Top Level Domain Holdings and Minds & Machines Merge

Top Level Domain Holdings, Ltd has completed its merger with Minds & Machines, a leading registry services provider for web-based top-level domains. The merger follows TLDH’s 2.5M pound private capital raising (approximately US $4.1 million). For more information visit Kikabink News.

Tucows To Buy Back Shares

Tucows, Inc. (TCX) is commencing a ‘Dutch auction’ tender offer to repurchase up to 5 million shares of its common stock. This represents approximately 7.4 percent of Tucows’ outstanding shares.

Kikabink News has covered the story, providing some interesting commentary: “Companies vary in their motivations for doing share buy-backs. It can be a sign of huge faith in the company or it can be for other reasons. I won’t speculate here, but if I was an investor in Tucows I sure would want to know…”

You can view the latest Tucows share price on the right hand side of the page.  This year its gone from 0.31 to 0.56. What are your thoughts on this?

Auctions Crack Down On Shill Bidding

Domain name auctions are now starting to give the appearance of cracking down on non paying bidders.

Last week, Dynadot send me an email regarding users that were shill bidding in their expired auctions. Here is a picture of one such user:

Dynadot stated: “Effective immediately, if an auction order is not paid, our system will automatically ban the user from participating in any future auctions.”

Following hot on their heals, I received two email from Snapnames about an hour ago saying that the auctions for domainster.com and fullsize.com will be run again. Yes, I was in both auctions and was amazed by the sudden price increase towards the end.

Lets see how this one goes.

Australian Regulator To Review Domain Name Renewal, Expiry and Deletion

This afternoon I received an email from auDA requesting comment on their Domain Expiry, Renewal and Deletion Policy. auDA has specifically asked for comments around:

1. Whether the current 30 day pending delete period for expired domain names (ie. where the registrant has not renewed their domain name) is appropriate.
2. Whether the current “domain purge” procedure (ie. where domain names are purged from the registry at a random time between 10.30am and 5.00pm AEST on the next business day after the pending delete period ends) is effective.
3. What action (if any) auDA should take in relation to unofficial domain drop lists, and the domain-catching services being provided by some accredited registrars and other industry participants.

The closing date for submissions is Friday 11 September 2009. You can find all the submission details on the auDA web site.

OzBargain Typo Squatted – Diverts To eBay

Popular Australian bargain site, ozbargain.com.au has been typosquatted. That’s right – if you visit ozbargin.com.au (note that its missing an “a”) right now, the website diverts to eBay.

auDA has a “Prohibition on Misspellings Policy (2008-09)” which specifically states under section 4 “Scope of Prohibition”:

“4.1 The prohibition on misspellings applies where:

a) the domain name is a misspelling of an entity, personal or brand name that does not belong to the registrant; and

b) the registrant has deliberately registered the misspelling in order to trade on the reputation of the other entity, person or brand.

4.2 For the purposes of the prohibition, a domain name will be regarded as a misspelling if it falls into one of the following categories:

a) the singular version of a plural name, or the plural version of a singular name (eg. woolworth.com.au, safeways.com.au);

b) a name with missing letters (eg. yhoo.com.au);

c) a name with additional letters (eg. quantas.com.au);

d) a name with transposed letters (eg. goolge.com.au, wetspac.com.au);

e) a name with letters replaced by numbers, or numbers replaced by letters (eg. 9msn.com.au);

f) a hyphenated version of a name (eg. e-bay.com.au, micro-soft.com.au);

g) a name prefixed by “www” (eg. wwwseek.com.au); or

h) any other name that auDA determines is a deliberate misspelling, having regard to the surrounding circumstances.”

—

The ozbargin.com.au domain was last modified March 21, 2009; however its not known how long this has been going on for, nor how much the squatter has made in eBay affiliate sales (if any).

The company that owns ozbargin.com.au is YEE TECH PTY. LTD – ABN: 94102253734 registered in Baulkham Hills NSW.

A complaint has already been sent to auDA – lets see how long it takes them to act.

Melbourne IT Appointed To Manage Twitter’s Domain Name Portfolio

Melbourne IT (ASX: MLB), have announced that they have been selected to manage Twitter’s domain name portfolio.

“Melbourne IT could not disclose the contract value but has conceded the Twitter account is reasonably small. Compared to some other clients that hold in excess of 10,000 domains, the social networking company is relatively new and is starting off with only a handful of critical names.”

The two year contract is believed to be centered around Melbourne IT’s Corporate Domain Management solution and includes protection against infringement and malicious web attacks.

Source: Melbourne IT & ARN.

Domain Thief Arrested & Charged By Police

Detectives from the New Jersey State Police Cyber Crimes Unit have charged Daniel Goncalves, aged 25, of Union Township, with:

1. Theft by unlawful taking or disposition
2. Theft of identity
3. Computer theft

The charges relate to the theft of the domain name P2P.com from their GoDaddy account in May of 2006.

After moving the domain name, the investigation found Goncalves again waited the mandatory 60 days and listed the name for sale on e-Bay in September of 2006, where it was purchased for just over $111,000. The purchaser, was professional basketball player Mark Madsen, a Los Angeles Clippers forward who did not know the name was stolen.

Colonel Rick Fuentes, Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police stated:

“The domain name industry is in some respects still like the wild west. Many of the rules are not yet codified into state laws, let alone federal or international laws”

“There is no deed for ownership of a domain name.  In most cases they are protected solely by a login and password for the site through which they are registered. Nevertheless, theft is theft, and that law that can be applied whenever possession of an own-able thing is improperly transferred for gain.”

Source: New Jersey State Police Cyber Crimes Unit.