkers missed. It also made good word-choice suggestions.

WordPress engineer James Huff stated that the feature was dropped because other tools get the job done:

We removed the feature as it has become a bit redundant lately. Most major web browsers have some form of this already built-in, and free extensions like [Grammarly] are making huge strides in the field.

It felt like the right time to back out of that field and focus more on everything else we offer.

I imagine it took a lot of resources to keep this featuring working. It’s good news for Grammarly; I’ll probably upgrade to its paid version.