Donuts Wins Rights for .Family new TLD
Donuts has recently won the right for the new gTLD .Family. The company managed to knock out its rivals, Google and UNiregistry.
Uniregistry also managed to win a few days ago the rights to operate the new gTLD .mom, knocking out its rivals, Google and Rightside.
The new gTLD .Family is scheduled to go into ICANN Last Resort auction this month.
Consoles.com Topped Flippa’s Weekly Sales List at $50,000
Flippa has just sent in their weekly sales report. Consoles.com was the highest reported domain name sales at $50,000 .
Flippa revealed over $80,000 in domain name sales for the last week.
Here are the sales :
Consoles.com $50,000
Divider.com $17,500
Automating.com $15,000
VitaminOutlet.com $4,500
DesignGraphics.com $3,999
Smartwatch.info $3,100
WebApplication.com $3,050
FairfieldRealEstate.com $2,000
Shoelaces.net $1,750
Shower.net $1,659
SafetyGloves.ca $1,649
Drunker.com $1,551
G.im $1,300
Cases.co $1,188
Tattoo.Directory $925
SleepingPills.info $800
PilotLightFoundation.org $750
MyDistance.com $750
Goggles.io + Portfolio of 8 .IO Domains $633
Relationz.com $650
Overheating.com $625
WhiskyDomains.com + Portfolio of 97 Whisky-related domains $550
Zembo.com $515
Dongles.net $501
ModernProfile.com $500
Productz.com $475
WPGS.com $415
DietPrograms.net $375
69.biz $351
Aleza.com $325
Seats.info $316
Virtuae.com $275
PlayMusic.net $249
SEOfp.com $225
Winelist.net $223
URLPrivacy.com $205
qRog.com $200
Taiwan.com and HongKong.com Domains Are Now Up For Sale
The premium domain names HongKong.com and Taiwan.com are now listed for sale through Domain Holdings Group.
According to whois records, both Taiwan.com and HongKong.com were first registered in August, 1994.
You can read the press release after the jump :
” Domain Holdings Group, Inc today announced the super-premium domain names HongKong.com and Taiwan.com are now exclusively for sale by its brokerage team.
“HongKong.com and Taiwan.com are 2 of the most important domains to both commerce and tourism inAsia,” said Alan Dunn, Managing Director of Domain Holdings Group.”And today marks the first time in over 20 years these assets are available for sale.”
According to the Wealth-X and UBS World Ultra Wealth Report for 2013 Hong Kong has become the largest recipient from the diversification of assets by mainland Chinese Ultra High Net Worth individuals. The opportunity to own these domains has a very short window but the successful buyers will gain a global brand for two of the most valuable economies in the world.
“Over the last two years the China market has become a dominant investor in domain names and we expect these domains to fetch near record prices,” said Mark Daniel, Director of Business Development for Domain Holdings Group.”
Sovereignty and Property Rights: Conceptualizing the Relationship between ICANN, ccTLDs and National Governments by Milton Mueller & Farzaneh Badiei
Abstract: Can ccTLDs be considered property? Or are they sovereign rights? Or are they somehow both? In recent litigation involving the top level domain for Iran (.IR), plaintiffs sought to garnish the domain as a form of property that could be used to compensate victims of terrorist acts allegedly backed by the Iranian state. Similar cases seeking to garnish ccTLDs have affected Syria (.SY) and the Congo (.CG).
In the theory and practice of Internet governance, there is a tendency to resist recognizing ccTLDs as a property right. These arguments tend to view ccTLDs as trustee relationships and argue that recognizing private property rights will undermine the rights of the domain registrants within the ccTLDs. Some (but not all) court cases have found that second-level domains are not property, but services.
On the other hand, governments are keen on asserting sovereignty rights over ccTLDs. They claim that sovereigns should be the ultimate authority over delegation and public policy for ccTLDs. In countries like Iran with a long-term conflict with the US, sovereignty rights are thought to immunize them from confiscation by outsiders. Some sovereignty claims closely mirror property claims.
In physical space, sovereign states have recognized territories. Sovereignty results primarily from a state’s ability to maintain a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence in that territory, but also from recognition of its sovereignty by other states. In cyberspace, the delegation of a domain name representing a country (e.g., .BR for Brazil, or .IN for India) involves an unusual three-party relationship between a government, a party that operates the domain (delegee) and ICANN. ICANN, as the global coordinator and policy maker for the domain name space, must delegate a country code or name to a specific operator – otherwise the domain simply does not exist on the Internet. And because the DNS root is a globally shared resource, its management involves more than the wishes of the sovereign state but also involves obligations to “the global Internet community.” Yet, as a nonprofit under U.S. federal and California jurisdiction, ICANN’s role seemingly subjects ccTLD delegees to civil law claims of the sort seen in the Iran and Congo cases.
What, then, is the best way to shape the relationship between ccTLD delegees, ICANN and the governmental authority referenced by a ccTLD string, and what role should sovereignty or property rights claims play? The scholarly literature has left these questions unsettled. It has studied mainly the relationship between states and ICANN, or between the state and the ccTLD delegee. Studies that consider the triangular relationship of ICANN, delegees and states have not applied both property and sovereignty theories. Either it has assumed that states have sovereignty rights over their ccTLDs, or it has not dealt with the applicability of the theories of sovereignty and property rights to this relationship.
This paper uses a law and economics framework to analyze the relationship between ccTLD delegation, theories of sovereignty and theories of property rights. While property is a private right and sovereignty is a public right, international relations theorists have argued that they have some commonalities. Both, for example, involve claims of exclusivity. Both are also invoked in allocating rights over international resources, such as rights over the sea and over space. By critically and systematically examining the consequences of applying sovereignty and property rights to ccTLDs, this paper attempts to provide practical insights into the best way to handle conflicting claims over ccTLD delegations.
To download this paper, go to:
ssrn.com/abstract=2575450
2015 Spring Premium Auction is Underway! Three Bids So Far
SnapNames is hosting these days the 2015 Spring Premium domain name auction. The auction features 128 domain names, out of which only three received bids.
The auction will end April 16,2015 at 12: 15 pm PT.
At the time of writing thi article, only three domain names received bids and two of them met their reserve prices :
StereoHeadphones.com Current Bid : $1,000
FacialSoaps.com Current Bid : $300 (Reserve met)
Humility.org Current Bid : $300 (Reserve met)
Other interesting domain names included in the auction are :
AlternativeEnergy.com
FinancialManagement.com
BusinessAdministration.com
Meet.ca
Nationally.com
NightClub.vegas
SEOService.com
Slogan.com
TrafficTicket.ca
TY.ca
You can see the entire inventory and place your bids here.
