Domain News

As reported earlier, Verizon sued Navigation Catalyst and the Basic Fusion registrar for cybersquatting. As part of this lawsuit, it has been reported elsewhere that the domain forum TMFor.com has been subpoenaed by Verizon’s lawyers. The items subpoenaed include identifying information for each and every user of the forum.

According to DomainNews, the article goes on to say that TMFor denies any connection to Navigation Catalyst and Basic Fusion and has hired an attorney.  The article states that the forum was moved to BonkersTwo.com, however that domain now redirects to TMFor.com. Read more after the jump.

The forum employed some measures that may have protected it’s members, such as automatically deleting all threads that were inactive for more than 30 days, but it is unknown if it employed other methods to protect it’s user database, personal information and post contents.

The private forum states that the “TM” in TMFor.com stands for Traffic Monetization, but unconfirmed rumors and other comments indicate that much of the discussion at TMFor has circled around buying, selling and monetizing domain names that could be considered trademark infringements.  The FAQ on the site states “#3 No hypocrisy. If you are claim that names trademarked by others are not legit business, then we will not accept you into this club.”

[Update]: There’s also a thread about this topic on DomainState, which includes a statement by a member called “TMFor.com”. The full statement reads:

Subject of this thread is misleading (if I put it mildly)

1. Verizon did NOT “shut down” anything
2. Verizon have NOT seized anything

Here is what happened:
Thursday 11.9. midnight EDT the Pair.com account received notice about subpoena. Forum has been deleted immediately, voluntarily, because there is imho a healthy chance Pair.com does not have a backup (Subpoena does not mean they have to make a timestamp backup, imho) and moved to a safer location.

Lawyer has been hired to make a motion to quash the Subpoena, because it does not make any sense as TMfor is not connected in any way with Navcat/Basic fusion. Also we are curious how they are reasoning it - is not like everyone can subpoena everyone, there must be grounds for it and we have no clue what the grounds might be.

I personally would not mind if they would get the data - they would have to go through 3GB of rubbish data, forum full of hogwash, is not like there has been disccussed some ultra-secret conspiracies, no. The forum was difficult to get in because all members was smart, like-minded individuals, that’s all. No conspiracy here. So I would like them to spend ~ on analysis which brings them nothing.

But some US members do not like their identities to be disclosed simply because Verizon lawyers are madmen and there could follow some witchhunt against them.

There is another reason I would like them to get the data they are asking: this account which Verizon required the data from is shared by several Chinese companies and they could sue Verizon in China (and likely win). Verizon have some assets in China to take, so that would be some easy money to make.

If the Verizon subpoena reveals the inner workings of trademark infringing domainers, this could lead to more lawsuits naming multiple plaintiffs and multiple defendants.  TMFor.com whois records are set to privacy but the history shows a variety of different owners including Chen Long of Shanghai and Mario Surio Martinez Juarez Ferdinando of Shanghai.

Navigation Catalyst Systems was born out of the experience gathered by new.net’s alternative root offering. The company offered Registry Wildcard services displaying advertising on any un-registered domain and branded domain parking services as well as other solutions for ISPs and registrars. It is assumed that their largely automated domain tasting operation ran through the Basic Fusion registrar, using the DNS lookup data gained by their other services in order to identify unregistered domains that were attracting type-in (and typo) traffic. It is unclear whether they were a participant at this forum.

Navigation Catalyst was originally part of The Vendare Group/Vendare Media which has since been renamed to Connexus Corp.

[via DomainNews]

(c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com

Domain Convergence, October 6-8, 2008, Niagara Falls

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Original post by Frank Michlick

As reported earlier, Verizon sued Navigation Catalyst and the Basic Fusion registrar for cybersquatting. As part of this lawsuit, it has been reported elsewhere that the domain forum TMFor.com has been subpoenaed by Verizon’s lawyers. The items subpoenaed include identifying information for each and every user of the forum.

According to DomainNews, the article goes on to say that TMFor denies any connection to Navigation Catalyst and Basic Fusion and has hired an attorney.  The article states that the forum was moved to BonkersTwo.com, however that domain now redirects to TMFor.com. Read more after the jump.

The forum employed some measures that may have protected it’s members, such as automatically deleting all threads that were inactive for more than 30 days, but it is unknown if it employed other methods to protect it’s user database, personal information and post contents.

The private forum states that the “TM” in TMFor.com stands for Traffic Monetization, but unconfirmed rumors and other comments indicate that much of the discussion at TMFor has circled around buying, selling and monetizing domain names that could be considered trademark infringements.  The FAQ on the site states “#3 No hypocrisy. If you are claim that names trademarked by others are not legit business, then we will not accept you into this club.”

If the Verizon subpoena reveals the inner workings of trademark infringing domainers, this could lead to more lawsuits naming multiple plaintiffs and multiple defendants.  TMFor.com whois records are set to privacy but the history shows a variety of different owners including Chen Long of Shanghai and Mario Surio Martinez Juarez Ferdinando of Shanghai.

Navigation Catalyst Systems was born out of the experience gathered by new.net’s alternative root offering. The company offered Registry Wildcard services displaying advertising on any un-registered domain and branded domain parking services as well as other solutions for ISPs and registrars. It is assumed that their largely automated domain tasting operation ran through the Basic Fusion registrar, using the DNS lookup data gained by their other services in order to identify unregistered domains that were attracting type-in (and typo) traffic. It is unclear whether they were a participant at this forum.

Navigation Catalyst was originally part of The Vendare Group/Vendare Media which has since been renamed to Connexus Corp.

[via DomainNews]

(c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com

Domain Convergence, October 6-8, 2008, Niagara Falls

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Original post by Frank Michlick

In an email sent to domain name registrars this evening, ICANN announced a new resolution approved by the ICANN board, effectively ending domain name tasting. Since the GNSO had previously sent their recommendation to the board in April, the vote came as no surprise to those in the domain community.   The new policy will charge the .20 cent ICANN fee on every domain registered, whether or not it is deleted within the 5 day Add Grace Period or not.

(Read more about the new fees and the impact after the jump)

The Add Grace Period (AGP) was implemented to allow registrars a 5 day period whereby they could delete domain names that may have been registered using fraudulent credit cards, by error, etc. The system was gamed by domain tasting operations which would register thousands of domain names, test them for traffic during the 5 day window and delete domains which did not make enough money to cover the annual registration fees. ICANN fees are only charged at the end of the quarter for domain names registered, transfered or renewed so the .20 ICANN fee was avoided since the domain tasting operations would only have to pay the ICANN fee on domains that were older than 5 days.

Some in the domain name industry still are not satisfied with the policy change, but others in the domain industry believe that this will go along way to killing off domain tasting operations in mass scale.   Let’s use real numbers to show what effect this has on a tasting operation. From information we have been provided by industry insiders, tasting operations have typical success rates of around .5% . In a typical scenario before this policy a taster might register 100,000 domains and likely only keep 500 - deleting 99,500 within the first 5 days. Using the AGP loophole, the registrar would only be charged the registry and ICANN fees of $3210 ($6.42 x 500) + $100 (500 x .20) = $3310. With the new policy implemented, a registrar will be charged $3210 (500 x $6.42 ) on the kept domains and $20,000 (100,000 x .20) in ICANN fees. Using the .5% domain “keep rate”, the per name cost of a tasting operation has increased from $6.62 per name to $46.42.

It is indeed still possible that domain tasting will occur. The AGP still exists which provides the loophole to delete tasted domains. However, the added ICANN fees are on a per domain cost, so in order for domain tasting operations to be profitable they will have to be less “shot-gun” and more “sniper” precise.

The ICANN new fees are also based on a threshold of 10%. So if a registrar adds in 100,000 domains per month and is deleting more than 10% the fees will be charged. As long as the registrar is under this percentage fees will not be charged.

The resolution can be read in entirety after the jump :

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In a recently released policy brief, ICANN addresses domain name monetization (PDF) as if it were a problem to be addressed. The policy brief begins by discussing and explaining domain monetization and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising in layman terms. The paper further goes on to discuss domain tasting and points out that domain monetization, specifically PPC, is at the root of the problems of domain tasting. Later in the brief, ICANN suggests that domain monetization may also be preventing internet users from using domain names. Generally speaking, the policy brief places domain monetization at the center stage as a problem likely to be cited in future ICANN policy considerations.

The paper asks:

“How Does Domain Monetization Impact Registrants?”

Domain name monetization techniques impact Internet users in different ways. The PPC model has been criticized for increasing the prevalence of cyber-squatting and speculative behavior by encouraging parties to grab names that are similar to famous brands or people and are therefore more likely to generate significant traffic.

Monetization did not impact registrants in this way. Tasting did. What is worrisome to Domain Name News is that in this brief ICANN is addressing the issue of domain monetization rather than domain tasting. The policy brief clearly puts “Domain Monetization” as the topic at hand, as if it were a problem. The problem we believe the brief should be addressing prominently is domain tasting. While there likely would be no domain tasting without a form of domain monetization (in this case PPC), one should not blame domain monetization as a problem worthy of policy considerations. Afterall, every domain name is monetized in some way, even ICANN.org is being monetized. Additionally, PPC domain monetization comes from search engines, yet ICANN places no blame on search engines or their advertisers for any of these “problems” with domain monetization.

Clearly there are ‘bad apples’ which brought the topic to the level where a policy brief had to be written about domain monetization. Registrars allowing tasting and domain monetization companies allowing trademarks to be monetized are part of the problem. Businesses and players in the domain business could have policed this issue a long time ago. Some registrars and parking companies have already undergone extensive purging of trademark infringing domains from their portfolios and prevent the monetization of them. There are also registrars who specifically forbid domain tasting. A leading parking company rep told Domain Name News “The TM market lives on as many parking companies continue to allow domain owners to park/monetize these domain names on their platforms. If the commercial incentive to own these names is removed, then the market will effectively disappear.”

ICANN is making attempts to solve the domain tasting issue with a proposed policy mentioned in the brief. Firstly, the proposed .20 fee for domain names deleted during the AGP should impact tasting operations bottom line and prevent the abuse of AGP. Additionally there is a proposed policy which states if a registrar deletes more than 10% of the total amount of domain names registered in a given month, refunds will not be granted. This should take care of the tasting issue, but it still leaves us wondering what else ICANN has up their sleeves regarding domain monetization.

But wait, ICANN isn’t through with saying that domain monetization is bad for the internet though. After addressing the tasting issue in the brief, ICANN states that domain monetization is a problem that is causing some domain names currently being used for PPC to be used in a way which may be a problem for some internet users. According to the paper Domain Monetization . . .

has also raised questions about whether “good names” are being used solely to create paid links and PPC revenue, rather than enable new users to create an online identity or substantive content.

This is often an argument cited by critics of domain monetization or domain parking. These critics (who likely do not have a good domain name or have a desire for a good domain name) feel that domain monetization robs them of domain names they could ‘put to use in a better way’ or as ICANN puts it with “substantive content”. In this scenario everyone who isn’t using a domain that I want is squatting the domain name. We wonder who is going to be the decision maker on any future policy of what is and is not “substantive content” or an “online identity” or who deserves a domain name and who doesn’t. It is not Domain Name News’ belief that this falls in to the mandate of ICANN and we feel they are treading further in to uncharted territory.  Additionally, there are plenty of alternative extensions available, and more to come. It’s likely that these “good domains” they are referring to are the more coveted .com domain names, so maybe this “problem” is already being addressed by the release of more extensions.

We believe that the intentions of this paper should have been to address the problems of domain tasting. As it is clear by a statement near the end of the paper that ICANN is more focused on tasting :

The practices of using parking and PPC to monetize domain names have not to date generated the same concerns as tasting.

The reasons for referencing domain monetization in this brief as if it were a problem is not clear, but it doesn’t read as a mistake. We see no good in labeling domain monetization as if it were a problem and wonder what else ICANN believes regarding domain monetization. The good that can be seen in this brief is that ICANN is making steps to do something about the tasting problems. The bad is that they’ve lumped all registrants and anyone monetizing a domain name in to the same basket. Let’s just hope that sensible minds come together in this “bottom-up, consensus based, policy making community” and not throw the baby out with the bath water.

(c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com

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Original post by Adam Strong

Domain blogs have been buzzing about Google and ICANN’s recent move to “kill domain tasting”. Upon a closer look Domain Name News felt that initial reports were largely exaggerated .

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Domain blogs have been buzzing about Google and ICANN’s recent move to “kill domain tasting”. Upon a closer look Domain Name News felt that initial reports were largely exaggerated .

Naturally that exaggeration perpetuated through out the web with a myriad of other bloggers like Jay, Sahar, Brett, Elliot, John Levine and even ZDnet and TechCrunch picking up the story and discussing this topic.

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The GNSO (Generic Names Supporting Organization) has released their Initial Report on Domain Tasting (pdf) yesterday. The report should be followed by a collection of public comments.

(c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com

Domain Tasting, gnso, ICANN, report, Up to the Minute

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Original post by Frank Michlick