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Verisign, the company that manages the .com registry, will be increasing the price of .com domains by 7% again this year.
The price increase affects all registrars.
We'll be keeping an eye on how pricing develops and if this involves any change to our own pricing we will let you know.
Journalists call from time to time asking me to talk about various internet related topics. Most of the time the publications or shows are "general interest", so you can only talk about very general things.
Last night, however, was quite different, as I was one of the guests on "Domain Masters" which is broadcast and streamed weekly at 7pm EST (11pm in Ireland, midnight CET)
The show's host last night was my good friend Jothan Frakes who is one of the domain name industry's gurus.
Although I was very nervous (which probably showed!) we had a nice chat about Blacknight, domains and the internet industry.
If anyone wants to hear the show there should be an mp3 version available on the WebmasterRadio site at some time over the next couple of days.
UPDATE: The Mp3 from last night is now available on the site http://www.webmasterradio.fm/Internet-Marketing/Domain-Masters/Geo-Domain-Expo-and-BlackKnight.htm
UPDATE 2: Of course if I provided proper hyperlinks people might be actually able to use them!
So here you go: Show details including podcast
The following article was published earlier today in Washington Internet Daily. It is reproduced here with the publisher's permission. I posted a related article on my domain blog earlier this week.
Registrar Network Solutions could face legal action over its practice of locking in domain names that are searched but not bought, Michigan attorney Enrico Schaefer said Thursday. The action violates consumer protection laws banning deceptive business practices, he said. There's no indication on Network Solutions's website that use of its free availability search prevents other registrars from offering the name, he said. "We are considering a class action," Schaefer told us. Network Solutions defended the process as a shield for customers against other front-runners.
The practice, "domain name front-running"(DNFR) may differ from the term in its best known sense. In November, .uk registry Nominet published a paper on its experience with DNFR, calling it a "technique believed to exist, but so far unproved, whereby one person monitors the activity of a second person who is planning to register a domain name and the first person then registers the domain name before the second person." Nominet concluded that DNFR "in the most common sense of someone tracking your actions to register a domain just before you can, does not exist."
DNFR is under investigation by ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee, which in October issued an advisory on the practice and is assessing the resulting comments, an ICANN spokesman said. The panel defined DNFR as "the opportunity for a party with some form of insider information to track an Internet user's preference for registering a domain name and preemptively register that name." It preliminarily found insufficient evidence that any party involved in the registration process engages in DNFR. Nor did it set standards for judging whether monitoring name availability is acceptable or not.
Network Solutions' ploy is "more nefarious," said Michele Neylon, managing director of Irish hosting and domain registration company Blacknight Internet Solutions. He agrees with Nominet that DNFR, in classic form, doesn't take place. But Network Solutions automatically registers names that prospective buyers query on its site and warehouses them preventing them from being offered by any other registrar and ensuring that consumers are stuck paying Network Solutions's often higher prices, Neylon said.
Network Solutions Vice President of Policy Jonathon Nevett responded Tuesday to the allegations, calling the practice a security measure meant to allay customer concerns about DNFR. The measure kicks in when someone searches for an available domain but decides not to buy it immediately after the search, he said. The registrar puts the name on reserve, during which time it's not active and Network Solutions doesn't monetize traffic to it, he said. If the name isn't bought in four days it's released to the registry and made generally available for registration, Nevett said.
The effort also tries to "take an arrow out of the quiver of the [domain] tasters," Nevett said. They’re the largest front-runners, buying search data from ISPs or registries, then tasting names for profitability, he said. "Some folks might not agree with our approach, but we are trying to prevent this malicious activity from impacting our customers," Nevett said.
"This is definitely front-running," said Ross Rader, director of research and innovation at registrar Tucows. Network Solutions has "put some lipstick on it and put another name on it by claiming that this is a consumer protection measure," he said. Either way, it's using availability and Whois search data for purposes other than the actual buying process, he said.
Existing DNFR data are believed to stem from ISPs selling log files of DNS data to buyers who parse the materials for Whois queries. They then use the information, and the five-day grace period registrars have to cancel a registration for a full refund from the registry, to front-run in various ways, said Tucows President Elliot Noss. Network Solutions is using others' bad behavior to excuse its own, he said, when the focus should be on ISPs’ selling
DNS data for inappropriate purposes, he said.
Network Solutions alleges that registries are selling availability or Whois data to third parties, Rader said. In a recent blog on the Tucows site, company Marketing Vice President Ken Schafer quoted a Network Solutions spokeswoman as saying that the registrar believes some registries or ISPs or both may be selling search data to front-runners. If Network Solutions has specific knowledge that registries are doing that, "they should do the right
thing" and come forward with it, Rader said.
However the practice is labelled, it raises strong consumer protection issues, Schaefer said. The registrar is essentially "tricking" consumers into using its free search tools without telling them they won't be able to buy the name queried from anyone but Network Solutions, he said. No one has contested front-running in court. The practice is new and loss of a single domain typically doesn't generate enough damages to justify legal action, he said. But suits against registrars engaged in front-running are "viable and likely inevitable," he said.
Network Solutions informed ICANN when it launched the process, an ICANN spokesman said. ICANN is looking into the matter to see whether it complies with the registrar accreditation agreement, he said. -- Dugie Standeford
Reproduced by permission of Warren Communications News, Inc., 800-771-9202, www.warren-news.com
As a domain registrant you have certain rights. Unfortunately those rights can be abused by companies that don't believe in ethical business practices.
It would be nice and simple if the whois display were the same across all TLDs (ie. domain extensions), but they're not.
A basic right is for the domain to be registered to you and under your control.
That means that the domain details should show yours. For example a .ie domain registered to me shows:
status: Active
nserver: NS.BLACKNIGHTSOLUTIONS.COM
nserver: NS2.BLACKNIGHTSOLUTIONS.COM
source: IEDR
person: Michele Neylon
nic-hdl: ABG182-IEDR
source: IEDR
person: Blacknight.ie Hostmaster
nic-hdl: AAM456-IEDR
source: IEDR
(I'm only showing the contact parts)
The administrative contact for the domain is clearly listed as me, while the second contact (tech-c) shows Blacknight, as I obviously register my domains with my own company.
For some TLDs, such as .eu the command line whois will give out varying amounts of information and you may need to go to the web based whois server to get the full details.
In either case the registrant is listed somewhere, even if the public cannot see it easily.
If the registrant wants to move their domain between registrars that is their right.
Under ICANN rules registrars are obliged to provide the EPP codes to registrants in a timely fashion (bearing in mind that you cannot transfer newly registered .com's etc., between registrars immediately)
If they want to update their domain's nameservers then they should be able to do so.
Unfortunately this does not happen.
The reality is that a disproportionate number of companies are denying registrants basic rights.
In some cases they may be doing this by accident, but in other cases it is 100% deliberate.
There is no valid reason for your web designer or developer to put their details all over your domain. None.
If you have asked your designer / developer to register a domain for you and paid them for it then it should be registered to you (which is one of the reasons why .ie domains are attractive!).
Over the past couple of years I've seen some crazy things, including a particular "registrar" that registers ALL .co.uk domains to themselves regardless of who has requested the domain.
Another company warehoused hundreds of .eu domains "on behalf" of their clients ie. in the hope that the clients would want to register the domains at some point in the future. Of course it wasn't clear if they would be charged a premium for this "service".
If a provider won't update the DNS for a domain then there is something wrong somewhere.
(If they can't update it due to the DNS not being loaded that is the registrant or their provider's issue!)
There's no good reason to delay handing over an EPP key.
If a registrant wants their co.uk domain retagged simply do it.
Why make people suffer?
In case you haven't heard the cost of .com/.net/.info/.biz domains will be going up later this year.
I got an email from the registrar we currently use about the price increases last night, so I thought I'd share the news.
The price increase isn't welcome, but it comes from the domain registries NOT from ICANN or the registrars. Unfortunately the registrars have to pass on some of their costs to companies like ourselves (although we are an accredited registrar for several TLDs we still aren't accredited by ICANN).
We've always priced com/net/org/info/biz in a "sane" way. We've never been the cheapest in the world, but we've always been able to maintain our prices. This isn't going to change, though it does mean that our margins will be slightly tighter than before.
If you're used to registering domains directly with us, then you have nothing to worry about, as we don't intend to increase our prices in the foreseeable future.
If you're using other companies to register .com etc., then you may need to keep a watchful eye on their pricing. Some of the registrars have been pricing themselves so low that an increase will be inevitable. If you're using one of those registrars I'd recommend you look at renewing domains for multiple years now before the price increases kick in on October 14/15.