The chairman also stated in a letter to ICANN, “It is “an important tangible and symbolic milestone for this nation, as well as the freedom and hopes of the Iraqi people”.

A recent survey cited by the U.S.-led administration in Iraq found that about 6% of Iraqis say they have access to the Internet but fewer than 2% use it regularly.

Source: USA Today

The domain owner is apparently Kari Bian, an Iranian film producer and executive producer of a film who claims the connection is coincidental.  “It’s just an accident” he said. “I have nothing to do with anything. I feel really bad for that flight.” “I just put ‘flight’ in front of 1 through 1,000 and I register them,” he explained.

Source: Wired

Being the domainer, I had to park and take a photo. The strange thing is, their website doesn’t even have a picture of the building. You’d think you were almost dealing with an online mailorder company.

At the top of the site is this quote – “When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. So let’s all get drunk and go to heaven!” – Brian O’Rourke.

Maybe they got the idea to make those HUGE letters over a few bottles of red wine?

Nice profit! Oh and yes I’ve checked for obamalibrary and its variants are registered.

Source: UPI.

Dan Warner presented on Domain economics covering the basics of supply and demand, inputs, risk and outputs.

One excellent point that was made is that “original thought” is the difference between using a search engine and type-in traffic. For many people it was one of the those lightbulb moments, where you thought, yeah that makes sense.

Key points:

• Should we go build that new thing that looks cool but wont make money?
• What should we build today, tomorrow or never build?
• The industry does a lot of non-commercial things. eg: ego, demands etc..

Statistics

• Single transactions have no value as data
• Need to look at total ROI
• Without evidence, assumptions have no relevance
• If you cant show that you can get consistent results, nobody will give you any value (meaning you are worth less).

Business Framework

• Finance
• Cost cutting
• Risk
• Growth

If you have high risk, like developing with a shotgun effect, that will significantly increase your risk.

Domain names only have two outputs:

• Traffic (Commodity Cash Flow)
• Future Rights (Sale Value)

Development has no value only output variants such as cash flow and sale value.

Most traffic has only a transient value:

Type-in Traffic

• Behavior (experience)
• Technology (mediation)
• Alternatives (subscription)
• Evolution (fundamentals)

Referred Traffic

• Search (algorithm)
• Social (human)
• Linking  (hosted)
• Spruiked (inbound)

Banished Domains

• here today -> gone tomorrow

Rate of Sale

• Nothing has value until it is sold
• Rate of sale is based on feedback from the market
• ROS is between 1% and 5% per year
• Opportunities that exist today might not be here tomorrow
• All domains are not created equally
• What is that dollar worth today vs in 10 years time?

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:

Here is a classic example of a story that is unfolding right now about one of my domain names.

The registrar in question, eNom is using the Sgt Schultz defense of “I know nothing” and its driving me crazy. Has this ever happened to you?

Timeline

1. Win NameJet auction on December 4, 2007 and the domain goes into my eNom account.

2. Receive renewal notice on October 20, 2008 from eNom saying that my domain name will expire on 11-30-2008.

3. Try to transfer the domain name out to another registrar. When I try to release the lock at eNom I get “Failed to get Registrar Lock Status“. When I click on “Email Auth Code to Registrant” it says “Domain does not have an AuthInfo key“. Very strange – so I contact eNom support.

4. eNom support say “This domain is not registered with eNom at this time” and that its with “Registrar: DOMAIN JINGLES, INC.”. This is interesting, because I can SEE THE DOMAIN IN MY ACCOUNT !!! I also don’t have an account with Domain Jingles.

5. I check the Domain Jingles whois and it says my domain is “Registration Service Provided By: eNom, Inc.” Hmmm….

6. I update the support ticket with these new facts and receive this response from eNom: “We have forwarded this ticket to our senior technical support staff to research further. Depending on what we find it might be a few days before we have a solution or additional questions for you. I have requested a resolution as quickly as possible to minimize your wait time.”

7. Today I login to my eNom account and the domain name is no longer there. It’s just disappeared! I have received no notices to transfer it out. The whois data is registered under my name and my contact email address. Nothing has changed except that its no longer in my account.

8. I called eNom phone support in the USA. They tell me that the domain is with DomainJingles (who is  an eNom reseller) and that I should call them. The support staff also tell me that they will flag this ticket and ask their techo’s to investigate. I explain the obvious concerns I have about:

• Having a domain in my account that suddenly disappeared.
• The fact that the domain name expires in a months time and nobody can tell me where it went!
• The registrar asks me (their customer) to contact THEIR reseller, who I don’t know.

I’ve tried to make contact with Domain Jingles, and will keep you all posted on further developments. In the meantime, if you can think of anything feel free to post a comment.

This is the podcast from an event I attended at the Churchill Club in Melbourne. The panelists were:

Richard Moore – CEO, Dark Blue Sea Ltd
Bruce Tonkin – CTO, Melbourne IT Ltd
Jo Lim – Chief Policy Officer, .au Domain Administration Ltd (auDA)

Thanks for Brendan Lewis (who was also the moderator) for permission to reproduce the podcast of the event.

I hope you enjoy it.

1. “The Panel recommends that auDA should require all overseas accredited registrars to register with ASIC to trade in Australia.”

That’s going to irritate the overseas registrars who have largely operated remotely; some of which have multiple credentials.

2. “auDA should work with the registrar community to develop a policy to ensure fair and equitable access to the registry so that the ownership of a number of registrar accreditations does not create an unfair market advantage.”

Again – they are worried about registrars having multiple credentials and picking up dropped domains. Lets share the love and hold hands.

3. “The Panel believes that the current policy on the registration of domain names by registrars on their own behalf is satisfactory. The Panel believes that auDA should work to ensure fairness and transparency in the provision of registrar services and access to information that may provide a market advantage. The Panel makes no recommendation in this draft document but will consider the issue again after receipt of public comments.” I think this might be code for lets stick our heads in the sand and see if anyone notices.

Yes I’m a capitalist – if someone can put up the cash and run multiple registrars, then great. Why should a growing industry like domain name sales, be hampered by further regulation? It doesn’t make sense to me.