.SUCKS Launches With Fears Of Brand-Bashing
The launch of the .sucks gTLD is certainly not without controversy and the gTLD is promoting itself as a “bash-a-brand” gTLD. And rightfully brand owners are concerned that they may be forced to register some of the highest prices for a domain name for any TLD just to ensure a registrant doesn’t set up a website to allow internet users to vent their displeasure at their brand.
The operators of .sucks claim each .sucks “domain has the potential to become an essential part of every organisation’s customer relationship management programme.” They want it to be a legitimate place where the public can voice criticism.
But not everyone agrees.
“There is a big part of me that would like to tell brands to simply walk away, and to forgo any registrations in this TLD,” writes Elisa Cooper on the MarkMonitor blog. “However, when I think of the fallout that could occur within our clients’ companies when .SUCKS sites start popping up, I cannot in good faith recommend this approach. Furthermore, I believe that recovery of these domains using traditional methods will be extremely difficult.”
The new gTLD, operated by the Vox Populi Registry based in the Cayman Islands and an affiliate of Momentous.ca, had been rumoured to be charging $25,000 per domain during the Sunrise period. But upon launch, it is now known .sucks domain names will cost $2,499 during the Sunrise period for brands registered in the Trademark Clearinghouse.
The 60 day Sunrise period will commence on 30 March, while General Availability commences on 1 June.
This price will drop during launch phases and in September 2015 the Consumer Advocate Subsidised “product” will launch when everything.sucks, a consumer advocacy site, who has contracted with dotSucks, will subsidise the purchase of domains for individual consumers that wish to host a forum discussion website.
However the Standard Registration product, which will commence in June 2015 and will allow for domains to be blocked, will cost $249 per domain. Standard Registrations will qualify for the Consumer Subsidy Programme that will be introduced in September of 2015. There is also a “Block” option for $199. Each of these options, and more, become available at different dates and for different prices.
Domain Incite has looked into WIPO decisions where brand names have been linked with “sucks” in .com. In short, brand owners are favoured. But of course, lodging a dispute while not in itself costing money costs money in lawyer’s fees and time.
Sunrise For .IRISH Commenced St Patrick’s Day
The Sunrise period for the .irish gTLD launched yesterday (17 March), St Patrick’s Day, and is now available to the global Irish community for use by businesses, brands and organisations all over the world who wish to register early and who want to market and develop products and services clearly identifying with the word ‘Irish’.
The 60 day ‘Sunrise’ period provides trademark holders with a valuable opportunity to protect their brand names and trademarks by registering their .irish domain name before they become generally available.
From 21 May to 20 June there will be the Landrush Phase. This is a premium phase open to the general public during which high value domain names that are not trademarks can be applied for. If multiple applications are received for the same domain name during the Landrush phase, an auction will be held to give applicants the opportunity to bid for the domain name.
And then on 25 June 2015 the .Irish domain will be open to the general public.
Domain Pulse 2015: New gTLDs Can Be Beneficial in Search, But Content Remains the Key
At the Domain Pulse conference in Berlin last month, Martin Scholz gave a presentation on how new gTLDs can be advantageous for business.
Scholz, from Searchmetrics who specialise in SEO content marketing analysis, explained how there can be advantages for registrants using new gTLDs. While using a good .com or ccTLD domain is likely to be the best option for a brand owner to get a high search ranking, not everyone is able to get one.
So a small business might find that they can get a more targeted .london or .berlin domain that will be advantageous. Searchmetrics, Scholz said, had found there are advantages with a .berlin domain for local Berlin businesses. They found .berlin domains rank higher than .de domains in local search results for searches relating to the German capital.
The example Scholz gave was that if a business has well a performing domain, like visitberlin.de, the example he used, then there is not really a need to move the domain to a gTLD. But not everyone has a well-performing domain so for some it may be on their list to work on their domain anyway. And if so, they can think about getting a ‘better’ domain that is more suited for their business – if it’s located in Berlin, it may – but it doesn’t have to – be an option to choose a .berlin domain.
User behaviour will also play a part. On a simplified level one could say: the more internet users click on a link, the higher a website ranks. Of course, there are other metrics like bounce rate and time-on-site that have a huge influence. So generally, if internet users start thinking, as in the example used by Scholz, that a .berlin domain is more relevant for them than a .de domain and they click on it more often, and they stay on the website and interact with the content, then this will affect the ranking by search engines such as Google and Bing.
But Scholz concluded, the main focus of webmasters should not be the kind of TLD they use, but rather have relevant content for their users.
More information on happenings at Domain Pulse are in the DENIC new release below:
Organizer DENIC welcomes Peter Schaar, MP Christian Flisek and experts of the industry to topical Internet policy debates
Is there any way in the age of web 2.0 to avoid digital disgrace and to safely protect one’s reputation? Have large commercial online services like Google and Facebook become so powerful that regulation is necessary and useful? Is it possible? How can users gain control of their online communication infrastructure? Which opportunities offer new approaches like transparent algorithms, open standards or interoperability? Must governments step in and protect the general public against the monopolists in the net? What measures could be applied and how realistic is their enforceability? Did the launch of new Internet address endings, like .hamburg, .bio or .bmw, actually initiate a “revolution” of the web as promised by their operators? Did they meet the users’ expectations?
Under the motto “Net-in-motion”, the twelfth specialist conference Domain pulse, which was held in Berlin on 26 and 27 February, provided interesting statements, forecasts and answers to these and other highly topical issues. More than 350 visitors listened to the lectures and international-expert panel discussions that have made the largest annual congress about topics and trends of the Internet domain sector an established meeting of the industry in the German-speaking territory. The two-day event is staged annually in turns by the registries managing the country code Top Level domains of Austria (nic.at), of Switzerland and Liechtenstein (SWITCH), and by DENIC, the operator of the German country code TLD .de, who is hosting this year’s conference.
Control loss and control attempts in the digital age
At the start of the conference on 26 February, keynote speaker Prof. Dr. Bernhard Pörksen from Tübingen University, one of the most renowned communication experts internationally, explained the basic principles of reputation management. With numerous witty case examples, he vividly demonstrated how the reputation of private individuals, companies or political entities can be “steered” in no time today. He strongly recommends everybody – individuals as well as companies or institutions – to have a media strategy for the digital age. “Today’s interactive media provide unprecedented possibilities for scandalization. Somebody feeling like taking umbrage already is sufficient – the only other thing this person needs is an audience,” warned Pörksen, and closed with some action recommendations for all of us.
Digital heavyweights and society: Regulation or laissez-faire?
A hot verbal battle on the topic “Digital heavyweights and society: Regulation or laissez-faire?” fought Peter Schaar, former Federal German Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, and Thomas Knüwer, founder of the digital consultancy kpunktnull, and made their statements how to deal with the extensive power of today’s international Internet enterprises like Google and Facebook, whose monopolist status creates totality instead of plurality. The experts agreed that the lock-in effects resulting from the non-interoperability of the social networks, strengthened the position of the monopolists even further. They did not agree, however, how to assess this phenomenon.
Knüwer considers the current discussion that generally suspects all Internet companies of hoarding data for unlawful purposes as exaggerated. From the users’ point of view, so his opinion, a multitude of social networks is not useful because they do not allow cross-network communication. For him, the Big Brother question must rather be asked in relation with public institutions, who attempt to legitimate blanket data retention with their crime prevention or short pre-crime approach.
Peter Schaar, in contrast, sees an urgent need for government regulation, given the oppressive dominance of the Internet monopolists, who acquire competitors on a large scale and extract user data from various services to combine and personalize them in detail. In his opinion, the legislator has to ensure user autonomy for certain services by making algorithms more transparent and standards more open. Moreover, the current competition and cartel law must be enhanced. A new definition of monopoles taking into consideration both the user’s side as well as the impacts of search machines and social networks on the advertising market is overdue.
Criticized in the discussion also was the rather unsatisfactory approach from the political side in Germany. Different from other countries like the USA, there were hardly any politicians in Germany with a clear opinion on Internet matters. Neither was there a real discussion about the digital society we would like to have in the future. Apparently, German politicians were unable to properly handle the topic and competence-building measures, also for creating greater awareness of the wider public, the order of the day, so the opinion of the panelist.
Internet Governance: The cards are being reshuffled – Pitfalls and desires
Also the second day of the Domain pulse was dedicated to Internet policy. One of the central topics was the general climate in the context of Internet Governance: What is left of the NETmundial conference of 2014 in Brazil, in which (multi-)stakeholders from all fields including politics, economy, technical community and civil society have been involved? Which issues should be followed up? What about the NETmundial Initiative (NMI), which is strongly driven by the World Economic Forum? Is it a useful follow-up platform of the NETmundial? Does it compete with the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), as some rumours say? And what about the IGF? Is the extension of the mandate by the UNO safely wrapped up? How stable is the institution? What will a multistakeholder organization without the be like “shadow of the state”? A situation awaiting us when the transition of the stewardship function of basic
Internet resources currently held by the USA, the so-called IANA transition, takes place as planned in September 2015. Do we need a controlling entity outside of ICANN? Can we learn from the principle of the separation of power in modern democracies and transfer it to the IANA succession?
In a high-caliber panel discussion, Professor Wolfgang Kleinwächter, member of the ICANN Board, Thomas Schneider, Chair of ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), Christoph Steck, Director Public Policy for Telefónica as a representative of the private sector at the NETmundial Initiative, Thomas Rickert of the Association of the German Internet Economy, eco, and DENIC-CEO Jörg Schweiger tried to assign protagonists, roles, affiliations and connections.
The tenor of the forum: By the NETmundial conference, the various stakeholder groups had proven that consensus could be achieved through the multistakeholder approach at eye level to adopt a joint declaration. It must be clear, however, that the declaration merely was an agreement on common basic values providing a solid foundation for solutions that should be developed jointly on an international level.
It was emphasized that the NETmundial Initiative expressly characterized itself as not being a parallel organization of the economy that wanted to exploit the – compared to intergovernmental agreements non-binding – multistakeholder approach for its own benefit. NMI at present rather should be considered a beta version. In an open consultation process, it wanted to obtain the opinions of the various communities and saw itself as a binding element between the different initiatives. Given the fact that the UN mandate of the Internet Governance Forum currently did not provide any decision-making power, the questions and problems related to the future management of the Internet resources and their services and applications identified at the IGF had to be addressed and promoted at other levels with a focus on implementation.
Digital agendas for Germany and Europe – a critical assessment of the status quo
In the next discussion round “The Old World’s answer to the New World’s IT challenge: Digital agendas for Germany and Europe – a critical assessment of the status quo”, German and European Internet politicians met with Volker Tripp from Digitale Gesellschaft e.V., an advocate of civil society who represents their criticisms. On the panel were Christian Flisek, spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group in the NSA Committee of Inquiry and member of the Committee of the German Bundestag on the Digital Agenda, as well as Sabine Verheyen, Member of the European Parliament for the German party CDU and deputy member of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection.
Flisek defended the Digital Agenda of the German Government. Even though much attacked by the general public, he called it a successful step in the right direction; for the first time the focus was on cross-sectional topics. Also the distribution of responsibility across three ministries (BMI, BMWi and BMVI) was valued positively by him. Despite all criticism, it created a stimulating competition for reasonable results. From the point of view of the Committee of Inquiry, however, a strong need for improvement was identified with regard to fundamental right protection by use of technology. He requested a permanent monitoring to be institutionally established, which should include a reformation of the existing parliamentary control entities.
Sabine Verheyen pointed out that the European approach to the digital internal market was directed first of all to economic cooperation, which was due to the transfer of competences to the European Union. National sovereignty for issues relevant to the society as a whole made it difficult to address such topics in the European context. The aim behind all the efforts was to pool the interests of the member states and enhance harmonization. Tripp complained that up to the present positive incentives had come only from the legal side, and stated the ECJ ruling about the right to be forgotten as an example.
Flisek criticized that the Code Law often tried to assume the role of a quasi-substitute lawmaker with the aim to more or less level out the interests of platforms against democratically legitimized rules. The complete existing legislation being territorially restricted, companies operating in the global context consistently faced jurisdiction conflicts, he pointed out. Thus, internationally agreed rules for the use of the Internet were urgently required. However, this must not mean giving up national regulatory competence. Moreover, European standards should be raised at least to the transatlantic context.
Volker Tripp advocated more self-confidence in supporting the European fundamental right position. He criticized the decisions of the German government, which, he said, often seemed to be based on fear and diffuse anxieties. He is missing a culture of options and possibilities. In his opinion, the WLAN duty of care, generally denounced as the gateway for anonymous Internet crime, should be abolished; one year later, a survey should investigate if and to what extent the related concerns had been justified.
Generally, the question arose, so Sabine Verheyen, which solution was better, regulation or negotiation, and mentioned the example of the transfer of air passenger data, a topic of highly controversial public debate. However, one had to be aware that finding consensus was very difficult and one could not pretend the German understanding of fundamental rights to be the non plus ultra.
Tripp countered that everybody could make the rules of a service provider the decisive criterion for their choice. The rules of a sovereign state, in contrast, had to be observed, if you liked them or not. So there really should be made a distinction between companies and governments collecting data.
All panelists agreed that German governmental authorities should strongly increase their presence on the international stage of Internet policy.
Other topics on the congress agenda included the new Internet address endings launched one year ago, their establishment in the market and to what degree have they met expectations – in particular with regard to search engine relevance. Further discussed were the security of telematic systems, mobile end devices and critical infrastructures as well as the types of disputes between domain holders and brand owners arriving from brand and copyright violations.
Domain pulse on the Internet
You will find the complete program of the specialist congress and all information about the protagonists involved on the event website www.domainpulse.de. About one week after the event, we will also make available live recordings as a retrospective of the event. The next Domain pulse will be held in Lausanne in Switzerland on 1 and 2 February 2016.
Rightside Releases Over 20,000 2-Character Domain Names
Rightside has just released over 20,000 2-character domain names. The list includes domain names for each of the top level domain names Rightside owns.
All the domain names will be released on March 18, at 17:00 UTC. The list features over 20,000 2-character domain names, with price ranges from $200 to $50,000.The domain names will be available on a first come first served basis, according to Rightside.
Some of the domin names to be released today are :
00.actor
00.moda
01.dance
01.lawyer
02.rip
02.sale
03.brand
03.forsale
06.degree
06.market
09.auction
0a.social
69.immobilien
Here are the extensions included in this list:
.ACTOR
.FORSALE
.PUB
.AIRFORCE
.FUTBOL
.REHAB
.ARMY
.GIVES
.REPUBLICAN
.ATTORNEY
.HAUS
.REVIEWS
.AUCTION
.IMMOBILIEN
.RIP
.BAND
.KAUFEN
.ROCKS
.CONSULTING
.LAWYER
.SALE
.DANCE
.MARKET
.SOCIAL
.DEGREE
.MODA
.SOFTWARE
.DEMOCRAT
.MORTGAGE
.VET
.DENTIST
.NAVY
.VIDEO
.ENGINEER
.NINJA
More information you can find here
ICANN: Request for Proposal: DNS Study for the Middle East and Adjoining Countries
ICANN is seeking a provider to conduct a study on the domain name industry in the Middle East and Adjoining Countries (“MEAC Region”)1. The goal of this study is to identify and define the strengths and weaknesses in the industry ecosystem within the region, and develop recommendations on how to advance the industry and bring it closer to the opportunities available.
The recommendation to conduct this study is one of the outcomes of the ICANN Middle East Engagement Strategy, developed by a group of community members in the region2. The Strategy defined three strategic focus areas for the region one of which was to further develop the domain name industry.
The study at a minimum will investigate the current state of the Internet and the domain name industry in the region, define best practices that have made an impact in domain name market growth, look at the broader ecosystem of the Internet infrastructure and online services and describe the impact of such elements on the overall evolution of the domain name industry, describe the business potential in the domain name industry in this region, and provide suggestions on how to develop the industry and what business models can be adopted in the entire industry chain. The study will include data, analysis, and recommendations.
The final report of the study is to be delivered no later than 9th October 2015.
For additional information and instructions for submitting responses please click here [ZIP, 409 KB].
Proposals should be submitted to
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
by 23:59 UTC on 6 April 2015.
1 The MEAC region consists of the 22 Arab States in addition to Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Turkey.
2 This wiki space provides more details about the Strategy. Key documents include the Strategy Document [PDF, 1.5 MB], the Year 1 Implementation Plan [PDF, 88.8 KB], and the Year 2 Implementation Plan [PDF, 28.7 KB].
This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2-2015-03-16-en
