What Happened?

It was quite entertaining. See for yourself; we have preserved this historical grilling session here:

Feel free to rate the video and post comments.

Documents

Chair Boucher’s Opening Statement

Chair Waxman’s Opening Statement

Testimony of Fiona Alexander, Associate Administrator, Office of International Affairs, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce

Testimony of Paul Twomey, President and CEO, ICANN

Testimony of Kenneth J. Silva, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, VeriSign

Testimony of Christine N. Jones, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, The Go Daddy Group, Inc

Testimony of Sarah Deutsch, Vice President & Associate General Counsel, Verizon Communications

Testimony of Thomas M. Lenard, President and Senior Fellow, Technology Policy Institute

I know what you are thinking…. how could he do this? It’s betrayal of the highest order! But you know what? I’ve discovered something…. the usual people are continuing to post drivel (some think its “ohhhh so controversial”) many others appear to actually believe the world is coming to an end.

Its the GFC! No, its not KFC, its got a G in it… no its not the Georgia Football Club either… its the Global Financial Crisis. Global, being stuff outside America? Think of it as all the ccTLD’s, but not .us! Got it now? Good.

This week I went on a bit of an auction binge and purchased a few great names including roses.us. Why? Because people are selling them!

That’s right, its time for the rest of the world to sweep up some quality domain names. With €1 Euro being worth more than US$1.35 – now is the time (although so was mid 2008 when €1 was worth US$1.59).

Here at the Domainer Income Corporate World HQ, I’m sitting by this lake pondering all those opportunities that arise in a recession.

For example, people buy more lottery tickets, they actively seek out cheaper goods. Its not that people arent buying, its just that how some people make those purchases has changed. They might buy less expensive items and expect a greater, faster  ROI. All of this creates opportunity.

Crisis? Recession? Meltdown? Not in my part of the world.

After sitting down, I thought about everything that was distracting me and/or was taking my time away from focusing on my goals. I then thought, what can I do to eliminate this? Here is what I did; I have:

1. Stopped reading most of the “popular” domaining blogs, in particular the ones that churn out opinion pieces, day after day. Unless they have something valuable, I’m just not going to read them.
2. No more RSS reader. It just aggregates crap and ties up my time – now gone.
3. Decided not to go to any conferences this year. My time is valuable and I need to concentrate on building my portfolio, not going to the next “must attend” domaining conference at some exotic venue.
4. Posting on forums. Don’t get me wrong, I like helping newbies ( I created the Domaining Wiki ), but I believe there is a better way of giving back to the community.
5. Unsubscribed from HEAPS of mailing lists. As email is no longer coming in, I don’t have to read it.
6. Unsubscribed from domains for sale lists. I figured that if people *really* want me to look at their portfolio, they will contact me. I don’t want to be on a “broadcast list”.
7. Unsubscribed from conference announcements. I wont be attending them this year, so there is really no point.
8. Unsubscribed from forum post / threads. Some forums I’ll still frequent, but I really don’t need to subscribe to the thread and get those notifications every time someone replies. This is too distracting.
9. Unsubscribed from registrar marketing material. I have special discount pricing and unique coupons for me as a “bulk buyer” so there is no real point.
10. Started renewing domains as soon as I could. Given the size of my portfolio, if I renew domains as soon as I’m able, then I receive less email. Some of the more valuables ones I’ve renewed for multiple years.

Why No Conferences In 2009?

1. I thought … when was the last time I *really* learned something new?

2. There are a lot of vendors pushing the same old crap, but just in a different city or country. They get paid to travel the world and do this. I don’t, and it ties up too much time.

3. What became of all those business cards I collected during my last conference? Did those “contacts” come in handy, or did it lead to a heap of Facebook and useless LinkedIn connections?

I must admit, cleaning out all that email was a lot like cleaning my garage. I felt free again!

What do you think? If this gives you a few things to think about, let me know. Its now gone 12:30am, so its off to bed to get some sleep – something else I need. Good night.

With world markets going up and down like a game of Donkey Kong (well actually more down than up) its having a serious impact on our cost of goods.

As of today, 1 USD = 1.52384 AUD (Australian dollar), or to flip it around, 1 AUD = 0.656154 USD. If you look at the chart, you will see that six months ago, the Australian dollar was worth US$.96.

Great For Parking

The rest of the world is making MORE money (in their local currency) as they take advantage of being paid in US$ or Euro.

Bad For Buying

The cost of bidding against US domainers has increased.

Great For Selling

While this may seem all “doom and gloom”, there is a hidden upside. If you are a non-US domainer who is selling, then now is the time to sell in US$. Why? It should be worth more in your local currency.

If you are a domainer outside the USA, please feel free to post a comment. I’d love to hear your situation.

Apparently the First Minister Alex Salmond visited the Spanish region of Catalonia and found this thing called the Internet. It turns out that Catalonia has .cat and so he wants .sco – just don’t tell him about SCO Unix. By the way – pussy.cat is taken.

“It is not only for Scots who live in Scotland but for our extensive Diaspora and it will be particularly appropriate for a bid to be made during the 2009 Year of Homecoming” Salmond said. I’m wondering if that means that all the Scots are leaving us to go home now its the new year?

It might come as no surprise that there is strong support for dot scot; according to the UK Press Association “Two government surveys showed support among Scots organisations running at 58% and in an international poll, the figure rose to 82%”. Scotland’s governing party, the SNP has got together a working group and is preparing for the submission to ICANN (assuming .anything-goes).

Word also has it that Groundskeeper Willie wants bigwillie.scot. So what do you think? Should Scotland have it’s own TLD or be made to share with those lovely English folk for a little while longer?

In order to educate consumers and protect the marketplace from this type of activity, I thought I’d post two examples that have recently popped into my inbox.

I’m just presenting the facts – judge for yourself.

Exhibit A – ZipDomains

I received the email below from i...@zipacquisitions.com. Their website (zipacquisitions.com) diverts to zipdomains.com and has i...@zipdomains.com as the contact.

Both domains are registered to:

Zip Domains i...@zipdomains.com. 233 Middleton Rd. Glenside Wellington 6037 NZ and have a US phone number +1 206-202-1813. Of course I had to call it – its just an automated answering service.

If you check out their website, there is a DNOA logo. However, neither email address can be found in DNOA profile lookup, yet they display the certified reseller logo on their site, without the link.

— Start Of Email —

Subject: edited-out-for-privacy.ORG

Our company specializes in acquiring expired domain names to help individuals and businesses protect their brand online.

The domain name edited-out-for-privacy.COM is expiring and will be available to the public very soon.

We noticed that you own edited-out-for-privacy.ORG and felt that you may be interested.

We can assist in trying to acquire the domain name, as there are likely many interested parties competing for it.

We do not charge upfront, and the fee if we are successful is only $199 USD.

If you are interested, please let us know by December 10 at the latest.
— ends —

I own the .org and the .com is currently in PendingDelete status. So if I say “yeah go ahead”, they just backorder it for me. Who knows…get a few ignorant customers and it might be a nice little earner.

Exhibit B – Register.com

I received an email from register.com with a subject line of “Keep edited-out-for-privacy.COM  Up and Running”.

You can see the graphic below showing “Renewal Notice” in big orange letters. The only thing is that my domain name wasnt due for renewal for another 7 months! But hey, I can pay you $35 for a .com! Now that’s a bargain if I’ve ever seen one!

The ethical issue here is…. a person reading this may think its a domain name renewal notice (therefore thinking their domain is going to expire) and they should pay register.com $$$$. In countries that have relatively mature consumer protection laws (such as Australia) such an email may be regarded as misleading and deceptive conduct. Its important to note that I’m not a lawyer, this is just my opinion – based on receiving this email.

Have you noticed an increase in spam? Post a comment and let us know!

It took another Domainer to figure out that RepublicansForAReason.com wasn’t registered, so its now parked at Sedo. I wonder who the (now former) Republican staffer was who forgot to register that one?

Perhaps it was Senator Ted Stevens, former chair the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation? Here is Ted explaining what happened:

2009 is going to be a big year for all of us. ICANN wants to divorce the US government and screw up the Internet with 50 companies running new top-level domains, and application fees at $185,000 each.  This gives them a mere $9,250,000 in cash; then cometh the domain registrations. Can we stop this? Yes we can!

The WSJ is reporting that companies are protesting about the proposed new domain names. Who is going to own .hotel or .bank and how much will they charge for a domain name in those TLD’s? Think about all the brands, variants, trademarks – this is going to be a very costly nightmare for business and lead to mass confusion on the part of the consumer.

ICANN’s pathetic reason for existence is based on a deal with the US Government which expires in September 2009. The agreement is through the Department of Commerce and is known as the Joint Project Agreement (JPA). Will Obama renew it? What are some of the alternatives to ICANN? Running it through/with the Internet Governance Forum at the United Nations?

What Are The Issues?

1. Revenue from 404 pages down. Although that depends on if you park or develop yourself.

2. Look what happens when its http://www.secure-domain-blah.com/user.php?user=john&session=12345678. Google is now in possession of my User ID and session details.

I tried it out on a non existent test script on Domainer Income. For those technical people, this is what it looked like when I ran a packet sniffer over it:

—

66.249.89.100    HTTP    GET /tbproxy/lh/fixurl?hl=en-US&sd=com.au&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.domainerincome.com%2Ftest.php%26id%3Djohn%26session%3D123&sourceid=chrome&error=http404 HTTP/1.1

—

Yep, its sending it to Google alright. So that got me thinking…. what if this script just blindly accepts stuff like…. the Google home page not existing for instance ? I think I’ll leave that one for the kiddies.

3. Did I just consent for this confidential information to be analyzed by Google? Did you notice how it tried to split up the domain name into words for the search box?

Matt Cuts has stated on his blog that “I believe if Google Chrome sees a very short, stock 404 page (less than 512 bytes), it talks to Google in order to try to suggest other possible pages and options.” Interesting choice of words…. I believe….

Although there has been some healthy paranoia around the licensing agreement, I believe that your:

• Google Account: Knows your personal information.
• Google Mail: Analyzes email you send, and email sent to you.
• Maps: Knows where you are – even on your mobile phone.
• Search: Knows what you are looking for.
• Adsense: Knows what you click on = interested in.
• Analytics: Knows what sites you visit.
• Checkout: Knows what you buy and who you buy it from.

Can I make it any clearer than that?

When you put it all together, this is far worse than Microsoft back in the 90’s. What do you think?

Simon was an electronic game launched in 1978 by Milton Bradley. Google, its time to confess. Which 70’s / 80’s product designer “borrowed the idea”??