DomainTools Blog

One of the questions I am asked is how can you predict another RegisterFly situation. A situation where a registrar goes bankrupt and stops servicing its customers. Lots of people were left in a lurch last year when RegisterFly tech support stopped answering tickets and RegistryFly didn’t pay for renewals to the Registry. The result was that the Registry started deleting domains of the RegistryFly customers.

The best way to predict the weakness of a registrar or a possible shortage of cash is when a customer buys or renews a domain name several years out and that renewal is not paid for at the Registry. A registrar can pocket the difference of the money and nothing bad will happen. The domain will continue to exist on the Internet and the customer may not notice the date field at the Registry.

When a registrar uses the money today that is allocated for renewals five year in the future it creates an imbalance in cash available in five years. It is best for the registrar to pay for the renewal today rather then wait. The prices of DotCom continue to go up yearly and it will only hurt the registrar if they don’t purchase the renewal years at today’s rates.

I heard a customer complaining yesterday that they renewed CCCP.com until 2017 and that we were reporting the wrong expiration date. It is sad when I have to report back to the customer that their registrar is cheating them and it is not some glitch with our website. It shows weakness at their registrar and this is a very bad sign for the health of the registrar. The customer jumped up and down claiming the Registrar whois shows 2017 and claimed the registrar whois was more accurate then the Registry. Sad fact is that statement is true the Registrar is the most accurate but the Registry controls the root. The domain expires in a week at the registry and it should be auto-renewed for one more year. If the customer leaves that registrar they will not receive those paid for years. Even if the customer gets the extra year put on at the end and they decide that now is the best time to cut and run, if they jump less then 45 days after the end of the Registration that year will get deducted thanks to a 45 day renewal bug. It is not the end of the world, however this indicates an implosion event in the future at that registrar. ICANN should be monitoring for situations like these. RegistryFly can happen again! Watch for the signs.

Some Registrars have been playing games and blocking transfers since the beginning of time. The rules for blocking transfers have been morphing continually over the years - ICANN keeps improving the rules and things continue to get better for the end-users. In the latest round of policy updates yesterday, ICANN announced it would be against the rules to block a transfer on a domain when the whois record changes.

That means a registrar cannot block a domain transfer based solely on a name change in the registrant field. ICANN also prohibited registrars from forcing a user to agree to a contract that bypasses the ICANN rules before the user can make changse to their whois record. The only blocking a registrar can do on a domain is within the FIRST 60 days after its initial registration or for a period of 60 days after an incoming transfer.

For quite some time now, certain registrars have blocked transfers on domains if the registrant changed their name on the whois record. Technically, this practice was never allowed by ICANN, but some registrars would bypass those rules by making a separate contract with the Registrant. There was no way to opt-out of that contract - if the customer wanted to update their record, they were bound to that registrar for another 60 days. Basically, Step 1 was agreeing to the involuntary contract and Step 2 was making a change to your record. This new rule says this sort of involuntary contract is not grounds for blocking a transfer, partially because registrants are mandated to keep their whois records up to date or the domain can be deleted.

Being forced to enter into an electronic contract in order to preform operations on your domain name doesn’t sit well with many consumers. It like being handcuffed to your registrar. Some have argued this practice is neccesary for security but that argument doesn’t make sense. True security has nothing to do with the Registrant Field and more to do with the Registrant’s email address and passwords to their registrar account.

I am very happy about this lastest policy advisory. ICANN has been trying to get all the Registrars to play by the same rules for a while but the lawyers at some Registrars seem to be smarter than the lawyers at ICANN. This advisory cuts through the involuntary contracts and now allows consumers the right to more freely move around. Congratulations ICANN!

The ICANN board just passed the following motion to end Domain Tasting, “THEREFORE, the Board resolves to encourage ICANN’s budgetary process to include fees for all domains added, including domains added during the AGP, and encourages community discussion involved in developing the ICANN budget, subject to both Board approval and registrar approval of this fee.”

It did not directly deal a death blow to tasting, but it was a definitive motion that will kill it this year. This policy is expected to go into effect when the new budget is approved, and that process typically happens in the summer.

http://www.icann.org/minutes/prelim-report-23jan08.htm

It seems all the heat on Domain Tasting in the last few weeks is causing everyone to take action, from Google to the ICANN Board. I applaud the decision to kill the abusive process of millions of free domain names, but I would caution the original use of the Add Grace Period (AGP) is still needed. The AGP was originally designed for very legitimate reasons: erasing domains purchased with a spelling error or for testing the registry computer system.

When the ICANN staff implements the new policy, there are specific things they should allow. Each registrar should have a testing limit of drops in the AGP, possibly 10,000 per month or 3% of all adds, whichever is greater.

One way to keep domain registration prices low is to not increase the domain registration costs for registrars. Bad credit cards are one of the reasons the AGP is needed. Registrars are severely affected when they purchase a domain from Verisign for $6+ and that purchase turns out to be from a stolen credit card. If the average margin on a domain is $1.00, it will take six legitimate registrations to pay for that one fraudulent domain purchase. Keeping costs low for registrars is a good thing. Domain Tasting should end, but registrars still need some use of the free AGP. The board made the motion to include the following language:

Whereas, it is the Board’s view that abuses of the AGP should speedily be halted, while the positive benefits of the AGP to consumers should be retained; Whereas, the positive benefits of the AGP may include, among other things,avoiding fraud and monitoring, testing and development of registrars’ provisioning, production and/or merchant gateway systems;

I am extremely happy Domain Tasting will end. I do feel a bit sad, though, since I coined the term Domain Tasting and now the phrase will be only used historically.

Have you every wanted to check if a domain was available for a common word for phrase in a different language. Asking us how to do a whois lookup on an IDN domain name is actually a common question in our support ticket system. So I thought I would let the world know how to do it. Perhaps you want to look at the whois record for “world map” in Korean. Here is a step-by-step instruction on how to do it.

1. Head over to Google Translate.
2. Enter in your words, such as “world map”.
3. Select the language you want to translate into. Example: “English to Korean”
4. If your results look like, “????”, then you need to install a language pack for your operating system. On WindowsXP it is really easy, just follow these instructions for the Microsoft Language Packs on Microsoft’s website. You can enable this from your control panel in a few minutes.

5. Once you have the translated words and it will look like a foreign language and it can be copied and pasted it into domaintools search box. Then the last step is to append “.com” to it. Then hit search and it will auto-translate it into the IDN script.

You will now see if the domain is available in a different language’s IDN alternative. Be sure to translate backwards to see if Google translated the meaning correctly. I have been able to find a few very valuable domains by doing this. Full IDN support was just introduced to DomainTools today. Please let us know if you see any translation problems.

By popular request here are some translation examples. I translated “World Map”:

?????????.com (Russian)
????.com (Japanese)
??????????????.com (Greek)
????.com (Korean)
???????????.com (Arabic)

Paul Stahura (CSO of DemandMedia) captured this video of the first in-person meeting of CORE back before the official formation of ICANN. The video was filmed November 7-10, 1997 (ten years to the day). When looking around the meeting you can see that there were plenty of people involved in the domain business back in the good old days. Some people have moved to registies, some people are no longer living, and some are still doing the exact same thing. Back in the late 90’s this group actually had a debate at one of the meetings discussing the fact they were running out of domain names. It was very certain that all single word domain names would be gone soon. The question was, what would registrars sell if there were no more good domain names left. Years later, it just sort of looks silly. We, the community register over 10 million domains a year now (that is 10 times more domains in one year then all the registrations combined leading up to 1999). The Internet community is continuing to register domain names at a faster and faster rate with no signs of slowing down, the acceleration continues.

“It was at the first full meeting of CORE, held in Tokyo. It is amazing to me how many of us are still around the industry.

Its kinda funny now to see this video knowing what we now know… this was pre-ICANN; and to see us all 10 years younger. Notice the lack of laptops at the meeting. Now when we meet, the tables are covered with them.

It’s a bit lengthy, about 20 minutes.

I pop in at the end, because I forgot to video myself during the meeting. For those who were there, you may remember this was the meeting when I bit through my tongue at dinner, and had to go to the hospital for stitches. eyow!, by beit mie thung.

Here’s to another 10 years!

Best,

Paul”

This video is a great time capsule. Thanks for sharing Paul!

ICANN has a stupid policy that allows gTLD registries to opt-out of showing thick whois information. DotTel tried to use this policy because UK privacy law doesn’t allow whois. Or that is at least what DotTel is telling us. The US Government denied the proposal and I have to say I agree with them. I love the US Veto power in this case! I think whois should be open and transparent.  Call me biased, but I have seen more good things come out of the open whois than bad things.  By turning off whois, it would allow criminals to operate more freely in the dark. My mother is in property management and it is scientifically proven that if you keep lights on all night long in a dark parking lot it wards off crime. If whois records and domain ownership goes into the dark, more bad will happen than we are already seeing. While I generally don’t like the US Government using the Veto power, I think it was a good call in this case.

My view is actually counter to my strongest belief, I would prefer that registries don’t publish thick whois records at all. I want Registries to publish thin whois like Verisign does. Then let the registrars control the whois of who owns a domain. The registrars are the official source according to ICANN so registries should get out of the business of publishing thick whois.

ICANN also needs to enforce the rules against registrars that don’t publish whois records for DotOrg and other thick registries. Registrars are required to publish records even if the Registry is doing it as well. When DotName stopped publishing whois records we figured out the registrar for the domain and then queried them directly to get the record.  Some Registrars publish records, but some do not. We have the only whois service that allows people to get easy access to whois records in DotName (at least for registrars that follow the rules).

I am glad the US Government stepped in but let’s get the thick whois out of the registries and into the registrars. I would also require registries to publish the IANA id of the registrar along with the URL of the Registrar’s whois server.

A new hope has just surfaced against the Verisign-ICANN monopoly. ICANN granted Verisign a contract that has no ability to end and has price increases that are baked into the contract forever. The new hope is an underdog watch group known as the “Coalition for ICANN Transparency, Inc.” (CFIT) that has filed a motion to declare the Verisign-ICANN contract a monopoly according to the Sherman Act. This is the third time they have brought the suit against ICANN and Verisign. The head lawyer on the case is Bret Fausett a sharp ICANN observer. There is not much hope that CFIT will win against such a titan, the other side has been able to get the case dismissed two times before, however I think the case is very strong and very accurate. The reason CFIT will face an up hill battle is because ICANN and Verisign have a lot of money to fight the lawsuit. Verisign has an extra $20 Million a year thanks to the contract and ICANN and VeriSign baked in a new ICANN fee that would be assessed on VeriSign and passed on to the registrars and ultimately passed on to consumers. This fee would result in excess of approximately $150 million dollars to ICANN over the contracted period of time and would be an end run around the existing ICANN budget approval process. The Court has already recognized that to eliminate competitive bidding violates the Sherman Act. The CEO of Tucows went on public record that they could provide DotCom registry services for $2 a name, which prompted the CEO of GoDaddy, the world’s largest registrar, to say that GoDaddy could do it for a dollar a name. Meanwhile the Chinese Registry CNNIC has figured out how to do provide global registry services for 13 cents a name per year. There is certainly a competitive market to run the DotCom registry.

So while the challenge is for CFIT to prove Verisign has a Monopoly in the eyes of the court, this will be a David vs Goliath type of fight that has a lot of valid points. What ICANN did was to grant a contract which goes against its own Bylaws and the Memorandum of Understanding between ICANN and the United States Department of Commerce, one of ICANN’s core missions is to promote competition. The DotCom contract now contains a “presumptive renewal” provision, which by its nature hinders competition. The proposed DotCom contract, however, goes much farther than the existing contract by strengthening the presumptive renewal and termination provisions on behalf of VeriSign, thereby making it virtually impossible for VeriSign to lose the DotCom registry and impossible to reap the benefits of competition. With price increases baked into the contract it also makes it nearly impossible for ICANN to take out the language of price increases. Next time the contract is renewed ICANN is obligated to extend the same terms and conditions and those price increase will continue to go up faster and faster. If that doesn’t make your blood broil then you don’t own a domain name.

The way the current contract reads Verisign has a monopoly and there is no way to break it. No other Registry can bid when the contract goes up for renewal. Prices will always go up and ICANN is mandated to continue renewing the contract. Verisign has a lock on ICANN and now owns the DotCom registry forever. The only hope we have is that the ICANN-Verisign contract is found to be a monopoly and a truly competitive bid is allowed on the Registry contract in the future.

Ask your Registrar to support the CFIT case financially. Only do business with a registrar that supports overturning the Verisign Monopoly.

DotCom prices go up October 15th. Verisign and other registries will be raising rates for registrars on that date. The top-level domains being effected are .com, .net, .org, .info .biz, .us and .name. On Monday, most registrars will be directly passing that cost on to their customers. If you own over 100 domains, you can save over $100 by renewing earlier than your auto-renewal date. If you own over 100,000 domains, you can save, well, a lot of money. Most big portfolio owners pay for domains one year at a time. If a domain expires in 30 or 60 days, most registrars will renew it for their customer if they have selected the auto-renew function. The registrar will bill the same credit card that is on-file.

eNom has already announced their price increases for October 15th. From what I hear, most registrars that have expensive domains like Dotster will not be increasing their rates. If a domain is $15 retail, it most likely will stay $15. However Dotster’s other brand, MyDomain.com, that has its lowest rate at $6.62 for over 100 domains will raise its rates. In short, if consumers have a lot of domains, they should renew now.

http://www.enom.com/price-notification.asp

Fabulous.com Domains
$7.15 = .com, .info and .org - Renewing/Registering/Transferring:
$5.15 = .net - Renewing/Registering/Transferring:

If you have a link to a registrar’s price increase page, please add it in the comments below and I will add it to the post. I have not been able to find price increase notifications very easily on many registrar websites.

UPDATE: The old price for DotCom to a registrar was $6.20 ($6.00 with Verisign+ $0.20 to ICANN). Now the price is $6.62 ($6.42 to Verisign + $0.20 to ICANN).

Domain Tasting has been going on for years however Ross Rader of Tucows recently raised the point that Domain Tasting may not even be allowed under section 3.74 of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement. ICANN has a poor history of enforcement on certain section and clauses. ICANN picks its battles careful, there are just too many provisions and rules to enforce. Mr. Rader has formally asked ICANN staff if they have ever enforced the provision that states, “3.7.4 Registrar shall not activate any Registered Name unless and until it is satisfied that it has received a reasonable assurance of payment of its registration fee.” An answer by ICANN Staff is expected sometime this month and it could lead to enforcement of the clause.

Mr. Rader points out:

The issue is not whether someone theoretically can pay for the registrations they’ve tasted, but that they will if the registration is activated. The second a registration gets transmitted to and accepted by the registry as a valid transaction, a fee is payable to the registrar. The clause in question clearly states that the registrar must be satisfied that the Registered Name Holder will pay for the registration and that such payment is final and non-revocable. In other words, a registrar is not permitted to issue a refund to a registrant for cancellations made during the Add Grace Period according to the terms of this contract. Generally, this reads that ICANN is not concerned as much with whether the registrant *could* pay the bill, but whether they *will*. Under all tasting implementations imaginable, the answer is clearly “no, they will not be paying that bill”.

The simple act of enforcement of 3.7.4 of the RAA may shut Domain Tasting down. A lot of arguments can be made against this but clearly a habitual user that preforms domain tasting can be isolated and told they are violating section 3.7.4 and that it is not allowed or the registrar could be discredited by ICANN. The issue is not about random domain owners and registrations that happen and then get deleted it is habitual users that clearly violate section 3.7.4 repeatably.

UPDATE:  ICANN has gotten back to Ross.  During any enforcement of this clause Registrars have responded to ICANN that they do collect payment during domain tasting. There is no minimum fee that is required to be paid so a valid defense is a registrar could charge $0.00001 for a domain per day. So if registrant registered 1,000,000 a domains the Registrar would be charge $10 a day. The registrant could then delete 999,900 of them before the AGP ended and the Registrar would charge the registrant $7 per domain for the 100 domains that were kept.

Payment is received and given so there is nothing in there that violates the clause in the contract. I guess this clause will do nothing and is actual rather pointless.

Domain owners that pay the renewal fee on their domain after expiration date and then transfer away from their current registrar are getting fleeced out of a year of registration. Under the right conditions and if everything aligns correctly we find that hundreds of transaction each day are being deprived of a paid domain year. I confirmed my finds when I found Pat Kane the Director of Business Operations of Verisign during the ICANN meeting in Lisbon. No registrar that I am aware of proactively provides a refund if the domain owner transfers away within 45 days of the anniversary of the domain creation and renewed after the expiration. I asked a few registrars and Elliot Noss the CEO of Tucows went on the record and said he would provide a refund when this edge case happened at Tucows. Mr. Noss doesn’t believe that many domain owners experience this at his registrar because their transfer policy allows domain owners to transfer out after expiration. At a registrar like Godaddy the edge case may happen a lot, if a registrar blocks the transfer during the grace period until the domain is paid for the case will happen more often.

However a lot of registrars do not allow owners to transfer out after expiration, instead they insist that the owner renew the domain name because it is past expiration, after the renewal they will not block the transfer. But their is a huge problem with this, Verisign refunds the money to the original registrar for the renewal if another registrar transfers the domain away in this window. Verisign implicitly automatically renews every domain that expires, this is why the domain stays alive past expiration, it is up to the current registrar if they want to delete the domain. The only way Verisign knows if a domain owners pays is if the registrar doesn’t delete the domain during the grace period. So if a transfer goes out, Verisign refunds one year to the old registrar, even it you paid for it, it is refunded to the old registrar.

The Verisign accounting system that handles over 75 Million transactions a year has a flaw in it that some registrars may not understand how it works and generally don’t issue a refund when they are issued a refund by Verisign. The special circumstances are as follows: The domain is past expiration, the owner renews the domain at the current registrar, the owner then transfers away with in 45 days of the anniversary of the creation date.

Do not renew your domain at your old registrar during the grace period and then transfer out. Instead, directly transfer out or pay your renewal fee, wait until day 46 after the old expiration and then transfer out. You will loose one year of registration if you pay first then leave.

Verisign could fix the hole by requiring a registrar to send an explicit renewal command, but the command doesn’t exist right now.

According to the Official ICANN FAQ at http://www.icann.org/compliance/faq.html, it says:

My domain name has just expired. Can my registrar require me to pay for a renewal before I can transfer to a new registrar?

No. Your new registrar of choice can initiate a transfer request on an expired domain name once they receive the required authorization from you. Expiration or nonrenewal of a domain name is not a valid reason for denial of a transfer request.

Note that if the registrar has already begun the deletion process on the domain name and its status shows it to be within a 30-day Redemption Grace Period, the name must be .restored. by your current registrar before it can be transferred.

This loophole most likely exists at other registries as well because most registries are modeled around Verisign’s registry. However Verisign has the biggest marketshare of the other registries and so it could be costing consumers millions a year.

UPDATE: Key-Systems.net, an ICANN accredited registrar has been giving refunds to resellers since 2002 with a automated fix they added five years ago. But only to resellers under the RRPproxy and ISPproxy system not to retail customers. So it would seem some registrars know they should give refunds… however not one registrar does give refunds on an automated bases to retail customers.

Richard Lau from RegistrarManager.com also pointed out ICANN posted an advisory about this in 2002. When I personally asked Verisign and a few registrars about this issue not one of them recalled the advisory ( http://www.icann.org/announcements/advisory-06jun02.htm ).