News and Events

New gTLDs launching soon

.dev and .inc will be launching soon in January but with a challenge. The challenge can lead to a controversy but let's see the details.

.dev is the latest of Google’s portfolio to be released, aimed at the software developer market.

First time when it was added to the DNS in 2014, it led to a problem for some developers who were already using .dev domains on their private networks. It took 4 years for all these collisions to resolve but still, the problems will emerge more once the domain buying and selling will start.

Google has already launched one of its own products, web.dev, a testing tool for web developers, on a .dev domain.

.inc Launching with a pretty much identical phased launch plan is .inc, from new market entrant Intercap Holdings, a Caymans-based subsidiary of a Toronto firm founded by .tv founder Jason Chapnik and managed by .xyz alumnus Shayan Rostam.

Intercap bought the .inc contract from Edmon Chong’s GTLD Limited earlier this year for an undisclosed sum. GTLD Ltd is believed to have paid in excess of $15 million for the TLD at auction.

.inc has proved controversial in the past, attracting criticism from states attorneys general in the US, which backed another bidder.

Credit: dnjournal.com

.io sold for $70 million, bought by Afilias

Afilias paid $70 million for the popular alternative TLD 18 months ago.

A recently published financial statement in Ireland shows that the company spent $70.17 million cash — a 10x revenue multiple — for 100% of Internet Computer Bureau Ltd in April 2017.

ICB runs .io, .ac and .sh, the ccTLDs for the British Indian Ocean Territories (.io), Ascension Island (.ac), and Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan Da Cunha (.sh).

Afilias has never publicly announced the deal.

Uniregistry calls for domain Bill of Rights

Uniregistry has called for a “Domain Bill of Rights” to protect free speech in a world were domain takedowns can be used to de-platform controversial speakers.

Meanwhile, CEO Frank Schilling has told DI that the company did not expel the right-wing social network Gab.com from Uniregistry’s platform, and would have allowed it to stay.

In a press release this week, Uniregistry COO Kanchan Mhatre said that while the company rejects “hatred and bigotry”, free speech is an “inalienable” human right.

The company called for the new agreement “to guarantee every domain name owner a formal ‘due process’ when being faced with accusations and demands for censorship”.

Schilling said that Uniregistry’s idea for a Domain Bill of Rights is still in the early stages. It has sketched out 10 draft bullet points but is not ready to publish them yet.

Credit: dnjournal.com

Trump gives Verisign almost $1 billion in free money

That’s according to the back of the envelope I’m looking at right now, following the announcement that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration is reinstating Verisign’s right to increase .com registry fees.

A new amendment to the Verisign-NTIA Cooperative Agreement restores Verisign’s ability to raise prices by 7% per year in four of the six years of the deal.

The removal of the Obama-era price freeze still needs to be incorporated into Verisign’s ICANN contract, but it’s hard to imagine ICANN, which is generally loathed to get into pricing regulation, declining to take its lead from NTIA.

.ONLINE crossed 1 Million Registrations

Three years and 3 months after entering general availability, Radix’s .online has become their first new gTLD to hit the one million registrations mark, and the fifth overall. Today there are 1.012 million .online registrations according to nTLDStats, 604,00 of which are parked, the highest proportion of the top 5 new gTLDs by registration numbers.

Overall the top 5 new generic top level domains are .top with 3.811 million registrations, .loan (2.245m), .xyz (2.220m), .club (1.516m) and then .online. For Radix, their top 5 new gTLDs are .online, .site (721,000), .website (281,000), .space (268,000) and .tech (238,000) and they have a total of 3.080 million domain names across 9 new gTLDs.

Credit: dnjournal.com