Showing posts with label Uniregistry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Uniregistry. Show all posts

2017-05-28

News Review: The WHOIS Way To Lose Domain Names | NR 2017-05-28

News Review | ©2016 DomainMondo.com
Domain Mondo's weekly internet domain news review (NR 2017-05-28):

 Features •  1) The WHOIS Way To Lose Domain Names, 2) a. New gTLDs Lose Over 2 Million Domain Name Registrations In Just 6 Weeks, b. Neustar Loses Again, c. Tucows' OpenSRS Drops Nine Uniregistry new gTLDs, d. MMX and Web.com for sale? e) #INTA17 disaster, pity the lawyers, 3) ICANN News: Renewal of .NET Registry Agreement Comments Close May 30, 4) ICYMI, 5) Investing, 6) Most Popular.

1) The WHOIS Way To Lose Your Domain Names--false or erroneous (including outdated) WHOIS info--check the WHOIS or contact your registrar(s) to make sure everything is correct and up-to-date. You may be surprised--I once discovered incorrect information on a transferred domain that I believe had been erroneously entered by staff at the prior registrar. Also note that any change in your registration info may invoke a 60-day lock by your registrar due to a poorly designed ICANN policy to prevent domain name theft (check with your registrar before making any change if you need to avoid the lock)--Contractual Compliance Update | GDD Summit Madrid | Presentation | ICANN.org:

2) Names, Domains & Trademarks
a. Deathwatch: ICANN's New gTLDs Still Losing Domain Name Registrations (source: ntldstats.com):
A decrease of more than 2 million new gTLD domain name registrations in just six weeks.
At this rate (a net loss of -2.1 million registrations every 6 weeks), ICANN's new gTLDs will have a total of -0- domain name registrations by Fall, 2018.

 b. Neustar Loses Again, in Court: "On April 6, 2015, Neustar, Inc. (the “Company”) filed a Petition for Review asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to “hold unlawful, vacate, enjoin, and set aside” the FCC Order issued on March 27, 2015, approving a recommendation by the North American Numbering Council for a competitor to serve as the next Local Number Portability Administrator (“LNPA”) ... The Court of Appeals issued its decision on May 26, 2017. The Court of Appeals denied the Company’s Petition for Review. The Company is reviewing the decision and continuing to consider its options."--Form 8-K, May 26, 2017. The loss of the LNPA a/k/a NPAC contracts will likely have a huge negative impact on Neustar's financials. Neustar is a technology company and domain name registry services provider (.biz, .co, .us ...). As I reported May 7, 2017:
Neustar Reports Results for First Quarter 2017 | Neustar.biz: "NPAC Services contributed $128.3 million in revenue. Net income for the first quarter of 2017 totaled $45.4 million, or $0.80 per share." • How much does Neustar's NPAC Services business contribute to Neustar's bottom line (net income)? 100%? See SeekingAlpha.com. • When does that very profitable NPAC Services business end? Probably 2018. • "Neustar ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $47.0 million and outstanding debt under its credit facilities and senior notes of $751.6 million ..."
c. Tucows' (NASDAQ: TCX) OpenSRS responds to Uniregistry new gTLDs' price increases:
"Uniregistry has announced a number of TLD price increases, taking effect on September 8th, 2017. Our main concern with this type of increase is that it has the potential to undermine consumer trust in the new gTLD program. Here’s everything you need to know, and what action we suggest you take ... 2. We will no longer support the TLDs with exponential price increase - The decision to discontinue support for these select TLDs was made to protect you [resellers] and your customers [domain name registrants] from unknowingly overpaying in a price range well beyond $100 per year. No longer supported as of September 8th, 2017"--
source: OpenSRS.com
Read more at: Uniregistry price increases | OpenSRS.com (emphasis added).

d) State of the Domain Name Industry:
  • New gTLDs registry operator Minds + Machines Group Limited: "following a number of informal approaches from external parties, the Board has appointed US investment banking firm, Headwaters MB, to review the various strategic options open to the Company to maximise value for shareholders."

e) #INTA17 disaster, pity the lawyers:
Even the trademark lawyers are tired and bored of ICANN's new gTLDs (lone tweet below):

3) ICANN news:

 Proposed Renewal of .NET Registry Agreement | ICANN.org: Comments close 30 May 2017 23:59 UTC. ICANN finally answered my questions (sort of). I plan on filing a comment and attaching ICANN's answers. Stay tuned!

Pre-ICANN59 Policy Update Webinar | ICANN.org: The ICANN Policy Development Support Team will host a Policy Update Webinar on Thursday, 15 June 2017 at 10:00 and 19:00 UTC, in preparation for the upcoming ICANN59 Policy Forum in Johannesburg, South Africa. RSVP by 13 June 2017. You will receive remote participation details the week of 12 June 2017. More at the link above.

ICANN Hires First Consumer Safeguards Director | ICANN.org: Bryan Schilling will be joining as the ICANN's first Consumer Safeguards Director, and will address illegal, infringing, and abusive activity impacting the DNS, reporting directly to Jamie Hedlund, SVP Contractual Compliance and Consumer Safeguards.

Special Meeting of the ICANN Board | ICANN.org18 May 2017:

 4) ICYMI Internet Domain News 
But also note: Net Neutrality Ideals Are Already Dead | Bloomberg.com: "Netflix and other rich companies pay internet service providers to connect directly into the providers' broadband plumbing. These "paid peering" fees are perfectly legal even under the stricter regulations the FCC is seeking to unravel."
  • NSA Surveillance: U.S. Fourth Circuit decision allows Wikimedia's lawsuit against National Security Agency’s (NSA) mass interception of Americans’ international digital communications, to proceed.--TheHill.com.
  • Internet Privacy: House Republican unveils internet privacy bill | TheHill.com: "Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) introduced legislation on Friday that would force broadband providers and internet companies trying to collect and sell consumer’s digital data to first get their expressed consent."

5) Investing:
1. "A lot of other people are trying to be brilliant and we are just trying to stay rational. And it’s a big advantage.”– Charlie Munger
2. “People tend to act too frequently in the stock market because stocks are so liquid. There are no called strikes, so ignore people yelling at you ‘Swing you bum!’” – Warren Buffett
8. “When you go out in the world, look for the job that you would take if you didn’t need a job … You really want to think about what will make you feel good when you get older about your life, and you, at least generally, want to keep going in that direction.” – Warren Buffett

6) Most popular post (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) this past week on DomainMondo.com: 

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo


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2017-03-12

News Review: 1. Trademark Squatters; 2. ICANN "Highly Political, Toxic"

News Review | ©2016 DomainMondo.com
Domain Mondo's weekly review of internet domain news:

 Features • 1. Domain Name Threats from "Trademark Squatters"; 2. ICANN's Sick, Toxic Organizational Culture; 3. Who should be fired? ICANN Management Organization Chart; 4.  Uniregistry to hike prices for some new gTLDs; 5. Root Stability Study Final Report; 6. Florida passes Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act; 7. Roth conference: Rightside and Web.com; 8. ICANN58, Rightscon, IETF 98; 9. ICANN's CCT Review; 10. Other Internet Domain News; 11. Most Popular Posts.

1. New Domain Name Threats from "Trademark Squatters"
Graphic: Avoiding trademark and domain name scams
Avoiding trademark and domain name scams | Dentons | JDSupra.com: "... 3. Do not reply to suspicious emails, even to indicate a lack of interest. Scammers use these replies to gather additional information about your company, and to identify which companies they will continue to target .... 6. Be aware that in Canada, trademark laws are changing and it will soon be possible to register a trademark in the country without ever having used it in Canada or anywhere else in the world. This will leave any of your [domain names and] unregistered brands open for exploitation by trademark squatters and pirates ..." (emphasis added)

Incompetent and gullible ICANN has already fallen prey to the "Trademark Squatters"--ICANN's Special Privileges for Trademark Owners are The.Worst | Electronic Frontier Foundation | eff.org: "... ICANN's acquiescence to even the most outlandish demands of the trademark lobby [e.g., IPC and INTA] has also set a precedent enabling some registries to go even further; for example, the registry Donuts (which we recently exposed as an architect of the copyright-blocking Healthy Domains Initiative) offers a DPML-Plus program that allows brand owners to block registrations not only of their registered marks, but also substrings, misspellings and variants of those marks, across hundreds of domains, for a period of ten years. We are aware of no national trademark system anywhere in the world that provides such extensive privileges to brand owners. Neither is there any convincing reason why the domain industry should be providing them with such privileges. Today's letter to ICANN exposes this scam and calls upon ICANN to stop being so solicitous to brand owners at the expense of other legitimate users of the domain name system. In particular, we are very clear that ICANN should not extend the Trademark Clearinghouse to top-level domains that it doesn't already cover, such as the most widely used domains .com, .org, and .net. ..." (emphasis added).

 See also: Why Did ICANN Become a Member of Trademark Lobbyist Group INTA? DomainMondo.com 15 Oct 2015.

 Letter referenced in the above article embedded below--Trademark Scholars Letter to ICANN GNSO RPM Working Group:

Final note: This Guy Would Fit In Perfectly at ICANN:"One of the attorneys behind the Prenda Law "copyright trolling" scheme has pleaded guilty to federal charges of fraud and money laundering. After years of denial, John Steele admitted Monday that he and co-defendant Paul Hansmeier made more than $6 million by threatening Internet users with copyright lawsuits ..."--arstechnica.com.

2. ICANN's Sick, Toxic Organizational Culture:
At last count, there are 37 reviews of ICANN on Glassdoor.com and they reveal a sick and toxic organizational culture at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN):

Interesting Work, Nepotism Alive and Well, Lousy Management  "Mar 9, 2017, review by Current ICANN Employee - Project Manager in Los Angeles, CA - I have been working at ICANN full-time (more than 3 years):
  • Pros: The work is highly challenging, smart people, unique company like no other in the world, interesting mix of highly technical people, legal talent and everything in between. A bottoms up policy organization with the two largest groups of professionals either having law or engineering degrees. Smart people, learn something new everyday.
  • Cons: Far and few respected executive managers. Management is out of touch, get promoted based on relationships, politics, nepotism and incompetence far far far more than other organizations. This company operates like a out-of-control insane 20 person start-up. With a shake-up in management maybe it will grow up to behave like the medium size organization it is.
  • Advice to Management--Clean house--Realize who should actually be in management and promote them! Tons and tons of managment does not make for good leadership. Less managers, real leaders would go a long way to make this the great organization it should be." (emphasis added)
Here's another:
Mar 10, 2017,  ICANN: "Where Good Careers go to Die" - Former Employee: I worked at ICANN full-time
  • Pros: Highly political if you like that sort of thing.
  • Cons: Can be a toxic, draining, soul sucking experience.
  • Advice to Management: Fire yourselves.

 3.  Who should be fired? ICANN Management Organization Chart, Mar 1, 2017 (pdf) embed:

ICANN organizational culture has definitely been impacted by the conflicts of interest, incompetence, dishonesty and the evident cronyism during the last administration, which reminds me of this past week's comments by Peter Thiel: Globalization is over--just a group of people who "messed up the world"--[ICANN, WEF, or both?]:
"The internet was designed to survive a nuclear war, but even so, I think there are a lot of regulatory challenges that Silicon Valley will be facing from Western Europe and elsewhere in the years ahead ... There's a technological determinism story you can tell where this is the future and China will eventually buckle under and cave and eventually adopt all of these things, but then you might wonder, maybe this doesn't happen at all, and maybe it's possible for the internet to actually fragment and not to have this historical necessity to it ... No one in their right mind would start an organization with the word "global" in its title today, that's so 2005, it feels so dated." --Peter Thiel, Mar 7, 2017, at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston (emphasis added),
To illustrate his point, Thiel took aim at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos: "A decade ago, this was a group of people who were running the world," he said. "And now, it's just a group of people who messed up the world."

4. Uniregistry plans to hike prices up to 3000% for some new gTLDs:
Graphic: Uniregistry plans to hike prices up to 3000% for some new gTLDs
Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth.--Mike Tyson
Some new gTLDs at Uniregistry getting massive price hikes | gTLD.Link--price increases of up to 3000% starting September 8--which generated negative and angry postings and comments in the domaining blogosphere to which Uniregistry's Frank Schilling finally responded on the blog post titled Frank Schilling just killed the New gTLD domain name program (Warning!) | onlinedomain.com--excerpt (emphasis added):
Frank Schilling: "... Making this change will give us the ability to lower prices and raise them ... our regulator [ICANN] dictates that “raising” prices requires this notice ... When we originally wrote our applications and applied for new gTLD’s, no registry operator knew there would be 1000 applications or that we would have some extensions with under 5,000 registrations. We’re pivoting to deal with that business reality ... There is a real cost to putting on a registry operation ... when we applied we put forth our best plan and best intentions. Now, after a reveal of 1000 extensions and after years of evolution, we are assessing business realities and we are pivoting for the good of our spaces and our registry. I understand that nobody likes that ... I am doing what I need to do for these namespaces to be successful. I also invested (many tens of millions) ... Regarding: “Registrants are not part of your company and are not required to and should not be forced to pivot anything.” When you invest in any namespace you do so under the rules of the registry. The tail doesn’t wag the dog. We have issued a press release to registrars which I hope will explain our repricing of these namespaces further ..." (emphasis added)
I haven't seen any Uniregistry press release about this passed along from registrars to domain name registrants. But at least Frank Schilling has been honest about what's coming. ICANN, most of ICANN's new gTLDs' registry operators, and many of their registrars, abhor transparency when it comes to new gTLDs' price increases. The ill-conceived and misbegotten new gTLDs program has been designed to rip-off domain name registrants from day one, and ICANN is now in the process of removing the last vestige of price increase transparency from its base new gTLDs registry agreement. Also note tweets by @GeorgeKirikos and Rick Schwartz‏ @DomainKing, including this.

 Editor's note: I have been warning domain name registrants for years of the pricing unpredictability of new gTLDs, while many domaining bloggers who chose to tout and promote the new gTLDs, are now somehow outraged that this could happen. Caveat Emptor! See also New gTLD Domains, the Walking Dead and Dying, ICANN FY15 Results | DomainMondo.com and my comment less than two weeks ago:
"The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, known as ICANN, mismanaged the global DNS and damaged the competitive global market for domain names by grossly over-expanding the number of new generic top-level domains (new gTLDs), beginning in 2014. As a result, many new gTLD registry operators are financially struggling, and after more than three years, many are still unprofitable."

5. Root Stability Study Final Report Now Available | ICANN.org: Report (pdf) p. 44: "However, the absence of an observed degradation of the security and stability of the root DNS system is no reason to be less cautious for possible future impact of the New gTLD Program ... We advise the New gTLD Program to retain a controlled rate of delegating new gTLDs. Further, we advise more frequent monitoring of the impact of new gTLD delegations, in order to obtain more detailed insight and to identify and respond to events impacting root DNS system stability on a short time scale ..." 

 6. Florida Passes the Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act | Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP | JDSupra.com: What is a “digital asset? "The Act defines “digital assets” as electronic records that are transmitted or stored on digital devices or the internet. Commonly used digital assets include documents (Adobe PDF, MS Word, spreadsheets, etc.), domain names or blogs, email accounts, social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, etc.), online user accounts (banks, PayPal, Venmo, etc.), and digital currency (for example, credits with online vendors such as iTunes)."

7. Roth conference March 12-15, 2017:
Domain name registrar and registry services provider Rightside $NAME CEO Taryn Naidu, and CFO Tracy Knox, are scheduled to present at the 29th Annual ROTH Conference at The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel in Dana Point, CA, on Monday, March 13, 2017, at 7:00 am PT / 10:00 am ET. The presentation will be available through a live audio webcast accessible from the investors section of Rightside's website at http://investors.rightside.co/ (and archived there for 90 days) or here or on the Roth conference website by registering for the webcasts. Almost 500 other companies are presenting, including domain name registrar Web.com Group Inc. $WEB on Monday, March 13, 2017, at 8am PT / 11am ET (available via Roth webcast).

 8. Meetings:
ICANN58 | Copenhagen
  • ICANN58 in Copenhagen, Denmark, continues through March 16. More info here.
  • RightsCon Summit Series: March 29-31, 2017, Brussels, Belgium. "RightsCon is the world’s leading event on the future of the internet."
  • IETF 98: March 26-31, 2017, Swissotel Chicago, 323 East Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL

9. CCT Review | ICANN.org March 7, 2017: Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice Review Team Draft Report of Recommendations for new gTLDs--the full report [PDF, 3.91 MB]; Public Comment Period closes 27 April 2017, excerpt:
"Looking at trust of new gTLDs specifically, the survey found that while consumer end users do not trust new gTLDs nearly as much as they do legacy gTLDs .... The report of draft recommendations makes a distinction between registrants and end-users. Registrants refers to purchasers of domain names, not end-users." .... Key Findings and Recommendations - Data Collection: Formalize and promote ongoing data collection, as the lack of data has handicapped attempts both internally and externally to evaluate market trends and the success of policy recommendations. Competition: ICANN should collect wholesale and retail price data from all gTLD registries and registrars to better inform future CCT reviews. Engage in a systematic collection of data on secondary market prices and country-level data on market competition ..."

10. Internet Domain News Quick Takes:

11. Most popular posts (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) this past week on DomainMondo.com:
  1. News Review: China Will 'Vigorously' Promote the Reform of ICANN
  2. Net Neutrality: Senate Oversight Hearing of the FCC, March 8, 10am ET
  3. TechReview | After Snap's Successful $SNAP Tech IPO, Who's Next?
  4. Scott Galloway: Snapchat $SNAP Is a Loser & Could 'Torch the Market'

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo


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2015-07-02

New gTLD Domains, the Walking Dead and Dying, ICANN FY15 Results

Chart of estimated and actual ICANN FY15 new gTLDs domain name registrations
Above: Column 1 - ICANN first estimated 33 million new gTLD registrations would occur in FY15 (July2014-June2015);
Column 2 - ICANN revised its estimate (in its adopted FY15 budget) to 15 million new gTLD registrations;
Column 3 - Actual new gTLD domain name registrations in FY15: Less than 5 million (see below)
Domain Mondo | 2 Jan 2015: ICANN's New gTLD Domains Are Failing Badly, 2015 May Be Even Worse: "Based on the trends thus far, new gTLD registrations for all of FY15 will not only fall far short of the ICANN budgetary estimate of 15,000,000, but in fact will be "lucky" to total even a third of that (5,000,000)."
July 1, 2015, the day after the close of the ICANN fiscal year (FY15: July 1, 2014-June 30, 2015), a good time to evaluate the hype and projections against actual results of new gTLDs. However, based on the absolute silence emanating from ICANN and the new gTLDs lobbyists (a/k/a stakeholders), as well as their shameless shills among the domaining bloggers, one wonders, "Who just died?" The answer may be some of the new gTLDs, RIP.

To review, Domain Mondo posted a chart above that shows FY15 new gTLDs (ngTLDs) domain name registrations, estimates and actual, as follows:
Column 1. Original ICANN projection last year for FY15: 33 million ngTLD registrations;
Column 2. ICANN's revised projection (used in its adopted FY15 budget): 15 million;
Column 3. Actual ngTLDs registrations in FY15: Less than 5 million. 
(Calculation based on actual ngTLD registrations in FY15--note that one must exclude 1.4+ million ngTLD registrations which occurred in FY14 (on or before June 30, 2014) from any calculation of FY15 registrations. Also note, Domain Mondo did not discount nor make any adjustment for the hundreds of thousands of ngTLDs given away for free in FY15, or those thousands of ngTLD registrations "warehoused" by ngTLD registry operators' affiliates in FY15.

Now to be sure, Domain Mondo believes there will be ngTLD survivors who may go on to financial "success"--Donuts, for example, which submitted 307 ngTLD Applications and secured an initial investment of $100 million in financing (source), appears to have a ngTLD Registry operator survivor's strategy of aggregating hundreds of ngTLDs, each of which may have only modest registration numbers, but collectively already total in excess of one million domain name registrations.

The new gTLDs teach the careful observer many lessons -- about narratives, emotions, hype, confirmation bias, investment choices and strategies, sunk cost bias, "can’t miss opportunities," markets, innovation (what it is and is not), consumer choice, and story-tellers with products or services for sale. This is why you should never ever drink the Kool-Aid.

With condolences, and to aid the grieving amongst the new gTLDs, Domain Mondo offers the following which hopefully may provide some comfort and guidance in your time of bereavement, now or in the future.



In reference to the throes of the new gTLDs (new generic top-level domain extensions), it may be helpful to recall Kübler-Ross's five stages of death and dying:
  1. Denial — One of the first reactions is denial, wherein the person imagines a false, preferable reality.--This is the stage, in Domain Mondo's opinion, some of the new gTLD registry operators still are currently--a good example may be Uniregistry's Frank Schilling--"There is just a momentary illusion of oversupply right now because of all the launches. It will pass."
  2. Anger — When the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue, he becomes frustrated, especially at proximate individuals or organizations. Perhaps Fred Krueger (formerly with MMX) was in this stage when he wrote: "One of the advantages of leaving MMX is that I am finally done with ICANN — which is one of the single worst organizations I have come across on this planet..." (emphasis added). Statements like this feel much better to the person grieving than admitting one might have misjudged the market for new gTLDs or perhaps made an unwise investment choice. 
  3. Bargaining — The third stage involves the hope that the individual can avoid a cause of grief. An example which might have been overheard at ICANN 53: "If we all stick together and convince ICANN to launch a worldwide, multi-million dollar, new gTLDs marketing campaign using their net auction proceeds, we can all survive and new gTLDs' sales won't be so pathetic."
  4. Depression — In this stage, the individual may become silent, and spend much of the time mournful and sullen. Examples of this are the many (if not most) smaller new gTLD registry operators who have just a few thousand (or less) domain name registrations, and are quickly running out of money and hope, and are only looking for a "way out."
  5. Acceptance — In this last stage, individuals acknowledge reality or the inevitable. Examples of this include Google which dumped its new gTLD .CAR and has pulled back on other new gTLDs, as well as other new gTLD registry applicants or registry operators who have withdrawn or not pursued their applications, given up, or sold off their new gTLDs, accepting any resulting losses with the knowledge that it is better to "cut your losses" now than get "deeper in the hole"--see e.g., dotREISE, the "zombies," et al.  

 Caveat Emptor!

See also on Domain Mondo:

                                                                                              edits 070415 and 07052015
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2015-05-19

Google Dumps Its CAR New gTLD Domain, What Does That Tell You?

The "money quote" in the recent news press release (see at bottom below) about the XYZ and Uniregistry new joint venture and registry operator Cars Registry Limited:  
"This trio of extensions was completed recently with the acquisition of the highly coveted .Car domain extension from Google." (emphasis added)
Highly coveted? Apparently .CAR was, at one time, highly coveted by Google, but no more.
Domain Mondo has commented before on Google falling out of love with ICANN's new gTLDs. See also: Google Just Killed The Last Remaining Rationale for New gTLD Domains.  But this is a striking development--Google decides it does not want nor needs the new gTLD domain .CAR at the very same time that Google is making headlines worldwide on its development and plans for a self-driving Google Car--

Google's Plan to Eliminate Human Driving in 5 Years | WIRED May 18, 2015: "Google's adorable self-driving car prototype hits the road this summer, the tech giant announced last week...."
Google's new self-driving cars hit the road - May. 15, 2015 (CNN)
Google's self-driving cars hit the road this summer (USA Today)

 What Does That Tell You?

 Google, after investing time and money in acquiring the new gTLD .CAR, just decided to "dump" it. And if Google, as a car "developer," "manufacturer" and "seller," doesn't want the new gTLD domain name extension .CAR, why would anybody else want it, or pay good money for it?

ICANN--the domain name regulatory monopoly--a "non-profit" California corporation that is in the "business" of "selling" a/k/a "authorizing" the creation of new gTLDs and their delegation into the Internet root (for the mere sum of $185,000 plus a modest annual fee), has made the following information available to the public:

On 22 January 2015, ICANN and Charleston Road Registry Inc., entered into a Registry Agreement under which Charleston Road Registry Inc., operated the .car top-level domain [new gTLD]. Effective 21 April 2015, the Registry Agreement was assigned by Charleston Road Registry Inc. [Google] to Cars Registry Limited [XYZ and Uniregistry joint venture] which now operates the .car top-level domain. 

 The agreements may be read at the following links below:

Registry Agreement
DOCX | Redline
PDF | Redline
HTML | Redline

Assignment and Assumption Agreement
Charleston Road Registry Inc. to Cars Registry Limited (21 April 2015) PDF

Excerpt from the public portion of the application for new gTLD (new generic top-level domain) .CAR, originally posted: 13 June 2012, Application ID: 1-1683-8443118(a) (emphasis added):

"... Describe the mission/purpose of your proposed gTLD [.CAR].
18.a. Mission⁄Purpose of the Proposed gTLD [.CAR]
"Charleston Road Registry is an American company, wholly owned by Google, which was established to provide registry services to the Internet public... Its business objective is to manage Google’s gTLD portfolio and Google’s registry operator business. As discussed further in the responses to questions 23 and 31, Charleston Road Registry intends to outsource all critical registry functions to Google Registry Services. The mission of this gTLD, .car, is to provide a dedicated domain space in which registrants can enact second-level domains that offer content related to cars, including the sale, purchase, rental, financing, servicing, repair, insurance and⁄or management of cars, as well as automobile industry-related information, such as new product development and trends (e.g. alternative fuel sources). This mission will enhance consumer choice by providing new availability in the second-level domain space, creating new layers of organization on the Internet, and signaling the kind of content available in the domain. The proposed gTLD will provide the marketplace with direct association with the term, ʺcar.ʺ Charleston Road Registry believes that registrants will find value in associating with this gTLD, which could have a vast array of purposes for businesses, organization, or individuals seeking to associate with the term ʺcar.ʺ This assertion is supported by industry data: the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers reports over 80 million vehicles were produced worldwide in 2011 [Source: http:⁄⁄oica.net⁄category⁄production-statistics⁄), and the global automobile market is over $3 trillion (http:⁄⁄www.ibisworld.com⁄industry⁄global⁄global-car-automobile-sales.html]. In addition, US-based Cars.com reports 10 million site visitors per month [Source: http:⁄⁄www.cars.com⁄go⁄about⁄us.jsp?section=C&content=fact&aff=national]. The proposed gTLD will also provide Charleston Road Registry with the means to meet its business objectives...."


Wonder if Google will continue to pursue .WEB? You can access and read the rest of ICANN's public file on .CAR here. Meanwhile, Daniel Negari (XYZ) and Frank Schilling (Uniregistry) have BIG plans for .CAR--

XYZ and Uniregistry Announce Joint Venture to Launch .Cars, .Car, and .Auto
Frank is on a roll--first dot SUCKS, and now dot CAR!!!

Caveat Emptor!


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2015-05-12

Frank Schilling's Uniregistry Is An Investor in New gTLD dot SUCKS

"...the largest owner of the Vox Populi registry, operator of .Sucks, is Momentous, a Canadian company. But it has been reported that "its IANA record lists an address in Bermuda for its technical contact and Uniregistry's office in Grand Cayman as its administrative address"...." source: ICANN.WTF? FTC & OCA Asked Whether .SUCKS is a Law Breaker (Part I)
Is dot SUCKS the problem or is ICANN the problem?

Who actually owns that new gTLD Registry operator from which you just registered that new gTLD domain name? Where are they located? Canada? Caymans? Hong Kong or Belarus? Hard to say, and good luck finding out from ICANN who currently holds those ownership interests, whether controlling or non-controlling. WHOIS? That doesn't tell you anything about the principals behind each of ICANN's new gTLDs. With at least one already launched new gTLD headed for third-party auction--see Are Zombie TLDs coming this year? | Domain Name Wire--who knows who will end up having ownership "interests" in these 1000+ new gTLDs ICANN unwisely launched into the global DNS (over which ICANN is supposed to be a steward acting in the public interest)? ICANN appears to be clueless or inept at keeping itself, much less the public, informed.

Case in point: Kevin Murphy at Domain Incite broke the story of a connection between .SUCKS and Frank Schilling's Uniregistry in a March 23, 2015 post:
"“We have a joint venture agreement and are presently handling postage and handling for Vox Populi,” Schilling told DI today. “We are providing office space services to them as well.” He characterized the deal as a “working relationship”. I would not be at all surprised if it’s much closer than that."--Why is .sucks based in Frank Schilling’s office? | DomainIncite
Turns out Kevin's intuition was right--according to an updated Statement of Interest from Bret Fausett, General Counsel for Uniregistry, Inc., it appears that Frank Schilling's Uniregistry, Inc. is doing more than just "handling postage and providing office space services"--

Bret Fausett SOI - GNSO Statements of Interest (SOI): 9) Please list any financial relationship beyond de minimus stock ownership you may have with any company that to your knowledge has a financial relationship or contract with ICANN: "Uniregistry, Corp. [Uniregistry, Inc.] has a non-controlling investor interest in certain TLDs currently operated by other companies, including .CAR, .COUNTRY, and .SUCKS."--(emphasis added)

 Which probably explains this:

Domain Mondo remembers when operating a generic top-level domain (gTLD) was a "trusteeship" carrying with it a duty to serve the global Internet community--

RFC 1591: ".... 2) These designated authorities [TLD Registry Operators] are trustees for the delegated domain, and have a duty to serve the community. The designated manager is the trustee of the top-level domain for both the nation, in the case of a country code, and the global Internet community. Concerns about "rights" and "ownership" of domains are inappropriate. It is appropriate to be concerned about "responsibilities" and "service" to the community....
6) For any transfer of the designated manager trusteeship from one organization to another, the higher-level domain manager (the IANA in the case of top-level domains) must receive communications from both the old organization and the new organization that assure the IANA that the transfer in mutually agreed, and that the new organization understands its responsibilities ..." (emphasis added)

But money-grubbing ICANN--its staff, its officers, its Board of Directors, and its self-interested "stakeholders" who have largely captured its policy-making GNSO--decided to trash the ideals of Jon Postel et al and the global public interest, and instead, corrupt the global DNS with their new gTLDs program and policy of the highest-bidder, winner-take-all, sale and auctioning off of the global Internet DNS.

Within the sick organizational culture of ICANN, what U.S. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV characterized as "a predatory shakedown scheme" has become merely a "clever policy to keep TM names costly for brands." In other words, ICANN authorizes, enables, encourages (and in return receives fees from) new gTLD registry operators who then have carte blanche to exploit and prey upon domain name registrants--particularly those with "deep pockets." The "lawyers" Schilling refers to in his tweet above are, apparently, the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC), now also joined by the Business Constituency.  See: Domain Mondo | The dot SUCKS Conundrum: ICANN, FTC, OCA, New gTLD Domains.

UPDATE: see also .Sucks Registry Goes On Offense & Threatens To Sue ICANN For Defamation/Breach of Contract | TheDomains.com  and  Vox Populi Registry Says "Enough" About .SUCKS Accusations | circleid.com

Caveat Emptor!


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