“The Board today accepted a recommendation from its global stakeholders that it is possible to implement many new names to the Internet, paving the way for an expansion of domain name choice and opportunity” said Dr Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN. A final version of the implementation plan must be approved by the ICANN Board before the new process is launched. It is intended that the final version will be published in early 2009.”

At a high level, this is what the recent Paris junket meeting was about:

1. Domain Tasting

ICANN doesn’t *really* make any money out of this, so they decided to make the 20-cent registration fee (paid to them) non-refundable to reward their friends, they then made domain tasting almost impossible for everyone except the most popular registrars. As these registrars have high numbers of domain registrations, 10% could be a high enough number to perform a good degree of tasting.

2. Dot WhatEverYouWant

Give anyone the ability to create a .WhateverYouWant, thus decreasing the value of existing domain name portfolios. It would appear that ICANN is a little bit irritated by domainers who had the vision (and took high risks many years ago) to snap up valuable domain names. After all, ICANN didn’t make the millions the domainers did.

3. Foreign Superpowers

Allow non Latin characters such as Chinese, Arabic and Cyrillic. Chinese being the largest ccTLD, soon to be the #1 superpower. Arabic (that’s English for oil) and Cyrillic (Russia - say no more). While the PR spin is to make it a warm, fuzzy internet for everyone (lets hold hands now and sing koom-by-ah) - I don’t believe it for a nanosecond. It’s all about making money for a small group of people.

I’ve already covered domain tasting and other character sets in other posts, so lets focus on adding more domain name extensions.

Why Is This Bad News For Domainers

Allowing anyone to create an extension could:

1. Decrease the value of existing domains. What if a single company controlled .sex ? How much would that be worth!?!?! How do you compare the value of lesbian.com to lesbian.sex ? Yes, I had to use that as an example. Ok, well what about www.newyorkrealestate.com compared to www.realestate.newyork or newyork.realestate ? Get the picture?

2. Lead to mass confusion amongst the public. What is an Internet address? Wasn’t that .com ?

3. Change the flow of traffic on the Internet. This is because Internet browsers and search engines may give preference to other domain extensions. Say goodbye to “type it in traffic” to .com.

4. Increase the number of trademark violations. How does ICANN expect to handle that? That’s ok - there are a lot of lawyers who are on “advisory panels” that can profit from giving advice. For those around in the early days of the Internet, Network Solutions ran into the same problem (and largely ignored it for awhile until it got out of control).

5. Attract the wrong type of people to the industry. In recent times we have seen a lot of dodgy “management” around various extensions and ccTLDs. Do we need any more people getting attracted to this new “gold rush”?

Impact On Existing Domain Portfolios

If you hold a large portfolio of anything other than .com, then you might find it decreases in value. For example, .net, .org .biz and .info and .us are not in a good position. However, those people who have purchased geographic domain names (eg: newyork.com) are also at risk. I’ll just pay off ICANN and create my own .newyork extension.

Why Does ICANN Do This?

Again, I believe that it’s all about ICANN making money for a small group of people.

1. ICANN looked at tasting. I can imagine the conversation - “hmmm… we’re not getting a cut… I know, lets make the 20-cent registration fee non-refundable!”.

2. ICANN looked at Verisign. I can imagine that conversation went like “hmmm… how can we multiply this? I know, lets give anyone the ability to create .whateveryou like, and then they pay $100,000 a piece to us (ICANN) for the privilege.” Multiply that out, per every conceivable extention you can think of, and that’s a MASSIVE of money.

By the way, just in case anyone didn’t notice:

ICANNs memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Department of Commerce expires in September 2009.

What happens when ICANN gets so much cash in the bank it has more dollars than a small country? It already has gone about publicizing its view that it should be independent of the US Department of Commerce. Is ICANN going to be “a nation” that controls the communications infrastructure of the world?

How much $$$ is it worth to turn the Internet into a train wreck?

If this proposal goes ahead, its going to be very difficult to distinguish between domains in Latin characters and others such as Cyrillic. What does this mean? It’s going to:

a) increase phishing as organized crime is going to catch on that they can register ebay.com or bank.com using Cyrillic characters. Best of all, those domain names will not be registered because the character sets are different.

b) increase the number of dodgy, misleading domain names that are for sale on auction sites. We all know the good old trick of using an 0 (zero) as opposed to an O (oh). Introducing non Latin characters makes it all that more difficult. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against it entirely - I just think its going to introduce problems - many of which haven’t been thought about or widely discussed.

Will there be another mini landrush to grab all those trademarks using Cyrillic? Who knows. It also presents a problem when you show Cryillic in italics and non italics:

We will see what ICANN comes up with later today.

The guys at Tucows have prepared a little video with Bill Sweetman, General Manager, Domain Portfolio to explain it:

You could watch the video…. but this sums it up - “Instead of having to search Tucows, you can just use Afternic to find expired names”. Easy.

John created the Country Codes of the World map. It includes 245 country codes, which encompasses all United Nations countries as well as numerous islands and territories. Each two-digit code is aligned over the country it represents and is color coded with the legend below for quick and easy reference.

Best of all, you can buy it from Byte Level Research and stick it up on your wall.

What do you think about the map? Feel free to post your comments.

These aren’t the domains your looking for…. move along… move along.

The company has issued a press release saying:

“Network Solutions has long called for a fee-based solution to eliminate the related abuses of domain name “tasting” and “front running.”

Umm… guys… just in case you DIDNT actually know…. YOU were the morons people who were sprung big time registering other peoples domain names without their knowledge engaging in this practice! Hello!!!!! Your magical jedi powers don’t extend to rewriting history. Now you write a press release saying that “these practices are abusive”.

What you guys need to do is, get a dictionary, now lookup the word hypocrisy [hip-ok-rass-ee]. Just in case you are too busy counting the great big piles of cash you are making from your monopoly (I’m sure you know the meaning of that word) - hypocrisy means “the practice of claiming to have standards or beliefs that are contrary to one’s real character or actual behaviour”.

Thanks to the guys at TechCrunch for bringing this to light. By the way Network Solutions, your so called “explanation” is not credible. Why do it in the first instance? What steps are you taking internally to ensure that you (as a company) don’t condone and/or engage in such unethical business practices in the future?

Tell me about your background. When and how did you get into domaining?

I started my first Internet business in 1998, designing web sites, coding, etc. Running a few web sites and trying to make it big before the dotcom crash. I was a co-founder of 2 medium sized web sites in Australia, still going strong. It was an interesting time with varying degrees of success.

Tell me about the moment when you said, I’m going to start Domain Shed?

As soon as we found out (about mid 2007) that AUDA was considering altering the rules in regards to selling and buying .au domains, the idea about starting DomainShed was there.

When did it go live?

DomainShed went live on 1st June 2008, (the earliest legally allowable date set by AUDA). To be sure we were the first, the site was activated just after midnight 31 May.

There are currently 35 domains listed on your web site. Why has the take up been so slow?

That was three days ago, now we have 112 domains for sale, more than a 300% increase.  We expect an exponential growth in the next 2 months as we are negotiating partnerships with established online companies relevant to the domain industry.

In a recent press release, Domain Shed describes itself as the “First Australian .au Auction Site”. Are you aware of other Australian sites who have been in beta for awhile now?

We have done our research and could not find any other web sites specifically set up to auction .au domain names.

How does your site differ from other commercial sites such as Sedo? Take us through the process.

The obvious one is that we specialise in .au domains and are Australian based. The aim was to have a simple process without many extra options. In this way sellers and buyers will find our system easy to use. In short, a seller or a buyer registers on our site, the email verifier is sent to the registrant and the account becomes active by clicking on the link in the email.. All details from registrants are checked out for accuracy verifying their identity within 1 hour from registration.

Why is the purchase process left up to the buyer and seller? What do you do to protect buyers from fraud?

DomainShed is not an auctioneer, we just provide an online venue to sellers and buyers of domain names. All our sellers and buyers are pre-screened to enable a secure and smooth transition of domain names. We will introduce escrow service at a later date, as an additional service for our clients requiring extra security.

Registration is free and you take 10% of the sales price. Are there any other fees aside from the optional extras?

There are no additional fees.

How many domains have sold since Domain Shed opened? What’s the average sale price?

A few domains have been sold, that is pretty good considering that 112 are listed. The price was several hundred dollars each, you have to start somewhere.

Whets your view on the Australian marketplace? People are listing names like “non-conforming-home-loans.com.au” for AU$10,000. Nobody is really going to buy that, even if it was a .com! Do you believe that Aussie domainers have unrealistic expectations?

Well, the domain auction in Australia is just starting, so it will find its level within a few months. A few .au domains have been sold before the rules changed as part of the “business” and they have reached $750,000 and more. All we can do is wait and see.

Do you think that auDA has done enough to relax its policies enough to make selling domain names attractive enough?

It is certainly much better than before the change of the policy, eventually it will became even more attractive to deal in .au domain names.

In your experience, what is the .com.au worth compared with a .com? 1/100th?

Interesting assumption. A web site in New Zealand (Country population 4.2 million) sold for $700 Million. It is a web site, not just a domain name but even in the USA (population 300 million) it is not easy to sell a web site for that amount. So to answer your question.. 1/10th or better is more realistic.

Looking into your crystal ball, what does the future of Australian domaining hold for you?

In the absence of a crystal ball I am looking into my glass of cold beer and it looks beautiful to me.

So, if you are thinking about getting into domaining, and don’t really have the time to put into it, then one option might not be to buy domain names at all. Buy a company whose business IS domaining.

Dark Blue Sea (owners of Fabulous) - Listed on the ASX, their current share price is AU$ 39 cents!

Marchex - Their current share price is US$12.61

These companies (and several others) own large portfolios of domain names as well as multiple businesses in the industry. However, like any financial investment you will need to do some research, and get some good financial advice from a professional.

This is one interview not to be missed.

As a side note, Adam is a great guy - this is one interviewed I really enjoyed. Post a comment and let me know what you think!

Who Was De-accredited?

1. Best Registration Services, Inc. dba Bestregistrar.com (IANA ID 473). They had 5,400 gTLD registrations.

2. DotForce Corp. dba DotForce.com (IANA ID 461). While they only had 400 gTLD registrations, they were based in Korea, so there could be an opportunity for someone to play in the international space.

How Do I Get 5,800 Domains?

If you are an ICANN accredited registrar, you need to send an email to Mike at ICANN by no later than 23:00 UTC on Friday, 13 June 2008, and include the following info:

1. Registrar experience, including number of registrations and customers managed;
2. Availability of sufficient customer service staffing to timely respond to customer service requests during and shortly after the bulk transfer;
3. Ability to communicate with customers in languages other than English;
4. A list of the TLDs in which accredited and operational;
5. Experience with and knowledge of bulk-transfer procedures;
6. Documentation of procedures to resolve potential disputes of domain name control or registration rights;
7. Experience as a customer-facing / “retail” registrar business;
8. Experience with second-level IDNs in the com & net zones;
9. Ability to provide ICANN with regular status reports.

Of course, if your company name is Godaddy then you probably don’t need any of this. (See sarcasm). Incidentally, if you have not read Bob Parsons 16 Rules then be sure to check them out - excellent work. Go and order the poster.