iEstates.com

The ICANN public comment period for the .com Registry Agreement renewal with VeriSign ends tomorrow on Thursday April 26th at 23:59 UTC.

You can submit comments via to com-renewal@icann.org. In the second “reply” phase replies to the comments can be submitted limited to those who commented in the first phase – this phase will end on May 17th 2012.

The 14 comments submitted to date can be read on the site here.

The proposed agreement suggests to keep the .COM contract with VeriSign without opening it to competitive bidding, a process that when done with the .NET registry in 2005 resulted in lower .NET registry pricing ($5.89 per Domain Name Year). The proposed extension would allow VeriSign to increase registrations fees by 7% in four of the next six years, potentially bringing up the price from the current $7.85 to $10.29 by 2016.

In case some of you feel strongly about the anti-competitive nature of the .com renewal, you may also want to consider a submission to the US Department of Justice.

[Hat tip to George Kirikos]

Related posts:

• ICANN further simplifies public comment process
• Big Shocker ! Verisign Raises Prices Again.
• Verisign Registry to Increase COM & NET fees in July 2010
• ICANN approves new .INFO policy
• Verisign domain takedown proposal very worrisome

As per a press release sent out by DENIC, the German .DE registry operator, the 15th million .DE domain was registered today at 12:56pm central European time. The domain was “floristennetzwerk.de” (which translates to FloristNetwork.de).

See the full press release after the jump.

On 18 April 2012 at 12:56 CEST it was registered, the 15 millionth domain
with a .de ending. Its flowery name: floristennetzwerk.de, which means
florists' network. "With my website I want to provide a purchasing portal
for florists to order flowers and plants, avoiding the usual channels via
intermediaries. I am a qualified florist myself and can build on 30 years
of experience.
And since I want to reach the green trade in Germany with my offer, it was
clear to me that I needed a domain under .de. I have the most beautiful
profession in the world. Flowers make people smile and are the only
product that does not really need any marketing." says the domain holder
Alexander Kleerebezem. 

He is not alone with his choice. Every month, an average of about 50,000
.de domains is registered with DENIC. If private persons, medium-sized
businesses or international companies doing business in Germany - a .de
domain is first choice for nearly all of them.

From 0 to 15 million: How it all began …

What started in the year 1986 with .de's registration in the IANA database
has evolved into a real success story and made .de the largest ccTLD in
the world.

In the beginning, the domain names are administered by a network operator
located in the USA. In 1988, administration is transferred to the
University of Dortmund that initially handles it rather informally and
simply records the registrations in a manual list. Starting with only six
.de domains, the list soon commences to grow at a continually increasing
pace. About a decade later, time has come to create a sustainable basis
for domain registration and administration. Early in 1997,  37 German
Internet service providers thus found DENIC eG. At that time, about 50,000
addresses are already registered with DENIC - and there is a clear upward
trend. In April 1999, DENIC records an inventory of 500,000 .de domain
names, and in October 1999 the first million-mark is passed. A period of
sharp continual growth up to one million a year follows.

Interest in .de domains still is immense today: "To have one's own
Internet presence is quite attractive for German citizens. Nearly every
sixth of them has their own .de domain. It has always been our special
concern to underscore the importance of .de as a country code. To this
end, we enabled the use of special characters of the German alphabet like
umlauts or letters with accents and the German eszett in domain names.
This makes it easy to identify oneself with the Top Level Domain .de,"
explains Sabine Dolderer, CEO of DENIC. "And of course it also is the
commitment and great performance of our members who offer first-class
service to the end client that has helped us to become the largest country
code Top Level Domain in the world."

 

 

Related posts:

• 201.8 Million Domains Registered World Wide
• 11,111,111 .de Domains registered
• .de registry to introduce authorization codes
• More Than 215 Million Domain Names Registered World Wide
• DENIC to release One and Two Letter Domain Names as of October 23rd, 2009

Denic e.G., the German registry operator for .DE, has published a new image video on Youtube yesterday.

The German version of the video has attracted a large number of negative comments to date – what do you think of the video?

Related posts:

• GoDaddy Launches Video Sharing Site Video.me
• Oversee.net’s CEO on The Call on CNBC (Video)
• .de registry to introduce authorization codes
• Aftermarket.com Creates Promotional Video
• LIVE : Ad.com Sells for $1.4 Million [Update: Video added]

Sedo today announced an exclusive auction of premium .ME domain names. The company has successfully brokered the sale of more than 1,000 .ME domain names, totaling nearly two million U.S. dollars, including such premier names as Business.Me for €40,000, and online meeting platform Join.Me for $45,000. Global brands such as WordPress (wp.me), Facebook (FB.Me), Porsche (Porsche.Me) and Yahoo (ME.Me) have taken advantage of the .ME domain name extension.

Running in partnership with the .ME registry, Domain.Me, the auction begins on February 2, 2012 and runs until February 9, 2012. The auction will include a wide range of prices and a unique selection of premium .ME domain names such as:

• Hotel.Me
• Singles.Me
• Boats.Me
• Yoga.Me
• Creditcard.Me
• Gift.Me
• Movies.Me
• Webhosting.Me
• Friends.Me

The complete list of .ME domain names available for auction on Sedo.com can be found at http://www.sedo.com/ME.

Disclaimer: Managing Editor Frank Michlick of DNN also is working as a consultant for SedoMLS.

(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (8)

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The .FR registry AFNIC, is celebrating their 25th anniversary today. As a birthday present to itself, the company has updated its logo, webdesign, anniversary magazine  and is launching a contest “The French Connection” that rewards five .FR websites to “showcase the best Internet experiences in .fr domain names“.

The highlight of the program will be a special event held on 11 October on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower with the French internet community to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the .fr namespace. There will an award ceremony for the winners of the contest, at which more than 300 guests are expected.

[via Press Release]

(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (9)

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auDA, the .AU domain administrator, has recently found that a reseller for the NetRegistry Group, NetAlliance Pty Ltd trading as NetFleet, has breached the .au Domain Name Suppliers’ Code of Practice (2004-04) by mass emailing 1,200 clients of another .AU drop catching service (Dark Blue Sea owned drop.com.au). The email addresses had apparently been collected from whois.

According to the ruling, the actions of the reseller caused the accredited registrar, TPP Internet to be in breach of their accreditation agreement.

To rectify the breach, NetFleet and TPP Internet have undertaken to destroy or permanently erase all records of any information including, without limitation, any domain name or registrant contact record obtained as a result of the breach.

In addition, NetFleet personnel must undertake auDA policy training, and the company must conduct a comprehensive review of all its procedures and systems to ensure compliance with its obligations

[Ed. Granted, this may not be exactly "up to the minute", as this happened on Feb 24th, 2011]

[via auDA]

(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (9)

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As reported earlier the Cyrillic .РФ IDN ccTLD launch had reached a stunning number of 500,000 registrations in the first week. Considering the numbers, it was obvious that speculators were playing the TLD, but apparently six registrars are involved in registering many of the names for resale & auction and are now involved in a legal dispute as reported by TheMoscowNews. Many of the registered names have been frozen by the registry.

The accused registrar, RU-Center said there are no plans to stop sales, with spokesman Andrei Vorobyov saying: “We do not believe we have violated the law or the rules of the co-ordinating centre.”At the end of last week the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) launched legal action against six registrars claiming they had broken competition laws.

Apparently the RU-Center itself bought 38% of the names registered and acquired another 48% of the registered domains through partner companies – a total of 86%.

[via TheMoscowNews & DomainIncite]

(c) 2010 DomainNameNews.com (2)

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DomainConvergence 2011, May 12-13, Montreal, Canada

While some of the .CA registrars are apparently still having problems with this morning’s switchover of the .CA registry to EPP, the registry appears to have successfully completed their migration. So what do the changes mean, aside from another backend protocol being used for registrars to connect to the registry?

• Registrants will now generally only deal with their registrars and not have to interact with CIRA directly.
• There are no more CIRA user IDs
• Domains are Auto-Renewed on a Registry level – just like COM/NET/ORG the registry now automatically renews the domain at the expiry date and charges the registrar account. It is to be expected that registrars will however delete any domains that are not set to auto-renew on the registrar level, just like for the gTLDs.
• New 3rd and 4th level domains are no longer supported with the exception of 4th level municipal domains. Existing 3rd and 4th level domains will be grandfathered.
• Registrars can now offer their own whois privacy system for individual registrants.
• The number of contacts per domain is now limited and not maintained across registrars.
• New Data used to validate Canadian Presence Requirements (CPR) will be required in 2011.
• Domains can only be transferred to another registrars 60 days after their initial registration or a previous transfer.
• An ownership change of a domain does not require a renewal of the domain name any more.
• “Critical changes” are now processed immediately.

As part of the switchover the registry operator also temporarily disabled the domain deletions, which were usually happening once a week. The process is going to restart on November 3rd, 2011.

(c) 2010 DomainNameNews.com

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In 2008 Jothan Frakes held an impromptu survey for registry service providers for new gTLDs at the ICANN meeting in Paris. The results were then consolidated into a matrix and published on the Names At Work blog by his friend Antony van Couvering – unfortunately DNN could not locate the information on the site today. Now, two years later and a bit further into the introduction process for new gTLDs- ICANN has published the 4th revision of the Applicant Guidebook for New gTLDs – Jothan Frakes has started a follow-up survey.

The first survey also seems to have had a big part in funding of the new gTLD service & consulting company Minds + Machines, which Frakes was part of. Now that he is not with the company any more, he can once again collect data in an independent survey of the registry services industry.

The survey will run until August 4th, 2010 and service providers (for ccTLDs & gTLDs) interested in having their information included can participate here: Registry Service Provider Survey

[Via Jothan Frakes' Blog]

(c) 2010 DomainNameNews.com

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Luxembourg based Domain Invest SA has just announced the purchase of “call.me” for 20,000 Euro (appx $27,000 USD). The company plans to develop the website in order to allow visitors to place sponsored calls from it.

See the full press release after the jump.

Luxembourg, April 6th, 2010 –DI SA (www.domaininvest.lu), a leading company in the internet domain name monetization, is proud to announce the acquisition of the domain name Call.Me, which will become one of the first virtual telephone booths.

Call.Me will enable visitors to call online from the website www.call.me any landline or mobile phone worldwide without having to install any software.

“The Internet is a virtual world which, by all means, should have a virtual telephone booth. It’s simple, but brilliant,” notes Natasa Djukanovic, Marketing and Sales Director of the .ME Registry. “The dot-ME domain, Call.Me, is perfect example of how our extension can be used as a call to action. We are thrilled to see this kind of technically advanced, easy-to-use service offered with a dot-ME name.”

Domain Invest (DI SA) operates a targeted online media business. The company owns and acquires thousands of undervalued internet domain names, with the aim of monetizing the traffic they receive through advertising.

DI SA invests in highly valuable media assets: internet domain names, the real estate of the Internet. The Company focuses essentially on premium generic domain names, such as GartenMoebel.de, AutoVerhuur.be, Valises.fr, Credito.it. DI SA has also recently centralized a large portfolio of “health” domain names, from healthy living practices to infections or diseases related names: erkaeltung.de, www.fieber.de, www.berufsallergien.de, www.multivitamins.com, www.vitamin.eu, www.healthjob.de, www.healthtruth.com, www.womenshealthmagazine.com, www.diets.net, www.lowfatdiets.co.uk, www.dietfood.com.

Frederick Schiwek, Managing Director of DI SA concludes, “We own large portfolio of domain names targeting specific topics and fields of interest. The acquisition of Call.me for examlple [sic] is essential as the name has a strong meaning and the .ME extension has gained great success and largely appealed to companies, organizations and also personal sites, for its marketing potential and also innovativeness”.

Stay tuned on call.me to see the upcoming advancements!

(c) 2010 DomainNameNews.com

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