Recently in iedr Category

I've been sitting on this "news" for a while, as I waiting on the registry to announce it ..

Fergal O' Byrne, who was the Irish Internet Association CEO and is currently CEO of startup Sonru, has been appointed to the IEDR's board as a non-executive director. According to filings with the Irish companies' office O'Byrne's appointment is effective from the end of May 2010, though it was only announced to the public today.

What is interesting, from a domain industry perspective, is that O'Byrne's appointment could signal one of two things. Either the IEDR are trying to change and actually want board members with industry experience or they are seeking to pay "lip service" to industry.

O'Byrne's appointment may be a good thing, but his role as a non-exec means that he won't be able to have as much impact as some of us in industry would like to see.

Of course it's been a busy few weeks over at IEDR central. They also announced last week that the 2nd quarter of 2010 was the "best performing quarter for .ie domain registrations in Ireland since records began".

While the figures for the quarter in terms of new registrations may have been up, the total zone size hasn't increased that dramatically and still hovers below the 150k mark.

You may also notice that the IEDR communications are now referring to "registrars" instead of "resellers". This change is due to the introduction of signed agreements between registrars and the registry operator in the last few months. More on that anon.

IEDR, the operator of the .ie ccTLD, has postponed its normal fortnightly purge until next Monday.

The registry operator normally conducts its deletions and suspensions of domains every second Friday, but has postponed this week's "run" until next Monday.

Over the last couple of months the IE Domain Registry has been in negotiations with its resellers in order to introduce an actual contract and establish a registry / registrar relationship.

As of today most of the IE resellers have signed a version of the contract, so you can probably expect a formal announcement from the IEDR in the next few weeks.

IEDR, the company that currently runs the .ie ccTLD, has announced an increase in  .ie registration figures.

According to a press release the registry is reporting that March 2010 saw a 2.2% increase in registrations, bringing the total number of .ie domains to over 141 thousand.

IEDR's CEO, David Curtin, made the following comment about the growth:

It's very encouraging indeed to have ended the first quarter with renewed growth in .ie domain registrations and a very solid performance in March, with registrations up 2.2% in March year on year and up 15.4% on the previous month. The decline in registration volumes at the beginning of the year was not unexpected given the tough and testing economic conditions Irish businesses are and continue to operate under, particularly SMEs. The increase in registrations towards the end of the first quarter and into quarter 2 points to strong, stable demand for the .ie namespace, which remains world class by international safety and security standards. The .ie namespace provides an established, trusted domain name through which start-ups and entrepreneurs can bring their goods and services to market and win consumer confidence. The IEDR is committed to maintaining the integrity, affordability and resilience of this vital platform for Irish e-commerce.

Considering that no comprehensive studies of consumer attitudes to .ie have ever been conducted on what basis does the IEDR make these claims?

If anything growth in .ie registrations is in spite of the registry, not because of them.

How the registry can make any claims about "affordability" when they are not the primary sales channel is laughable.

If the registry really wanted to boost registrations they could do a lot to cleanup their rules and processes so that Irish (and international) businesses would see .ie as a viable option. As things currently stand it can still take several days (if not longer) for a .ie registration to be fully processed due to the inconsistencies in their rules.

The IEDR, which runs the registry for the .ie ccTLD, has announced an upcoming change to its registration processes.

As of April 8th 2010 pending updates and registrations will be valid for 27 days instead of the previous 30.

What this means for registrants is that they will have 3 days less to provide the supporting documentation for a .ie registration.

In any case the change is not that significant, as even 27 days is more than enough time for most people to organise the paperwork

The only problem at present, however, is that the Irish companies' office is, in common with most of the civil service, involved in an industrial dispute. This may lead to delays in processing new company and business regisrations.

Trademark holders do funny things with domains.

Bebo.ie, which was registered in bad faith, was handed back to its rightful owners last year.

However Bebo Inc obviously don't care enough about the .ie domain to hold onto it, so it's been dropped.

So will anyone try to grab it again?

It will be interesting to see if someone else makes a play for it. With the number of active Irish users on Bebo the domain would probably generate quite a bit of type in traffic.

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

The IEDR's attempt at introducing some level of transparency, that I mentioned previously, has been rejected by its resellers.

Exact details of how many resellers actually rejected the proposal have not been provided as yet.

The IEDR, the body that is responsible for .ie domains (Ireland), is currently consulting with its resellers about introducing a greater level of transparency.

At the moment there is very little transparency with respect to the sales rank of the various companies that offer .ie domain registration services. The IEDR's own newsletter refers to the companies by letter!

If the new system is implemented then we would finally be able to confirm who actually is handling the volumes and who is just "spinning" ...

While it's impossible to say what the outcome of the consultation will be there have already been some negative comments mentioning "commercial sensitivity"!

Considering that most other registries provide the information either directly or indirectly you'd have to wonder what people were so worried about.

Disclosure: I run one of the largest IE resellers and am in favour of publishing the names.

The IEDR, which is the current registry operator for dotIE (.ie), announced today that its quarter 1 registration figures were the highest to date.

Close to 10 thousand IE domains were registered in the period up to the end of March 2009, which is a 28% increase over Q4 2008. Though the press release doesn't mention that Q4 is shorter due to the Christmas break, which leads to registrations not being completed in one calendar year, but being carried across to the next one.

According to the release over 80% of the domains were registered to either sole traders or companies.