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RrSG provides evidence to back up claims made against Minds + Machines

by — Policy & Law 4 Comments

Communication shows that Web.com didn’t receive contract until after reservation program was live.

Last month I wrote that ICANN’s Registrar Stakeholder Group (RrSG) was questioning if Top Level Domain Holdings/Minds + Machines’ “Priority Registration System” complied with ICANN contracts.

Issues around registry and registrar cross ownership and making sure registries provide equal opportunity to unaffiliated registrars are sure to pop up in coming years. This is just one example.

At ICANN’s request, RrSG has provided evidence of its claim in the form of email communications between Web.com and Minds + Machines CEO Antony Van Couvering.

It appears the communication shows that Minds + Machines launched its Priority Registration System prior to offering its registry/registrar agreement to other registrars (or at least Web.com), which may have given the company a leg up on the competition. It’s an issue of timing.

It’s not clear to me if this actually violates ICANN agreements based on my reading of the contracts. It will be interesting to see how ICANN responds.

(You can see Van Couvering’s response to the initial RrSG request here.)

ICANN publishes new TLD applicant videos

by — Uncategorized 1 Comment

All new TLD applicants invited to participate in recorded videos.

As part of ICANN’s global awareness campaign for new top level domain names, the group invited all applicants for new top level domain names to participate in a recorded interview.

ICANN hopes these videos will “provide insight into the individual story of a TLD, or portfolio of TLDs, the inspiration behind it and how they see it being used”.

The first two videos feature some familiar faces.

In one video 27-year-old domain name investor Daniel Negari discusses his application for .xyz. You can read more about his plans for the domain here.

In another video, Top Level Domain Holdings CEO Antony Van Couvering discusses the bid for .london and how they will measure its success.

I think this was a smart way for ICANN to promote new TLDs without playing favorites. You can view all of the videos here.

TLDH explains its change of heart on private domain auctions

by — Uncategorized 0 Comments

Antony Van Couvering explains why it believes private TLD auctions make sense.

Up until last week, it appeared that Top Level Domain Holdings, one of the largest new TLD applicants, would not participate in private auctions for TLDs.

But that changed, and now TLDH/Minds+Machines CEO Antony Van Couvering has published an explanation for the reversal.

It’s worth reading the explanation in its entirety. One of the key reasons for TLDH’s opinion: applicants will exit the auction process with more cash in hand to promote new TLDs than if they give it to ICANN in “last resort” auctions.

Indeed, as a competing applicant told me recently, “Once someone really thinks about the benefits of private auctions, they’d be silly not to participate.”

In a private auction, the losers walk away with most of the cash paid by the winner.

Everyone is running their own calculations, and it’s possible some may believe they’ll come out ahead if they don’t participate. Yet the fact that some companies are participating in private auctions changes the calculus even for those that don’t. Some of these companies may leave the private auction process with more cash (thanks to losing bids) to go to an ICANN auction against a company that sat on the sideline during private auctions.

TLDH said it won’t participate in the current round of auctions because it’s too early.

TLDH: Digital archery may have technical bugs

by — Uncategorized 2 Comments

Big new top level domain applicant finds odd results with digital archery system.

Digital archery, which creates a secondary timestamp for new TLD applications that will determine how they are batched, is run through ICANN’s TLD Application System (TAS).

This is the same system that was taken offline for over a month due to a security glitch that allowed some competing applicants to see limited data from other applicants.

So you don’t suppose there could be problems with digital archery, too?

One of the larger top level domain applicants, Top Level Domain Holdings, Inc., says it has discovered some odd results in the digital archery test system that may point to technical problems.

[Update: ICANN confirmed there was a problem. It wasn’t with the recorded data, but only displayed data. Still, this doesn’t instill confidence.]

TLDH has built a system designed to get good results in digital archery. But its tests have shown strange outliers when it clicks 1 to 5 milliseconds earlier than the target time in digital archery.

Of course, it’s entirely possible this is something on TLDH’s side. But ICANN doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt anymore.

ICANN has responded to TLDH’s blog past on Twitter, saying “we’re aware of the issue you raised & are looking into it…” and asking others with similar issues to notify it.

I still stand by my claim that digital archery is a very dumb idea. I think Antony Van Couvering does a good job of explaining why in his post.

Donuts and Minds + Machines updates on TAS and new TLDs

by — Uncategorized 0 Comments

Interesting posts from the perspective of new TLD applicants.

The new TLD delay continues and ICANN just released the total number of applications received so far (over 2,000).

So what does this mean for new TLD applicants?

Two of the largest recently published blog posts that shed some light on it.

First, eNom founder Paul Stahura (now with new TLD applicant Donuts Inc) wrote about the application glitch and how it could affect applications. Donuts saw one other applicant’s filename i the application system but could not determine either the applicant name nor top level domain it was related to.

Nevertheless, Donuts suggests that no “new” applications be allowed when the system reopens. After all, there were just 12 hours to go when the system was shut down. Had anyone really planned on starting a new application with less than 12 hours to go? I’m sure there could be some debate about that.

Second, Minds + Machines founder Antony Van Couvering tries to break down what 2,100 applications will look like. He guesstimates roughly 50 geo TLDs, 200 IDNs, 150 niche TLDs, 500 applications from “portfolio” applicants (such as Minds + Machines), and 1,200 .brand domains.