Recently in domainers Category

The TRAFFIC conference will be held in the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas from January 21 to 23rd 2010.

TRAFFIC, which has been running since 2004, is one of the more popular conference series in the domain industry. 2010 will see the event being held in the US, Europe and Asia - which is a first for them.

Further details are available on the official site.

So what does a ccTLD operator do when they're worried about cashflow?

They go off and spend thousands on a glossy annual report obviously!



The IEDR's annual report and review for 2008 is the glossiest one they've produced to date. As usual it contains plenty of fluff while ignoring anything of substance.

In the Chairman's introductory statement they reveal that:

"The board has agreed terms of reference for a Policy Advisory Committee (PAC) to advise on .ie namespace policy matters, the membership to be representative of relevant stakeholder organisations"

Well that's charming.
The document that was being discussed between the IEDR and its resellers was firmly slanted in the IEDR's favour and had not been accepted by the reseller community.
So now it looks like the IEDR have done what they always do and unilaterally implemented a change without accepting feedback from the companies that pay their bills (registrars / resellers) or those that give them a raison d'etre (registrants).

Scanlan goes on to infer that the IEDR have been appointed as the registry operator for the .ie namespace permanently. This is not the case, unless whoever wrote the Comreg documents is a very bad communicator, which I somehow doubt.

Making repeated reference to the Comreg report is annoying, as Comreg did not actually publish the report of the external consultants. All that was published was the result of the public consultation - and even that was months behind schedule and did not reveal anything really meaty.

So what about the rest of this year's report?

Well it has got lots of plenty glossy photos of IE registrants (Why aren't they using this in publications that the public see???) there isn't a huge amount of substance.



The report states the following about the aftermarket which underlines the level of their ignorance

".. Furthermore, there is no secondary market for .ie domains, which reduces the incentive for 'domainers' to engage in cybersquatting and domain warehousing"

So all "domainers" are "cybersquatters"?

Why does the IEDR have such a ridiculous fear of the secondary market?

Other registry operators such as AFNIC, which also restricts registrations to some degree, do not see aftermarket activity in such negative terms.

It could also be argued that the registry's restriction on trade in domains is unlawful

One could also argue that the IEDR's current "managed registry" model, whatever that is exactly, contravenes Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In case you're not familiar with that specific article here it is:

"ARTICLE 10

   1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. this right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
   2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or the rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary. "

Has anyone ever challenged the consitutionality of the IEDR's stance?

As a body that draws its powers from Comreg's regulation and Irish legislation it cannot continually use the excuse of being a private company.

But I still fail to see how the IEDR can justify the expense of a glossy report like this yet be incapable of communicating an important policy change to its stakeholders (sole traders may now register their surname). Spending money on improving their communications with stakeholders would appear to be a better way of investing their funds.

Do Comreg care enough to actually act?

Or will they sit idly by while the IEDR cherrypick which voices to hear and implement policy changes with little or no real input?

UPDATE: I've attached the full report (4.2 MB PDF):
IEDR AN Report 08-web.pdf

While I may not be in a position to attend ...

The 8th Toronto Domainer Dinner is being held this Thursday.

Full details and booking here

Google dropped a bit of a bombshell yesterday when they announced that they were opening up Adsense for Domains to the general public (North American publishers first).

Could this be the end for some of the smaller parking companies?

With Google's ever growing publisher base I suspect that some of the parking companies are going to be under pressure. Unless they can bring something new and interesting to their clients some of them may not survive such a move intact (I'm thinking mergers etc.,)

While the big companies such as Oversee and Sedo have a diversified portfolio of both web properties and revenue sources, what about some of the smaller players? With Google for domains being offered via the Adsense control panel it may be all too easy for publishers to simply move their domains onto that system and get a single monthly payment from Google instead of dealing with multiple, smaller, payments that incur higher banking charges.

Of course it's early days yet, so the actual impact of this kind of change may not be felt for a few months.

Thanks to the guys over on DomainNameNews for mentioning it

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google opens up Adsense for Domains: now more people can typosquat and make money!
• Google Adsense for Domains: What's Left?
• Google Expands Parked Domain Ads Program
• AdSense for Domains Is Now Open for Everyone (Kinda)

I really am a sucker for silly junk, but the idea of getting a Rick Schwartz bobblehead was incredibly appealing, so I did ...



They were auctioning a signed one off on Ebay, however they weren't shipping it outside the US, so I didn't bid (well I did bid, I just didn't get carried away!)

In some ways the failure of .eu to capture hearts and minds makes me sad. I'm European. I'd like to think that a European namespace could be a success, but that seems to be a misplaced desire.

As I mentioned some time ago, the only way to grow a namespace or TLD is through usage. Once people start to see a domain extension in "action" then they begin to start using it. If people start using it then everyone benefits - registry, registrars, "normal" registrants and domain investors alike.

When was the last time you saw a high profile .eu site?

You'd have to think long and hard about it, wouldn't you?

Even the "big boys" aren't really using their .eu domains actively.

Google.eu doesn't have any A records ie. it doesn't point anywhere.

Yahoo.eu points to a Yahoo site, but not to the European one!

Ebay.eu actually does what you'd expect it to do, but it was the only one I could find when I did a quick search this evening.

Why do I bring this up?

Last week John McCormack sent me some preliminary statistics on domain usage for the EU namespace and the figures were quite worrying. He's since published a blog piece with a breakdown of the stats and if I were in Eurid I'd be sobbing.

You can read John's article, but the basic underlying truth is hard to avoid.

Adoption of .eu has been pretty bad and that's being diplomatic about it.

While there may be a large number of domains registered only a very small fraction are in active use, with many simply redirecting to a ccTLD equivalent or being parked.

Launching a new TLD is not easy.

Afilias have resorted over the past couple of years to literally giving away domains for free and it looks like Eurid are adopting a similar approach.

DotMobi, however, have worked hard to build up interest in their TLD among users of all shapes and sizes and got the investors interested as well.

What will the future hold for .eu?

Will their PR pay off or will it all fizzle out?