Tag: .music

DotMusic Claims Right To .MUSIC Beating 7 Others Including Google and Amazon

Cypriot entrepreneur Constantine Roussos has beaten 7 other applicants, including Google, Donuts, Radix and Amazon, for the right to operate the .music new gTLD.

“If someone told me back then that it would’ve taken 11 years… I would’ve said to myself, ‘Do what you’re doing, dude,'” Roussos told Billboard. “It’ll take you 11 years, but do what you’re doing.”

Domain Incite had been speculating in recent days that it was likely Roussos’ DotMusic had won, and following victory noted that it wasn’t yet known how much was paid. DI notes that MMX was the last of the applicants to withdraw their application.

DotMusic faced early competition from Far Further, who had the backing of some music industry heavyweights, but as Billboard reports, they applied as a “community” applicant and failed to meet the threshold required. When Far Further dropped out, the industry moved to back Roussos’ DotMusic. However they then fell afoul of the required “community” threshold. They then appealed, a process that “was still ongoing when, in a surprising turnaround, they struck a closed-door deal with the other remaining .music suitors (including Google and Amazon) that resulted in the others withdrawing their applications.”

This resulted in DotMusic avoiding a public auction to resolve the contention set, a process that Roussos admits he would have had zero chance of winning.

“If we did go to a public auction with ICANN, I would have [had a] less than 0% [chance of] winning,” Roussos told Billboard, adding, “This is kind of a shock for everyone, actually.”

The new generic top level domain is to be operated for “legitimate members of the entire global music industry” and will take a strong stance against any domain name involved in infringing copyright.

“If I would [ask] you, ‘What’s Queen’s official website?’…It’s not Queen.com,” says Roussos by way of example. “If I asked you ‘What’s Kiss’s website?’ Well hey, Kiss.com is a dating website… And then you look at other ones, like Justin Bieber. JustinBieber.com is owned by some blogger called Justin Bieber.”

For anyone interested in registering a .music domain name pre-registration is currently available which will give first communication and the opportunity to register the desired domain. However launch dates haven’t yet been announced.

For more information on the DotMusic application process and the ideas behind the application, see the Billboard article here. There are also a number of articles on Domain Incite including this most recent one here.

Daily Wrap: $33m .ORG Registry Contract Up For Grabs, Rightside, .EU, .MUSIC Community Application Fails

Public Interest Registry logoPublic Interest Registry, the not-for-profit operator of the .org, .ngo and .ong domains, announced they are putting out to tender the back-end registry services for its top level domains

Public Interest Registry logoPublic Interest Registry, the not-for-profit operator of the .org, .ngo and .ong domains, announced they are putting out to tender the back-end registry services for its top level domains.

According to research by Domain Incite, the contract has been worth over $30 million a year to the current registry operator Afilias. Afilias received $33.2 million in 2014 and $31 million in 2013.

Rightside, the registry operator for 40 new gTLDs, the largest being .rocks, .news and .ninja, with 448,000 domains under management, announced its financial results for the fourth quarter of and full year 2015.

“In Q4, and for the full year of 2015, Rightside achieved strong financial results as we continued to execute on our mission of advancing the way businesses and consumers define and present themselves online.  We achieved record revenue in the fourth quarter closing the full year 2015 with 11% total revenue growth and Adjusted EBITDA of $4.8 million,” said Chief Executive Officer Taryn Naidu.

“Looking ahead to 2016, we are excited about our portfolio of 39 new gTLDs and the future growth opportunities as we continue to invest in market development initiatives that drive heightened awareness and growing usage for new gTLDs by consumers and businesses. We are focused on improving profitability by driving margin expansion and growth in our Registry and retail business lines and implementing cost efficiencies throughout the business,” Naidu continued.

EURid has published its latest progress report for the .eu registry. During Q4 2015, the number of .eu registrations increased by 7,937 domain names, a net increase of 0.2%, to 3.87 million.

During the last quarter of 2015, the total number of .eu registrations increased in 25 of the 31 EU member states and eligible EEA countries. The last quarter was also characterised by the announcement of the completion of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track for the .eu in Cyrillic, the second successful edition of the .eu Web Awards and the launch of the IDN World Report in partnership with UNESCO.

The full report is available for download on EURid’s Quarterly progress reports page.

Following on the failure for the community applicant for .gay to attain community status, the community application for .music has also failed to attain community status [pdf]. According to the evaluation, the application received 10 out of 16 points in its evaluation but requires 14 to pass. The application failed on the “community establishment” criteria, receiving zero out of four points. This criteria requires “a clear, straightforward membership definition and there must be awareness and recognition of a community among its members.” And there must have been “pre-existence” of the community prior to September 2007.

It does appear that the application requirements have not taken into account how community groups operate and one would think this is a massive failure on behalf of ICANN when devising the new gTLD programme.

ICANN Controversially Rejects .GAY Community Application Again

ICANN has rejected the community application for .gay by dotgay LLC again because it wasn’t deemed to be community enough. The application has been through the Community Priority Evaluation (CPE) and reconsideration processes twice.

ICANN has rejected the community application for .gay by dotgay LLC again because it wasn’t deemed to be community enough. The application has been through the Community Priority Evaluation (CPE) and reconsideration processes twice.The decision is bound to be controversial and means that now the applicants will have to negotiate with the other three applicants if they wish to proceed. And if they cannot come resolve the contention, then the four applications for .gay will be scheduled to participate in an ICANN-facilitated “method of last resort” auction to resolve the contention. And this is something this community group is highly unlikely to win since it will come down to who is prepared to stump up the most money.The other three applicants are Top Level Design, United TLD Holdco and Top Level Domain Holdings.Writing on the ICANN blog, Chris Disspain, Chair of ICANN’s Board Governance Committee (BGC) says that:
Of the four entities applying for the .GAY TLD, dotgay LLC’s application was the only community application, and therefore the only application eligible to seek community priority through CPE. If an application achieves community priority, it is then able to move forward towards contracting, and the other applications will no longer proceed. dotgay LLC’s .GAY application did not achieve community priority so it continues to compete with the other three applications.It should be noted that dotgay LLC has been through both the CPE and Reconsideration processes twice. After completion of the first CPE in October 2014, through the Reconsideration process, a procedural error in the CPE was identified and the BGC determined that the application should be re-evaluated. However, the same outcome and score were achieved both times.The BGC, which is responsible for evaluating such requests, is limited by the Bylaws in evaluating this Request for Reconsideration. Specifically, the BGC is only authorized to determine if any policies or processes were violated during CPE. The BGC has no authority to evaluate whether the CPE results are correct.I want to make clear that the denial of the Request for Reconsideration is not a statement about the validity of dotgay LLC’s application or dotgay LLC’s supporters. The decision means that the BGC did not find that the CPE process for dotgay, LLC’s .GAY application violated any ICANN policies or procedures.Commenting on the BGC’s decision, Constantine Roussos who is behind one of the eight applicants for .music, is highly critical of the decision writing that “it seems mistakes have been made.” Roussos writes “there’s no policy requiring an organization to represent a community in its entirety. CPE rules permit an ‘entity mainly dedicated to the community.’ ‘Mainly’ does not mean entirety. ‘Mainly could imply that the entity administering the community may have additional roles/functions.'” Roussos goes on to cite several inconsistencies with ICANN’s decision and is concerned about what ICANN will decide on his .music application where there are seven other applicants. He writes “the music community is biting its nails waiting for the .MUSIC CPE decision (which clearly exceeds CPE criteria. … CPE is the most frustrating, unpredictable process in ICANN’s history. Community applicants have worked diligently for years to meet the criteria and gather support. No doubt ICANN staff is working hard on the subject matter but decisions seem to be a coin toss. This lack of transparency, accountability and predictability is frustrating for community applicants relying on ICANN rules.”

Donuts Marks One Year of New gTLD Availability with Over 1.2 Million Registrations

Donuts Inc., the world’s largest registry for new gTLDs, marked the one-year anniversary of general availability of new Internet identities today, reporting that its 150 now live gTLDs are home to more than 1.2 million registrations, accounting for nearly one third of the four million total names registered across all new gTLDs.

[news release] Donuts Inc., the world’s largest registry for new gTLDs, marked the one-year anniversary of general availability of new Internet identities today, reporting that its 150 now live gTLDs are home to more than 1.2 million registrations, accounting for nearly one third of the four million total names registered across all new gTLDs.The company, which expects eventually to run approximately 200 gTLDs, said it currently operates eight of the top 25 and half of the top 50 new gTLDs by registration volume, including .GURU (80,584), .PHOTOGRAPHY (51,431), and .EMAIL (48,031). Registrants are widely dispersed geographically, with United States customers most active (48 percent), followed by Germany (12 percent) and the United Kingdom (11 percent). Usage of new gTLDs has climbed steadily, as well — according to CSC Digital Brand Services, there was a 52% increase over the past quarter in the number of new gTLD domain registrations ranked in the Alexa top one million most visited sites.”We’ve built a foundation to create vibrant online communities that drive commerce, participation, communication and the exchange of information,” said Donuts CEO and cofounder Paul Stahura. “As we promised early last year, there’s now a relevant, specific domain name for everyone, promising the ability to identify products, services, communities, companies and organizations.”Adopters are agreeing. According to Brad D. Riggan of Liquid Media®, an Oklahoma City-based multi-dimensional digital creative firm, the switch to a new gTLD was intuitive. “We changed to Liquid.MEDIA because we wanted a domain name that represented the meaning of our company,” he said. “This is a precise descriptor that tells our clients and potential clients what we do.”Donuts recently launched .WORLD into general availability, and tomorrow will make .ENERGY and .DELIVERY open to any registrant. .COACH, .MEMORIAL, .LEGAL, .MONEY and .TIRES are now available exclusively to trademark holders and will open to all registrants later in March.The new gTLD program, still in its infancy, is undergoing rapid growth as .COM and other legacy over-used gTLDs fade in utility. Last fall, Afnic, the registry operator for the .FR country code TLD (ccTLD), released a study documenting that new gTLDs are growing faster than both legacy gTLDs and ccTLDs. And as reported in October, analysts at investment bank B. Riley & Co. forecasted that new gTLD registrations could cross the 20 million mark by 2016.Further pent demand will be addressed throughout 2015, when “contention sets” — gTLDs for which more than one registry applie — will be resolved. Including names like .MUSIC, .SHOP, .ART and .APP, remaining contention sets account for what will likely be some of the most popular and well-used gTLDs. “We’re still very early in the life of new gTLDs, but the promise of these names has already been well proven,” Stahura said. “As less relevant legacy gTLDs continue to decline in popularity, consumers and businesses are embracing the semantic meaning and specificity of new gTLDs.”About Donuts Inc.

Donuts securely operates the largest number of the Internet’s top-level domain names and provides varied and relevant online identities, in multiple languages and character sets, to businesses, individuals, and organizations worldwide. Donuts is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, with offices in Southern California, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and London. For more information, please visit www.donuts.co.This Donuts news release was sourced from:
www.donuts.co/news/donuts-marks-one-year-of-new-gtld-availability-with-over-1-2-million-registrations/