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Namecheap and Tucows settle legal dispute

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

Transfer dispute was resolved in a legal settlement.

Namecheap and Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX) have entered into a settlement agreement to resolve a transfer dispute.

Namecheap, a former Enom reseller, sued Tucows (which now owns Enom) because it said that Tucows was dragging its feet over transferring millions of domain names to Namecheap. Tucows said it was just a matter of using the appropriate mechanism to transfer the domains.

Following a court order, Tucows transferred 2.65 million domains to Namecheap in January 2018. It then entered into a settlement agreement with Namecheap in September 2018, under which Namecheap agreed to pay an “administrative fee” to Tucows for services related to the transfer. Tucows transferred a further 0.24 million domains later that month. The company will transfer the remaining 0.4 million domains to Namecheap in the fourth quarter.

The net-net: Namecheap eventually got the names transferred the way it wanted and Tucows got at least some of the costs covered.

The settlement was disclosed in Tucows’ 10-Q filed with the SEC yesterday.

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.Com winners and losers, and Google Domains’ odd practice

by — Domain Registrars 10 Comments

You still can’t register a domain for more than one year at Google Domains.

ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ:VRSN) about the .com registry. This registrar-by-registrar report covers July 2018.

While reviewing the data I was surprised to see something about Google Domains. Even after all of these years and the growing success of its registrar, Google Domains still doesn’t allow initial registrations for more than one year. You can renew domains for multiple years at a time, but all initial registrations are limited to one year.

Registrars love multi-year registrations, so I’m baffled why Google Domains doesn’t offer them.

Anyhow, on to the rankings. Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations:

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 916,032 (866,819 in June)
2. HiChina Zhicheng Technology Ltd. 237,296 (203,536)
3. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 212,279 (192,056)
4. Xin Net Technology Corporation 129,492 (132,636)
5. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 127,916 (117,369)
6. NameSilo 127,451 (105,228)
7. NameCheap Inc. 124,011 (117,964)
8. Web.com++ 93,535 (96,339)
9. Google Inc. 94,033 (89,914)
10. West.cn 59,781 (not in top 10)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of July 2018:

1. GoDaddy* 48,659,723 (48,452,314 in June)
2. Tucows** 12,834,441 (12,835,741)
3. Endurance+ 7,411,874 (7,500,686)
4. Web.com++ 6,721,550 (6,737,824)
5. HiChina 5,683,428 (5,527,250)
6. Namecheap 4,312,430 (4,284,760)
7. 1&1 3716477 (3,731,057)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,260,541 (2,172,780)
9. GMO 2,011,266 (2,035,462)
10. Google 1,840,869 (1,782,920)

Many domain companies have multiple accreditations and I’ve tried to capture the largest ones. See the notes below.

* Includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains
** Includes Tucows and Enom
+ Includes PDR, Domain.com, FastDomain and Bigrock. There are other Endurance registrars, but these are the biggest.
++ Includes Network Solutions and Register.com

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AppDetex raises another Whois stir, Tucows responds

by — Domain Registrars 2 Comments

Brand protection company claims registrars aren’t cooperating, but there are two sides to the story.

Tucows CEO Elliot Noss has responded to claims made by brand protection company AppDetex over access to Whois data.

AppDetex has raised concerns that domain name registrars are not responding to or are denying requests for Whois data when it has a legitimate interest. It made its first claims just before the ICANN conference in Panama this summer and timed its second complaint for just prior to ICANN 63 in Barcelona this week.

In its most recent complaint to ICANN (pdf), AppDetex said that registrars were only “fully complaint” to 2.5% of its requests.

In response (pdf), Noss called AppDetex out for its own non-compliance.

AppDetex has submitted (as of this letter) 1273 requests for Registrant data to Tucows-family registrars. Up until October 9th, 2018, we responded with our requirements template to all of them and had not received a single reply. The claim in their letter of contracted party failures to respond in a reasonable time frame is outrageous as they have failed to further their own requests for months.

Additionally, it seems that Facebook and AppDetex have been submitting automated queries without sufficient human review. Noss points to requests for data on “lincolnstainedglass.com” and “grifflnstafford.com” as examples. These were likely included because they include something visually similar to “insta” in them. Facebook has trademarks for Instagram.

Noss wrote:

We are also concerned that, given the clear lack of human-review and due care presented by the requests we have received from AppDetex, they are simply creating algorithms to identify potential infringements and demanding personal Registrant data for these potentialities wholesale. The examples we have noted above—and many others—could have been easily identified by AppDetex prior to submitting to Tucows if they had included the reason that the domain was suspected to be infringing, rather than the mere assertion that it “misuses one or more of the following trademarks” and then listing seven trademarks. We require that requests for personal data include the reason for the valid request.

Tucows, the second largest domain name registrar, has been one of the registrars leading the discussion on the EU’s GDPR. Earlier this year it launched a site for parties to request access to masked Whois information.

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Latest .Com Winners & Losers

by — Domain Registrars 3 Comments

How domain name registrars fared with .com in June.

ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ:VRSN) about the .com registry. This registrar-by-registrar report covers June 2018.

There was shifting among the top ten registrars for June in terms of new .com registrations. West.cn fell off the list when its volume fell from 61,649 to only 35,460. NameSilo, which just cracked the 2 million domains under management (across all TLDs) mark, was #7 with over 100,000 registrations.

1. GoDaddy.com* 866,819 (951,994 in May)
2. HiChina Zhicheng Technology Ltd. 203,536 (210,854)
3. Tucows** 192,056 (207,430)
4. Xin Net Technology Corporation 132,636 (125,152)
5. NameCheap Inc. 117,964 (125,428)
6. Endurance+ 117,369 (136,328)
7. NameSilo 105,228 (67,446)
8. Web.com++ 96,339 (109,876)
9. Google Inc. 89,914 (98,618)
10. 1&1 Internet 48,692

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of June 2018:

1. GoDaddy* 48,452,314 (48,305,409 in May)
2. Tucows** 12,835,741 (12,875,098)
3. Endurance+ 7,500,686 (7,592,640)
4. Web.com++ 6,737,824 (6,709,055)
5. HiChina 5,527,250 (5,426,366)
6. NameCheap 4,284,760 (4,243,582)
7. 1&1 3,731,057 (3,744,506)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,172,780 (2,076,944)
9. GMO 2,035,462 (2,064,482)
10. Google 1,782,920 (1,728,215)

Many domain companies have multiple accreditations and I’ve tried to capture the largest ones. See the notes below.

* Includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains
** Includes Tucows and Enom
+ Includes PDR, Domain.com, FastDomain and Bigrock. There are other Endurance registrars, but these are the biggest.
++ Includes Network Solutions and Register.com

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ICANN loses in German court (again)

by — Policy & Law 2 Comments

Attempts to get an injunction forcing a German registrar to collect certain Whois data are failing.

ICANN has yet again failed to convince German courts that an injunction is needed to force domain name registrar EPAG to continue collecting certain information for Whois.

The non-profit domain name overseer sued EPAG, part of Tucows, the day the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect. EPAG had informed ICANN it would no longer collect Administrative and Technical contact data for Whois because of its interpretation of GDPR.

EPAG’s arguments included that it didn’t necessarily have a contractual relationship with the Admin or Tech contacts and that it was still collecting the registrant information.

The court denied the injunction and ICANN has gone through several appeals processes, bouncing between the courts.

In light of yet another ruling from an appeals court, ICANN said that it was limited to the issue of the necessity of an injunction.

Tucows CEO Elliot Noss has said that the lawsuit isn’t really adversarial. Both ICANN and Tucows no doubt believe they are correct but would welcome some clarification from the courts on how GDPR applies to Whois.

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