China Approves 5 Afilias TLDs For Sale Within Country

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has awarded 5 of Afilias’ gTLDs licences to allow them to be sold within the country, the registry operator announced last week.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has awarded 5 of Afilias’ gTLDs licences to allow them to be sold within the country, the registry operator announced last week.

The gTLDs, 3 of which are legacy generic top level domains – .info, .pro and .mobi, and 2 of which are new gTLDs – .red, and .kim.

The approval means Chinese businesses and other registrants are now legally allowed to operate sites in the 5 gTLDs. Only 15 ASCII TLDs (out of over 1000 worldwide) have been licensed so far, and Afilias operates one third of these privileged TLDs.

Afilias provides backend registry services for over 200 TLDs including 195 new gTLDs. For domain names to be legally sold and used for websites within China, each TLD must be licensed by MIIT to be eligible for sale.

Of the new gTLDs, Afilias’ 195 that have been delegated have 899,000 domains under management with .red having 112,600 and .kim 95,100 according to nTLDstats.com, the 29th and 34th largest of the new gTLDs. Of the legacy gTLDs, .info has 5,367m DUM, .pro 227,000 and .mobi 566,000 according to RegistrarStats.com.

“Afilias is proud that the Afilias China Registry Service, which supports these 5 TLDs, has proven to be among the few that are safe enough to meet MIIT’s high technical standards for licensing,” said Kun Qian, Afilias’ China Country Head. “Afilias now looks forward to working closely with our Chinese registrar partners to expand the market with our broad portfolio of globally recognized TLDs.”

“China’s domain name market is already the world’s second biggest, with over 40M registrations,” said Roland LaPlante, Senior Vice President of Afilias, “and more consumer choice will help it grow faster. As the first western registry operator to have licensed, in-country operations, Afilias provides more choices and an extra measure of confidence for Chinese registrars and registrants alike. Companies and others looking to tap new markets and reach broader audiences should add (or switch to) globally appealing addresses such as .info and .pro, which are intuitively meaningful and have more names available than legacy TLDs like .com.”

Afilias believes these 5 TLDs will serve the needs of both start-ups and established organisations that need a globally appealing internet presence to compete in today’s marketplace. Chinese firms typically have names in localised addresses, but many of them have aspirations beyond the Chinese market—these firms need a global address that sets them apart as a bigger player.

Global Domain Registrations Grow 9% In 2015 To 314 Million, But Growth Across TLDs Uneven

The total number of domain names registered around the world grew to 314 million at the end of 2015, a growth rate of nine percent (25.9 million) for the 12 months and five percent (15m) for the fourth quarter, according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief published Thursday.

The total number of domain names registered around the world grew to 314 million at the end of 2015, a growth rate of nine percent (25.9 million) for the 12 months and five percent (15m) for the fourth quarter, according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief published Thursday.For the largest TLD of them all, .com, it’s growth is unassailable. There are now 124 million .com domains registered, up from 115.6 million a year ago, a growth of 7.3 percent. But its Verisign stablemate .net has only grown from 15 to 15.8 million, or 5.3 percent, over the same period.The .net TLD is one of a number of gTLDs, along with .us, that seemingly have been knocked by the growth of the new gTLDs. In the 12 months to 31 December there has been a significant growth in new gTLD registrations.The largest TLDs in order by zone size were .com, .tk, .cn, .de, .net, .org, .uk, .ru, .nl and .info.New gTLDs have been growing strongly. As of 31 December 2014 there were 478 new gTLDs were delegated into the root and new gTLD registrations totalled 3.6 million, or 2.3 percent of total gTLD registrations. Fast forward 12 months and there are 10.9 million new gTLD registrations, which represents 3.5 percent of the total domains registered in all gTLDs. Fast forward another three and a bit months and there are 16.8 million domains registered across the 968 new gTLDs that have been delegated. The top ten new gTLDs represented 51.9 percent of all new gTLD registrations.In the ccTLDs, growth has also been strong with approximately 144.4 million domains registered at the close of the fourth quarter of 2015, an increase of 6.6 million domain names, or a 4.8 percent increase compared to the third quarter of 2015. For the year, ccTLD registrations increased by approximately 10.4 million, or 7.7 percent. Without including .tk, which has over 26 million registrations virtually all given away for free, ccTLD quarter-over-quarter growth was six percent and year-over-year growth was nine percent.The top 10 ccTLDs, as of 31 December, were .tk (Tokelau), .cn (China), .de (Germany), .uk (United Kingdom), .ru (Russian Federation), .nl (Netherlands), .eu (European Union), .br (Brazil), .au (Australia) and .fr (France).Again as of 31 December, there were 289 global ccTLD extensions delegated in the root, including Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), with the top 10 ccTLDs comprising 67.2 percent of all ccTLD registrations.But where is the uneven growth apart from .net? Looking at RegistrarStats.com growth appears to have largely plateaued for .org but dropped significantly for several other gTLDs including .org, whose dropped started in 2012, .biz (2014), .mobi (2014), .tel (2011) and .xxx (2012). One ccTLD that has also shown a noticeable decline is .us whose decline also commenced in 2014.A gTLD that has grown noticeably recently that isn’t a new gTLD is .pro who changed their eligibility requirements.

.PRO Domains Now Available to All

Afilias dotPRO logoAfilias plc announced that beginning today (16 November), .PRO is an unrestricted Top Level Domain open to all registrants.  That means that everyone is now eligible to register a domain name ending .PRO, such as afilias.pro or yourname.pro

Afilias dotPRO logoAfilias plc announced that beginning today (16 November), .PRO is an unrestricted Top Level Domain open to all registrants.  That means that everyone is now eligible to register a domain name ending .PRO, such as afilias.pro or yourname.pro.

No one wants to work with an amateur when they can work with a pro.  That’s why a .PRO address is so important to your marketing.  If you are a pro at your craft, whether it is web design or landscaping, you need to let Internet searchers know in a quick and easy manner.  A .PRO address will make the right first impression.

Since 2002, .PRO has been the mark of professionals on the web.  .PRO has over 120,000 registrations worldwide including professionals as varied as engineers and lawyers.   However, despite demand from registrants and registrars alike, .PRO names have historically been denied to professionals from a wide range of fields such as policemen, firefighters, journalists, programmers, artists, writers, and many others.  The .PRO registry has opened the domain to a much wider range of registrants who want to brand themselves a “pro” with their Internet address.

“The very name .PRO communicates professionalism of the highest order,” said Roland LaPlante, CMO at Afilias.  “Now pros of all types can quickly and easily communicate their expertise in their email and web addresses with a .PRO name.  Beginning today, .PRO names can be registered without the hassle of additional paperwork, making .PRO easy for registrars to service and easy for registrants to buy” he added.

This Afilias news release was sourced from:
registry.pro/newsroom/press-release/pro-domains-now-available-all

ICA Asks ICANN BGC to Reconsider Approval of Legacy gTLD Registry Agreements Containing URS by Philip Corwin, Internet Commerce Association

Internet Commerce Association logoOn October 13th ICA filed a formal Reconsideration Request (RR) asking ICANN’s Board Governance Committee (BGC) to rethink The Board’s approval of the renewal registry agreements (RAs) for .Travel, .Cat and .Pro. All three renewal agreements contain Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) and other rights protection mechanisms (RPMs) drawn from the new gTLD program. Those RPMs are in the contracts largely because staff of ICANN’s Global Domain Division (GDD) started the RA renewal process by proposing their inclusion “to increase the consistency of registry agreements across all gTLDs”. ICA had previously filed comments on all three proposed RAs protesting the inclusion of the URS, as did the large majority of all those who commented

Internet Commerce Association logoOn October 13th ICA filed a formal Reconsideration Request (RR) asking ICANN’s Board Governance Committee (BGC) to rethink The Board’s approval of the renewal registry agreements (RAs) for .Travel, .Cat and .Pro. All three renewal agreements contain Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) and other rights protection mechanisms (RPMs) drawn from the new gTLD program. Those RPMs are in the contracts largely because staff of ICANN’s Global Domain Division (GDD) started the RA renewal process by proposing their inclusion “to increase the consistency of registry agreements across all gTLDs”. ICA had previously filed comments on all three proposed RAs protesting the inclusion of the URS, as did the large majority of all those who commented.

The explanations of the Board Resolutions approving the three RAs, accomplished with no formal vote on the Consent Agenda of its September 28th meeting, contains the comforting words that “the Board’s approval of the Renewal Registry Agreement is not a move to make the URS mandatory for any legacy TLDs, and it would be inappropriate to do so”. However, it also includes the highly questionable assertion that the inclusion of the URS in the Renewal RAs is based on the bilateral negotiations between ICANN and the Registry Operator, where Registry Operator expressed their interest to renew their registry agreement based on the new gTLD Registry Agreement…and transitioning to the new form of the registry agreement would not violate established GNSO policy“.

There are two major problems with that reasoning:

  • First, there is no equality of bargaining position between a registry that needs its contract renewed, and that often is seeking to obtain beneficial amendments to its prior RA, and GDD staff who take RPM inclusion as their starting point and insist on that throughout the negotiation process as the price of reaching a deal. The assertion that these Registry Operators “expressed their interest” in adopting the URS is a convenient fiction when, by their own admission, GDD staff proposed it at the start of negotiations. The very fact that all three of these registries adopted the RPMs is circumstantial evidence that the action was coerced and hardly voluntary.
  • Second, and more important for preserving ICANN’s multistakeholder bottom-up policy development process, GDD staff subverted it by making what is incontrovertibly a policy decision on a critical question that has not yet been addressed by the community. Now that the Board has condoned this GDD staff initiative they are free to pursue the same RPMs end with every legacy gTLD when their contracts come up for renewal – including .Org, .Net and .Com.

As ICA explained in its RR:

“We believe that this attempt by ICANN contracting staff to create de facto Consensus Policy via individual registry contract, absent a relevant Policy Development Process (PDP), is a glaring example of the type of top down, unaccountable action that should be targeted by enhanced accountability measures accompanying the IANA transition proposal. Contracts with legacy gTLDs can contain and enforce Consensus Policy, but it is an impermissible violation of ICANN’s Bylaws for contracts to attempt to create Consensus Policy.

… We further note that ICANN staff has just issued, on October 9th, the “Preliminary Issue Report on a GNSO Policy Development Process to Review All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs”. This report will be considered by the GNSO Council and the ICANN community at the upcoming ICANN 54 meeting in Dublin, Ireland and, following a public comment period scheduled to end on November 30th, will result in a Final Staff report being issued on or about December 10th.

That Final Report will probably provide the foundation for the initiation of one or more Policy Development Processes (PDP) addressing whether the new gTLD RPMs should be adjusted and, more relevant to this reconsideration request, whether they should be adopted as Consensus Policy and applied to legacy gTLDs and/or integrated with the UDRP. Indeed, the Preliminary Issue Report notes (at pp.22-23):

“These [potential] issues would be specific topics to be addressed as part of their Charter by the PDP Working Group, in addition to the more general, overarching issues such as:

  • Whether any of the new RPMs (such as the URS) should, like the UDRP, be Consensus Policies applicable to all gTLDs, and the transitional issues that would have to be dealt with as a consequence.”

This passage of the Preliminary Issue Report constitutes further and new material evidence, provided directly by ICANN policy staff, that the question of whether the URS should become a Consensus Policy applicable to all gTLDs is an overarching policy matter, and that it is wholly inappropriate for GDD staff to seek imposition of it on legacy gTLDs as the starting point for registry renewal agreement negotiations because doing so creates de facto consensus policy via contract. It also identifies the presence of “transitional issues” that have in no way been considered in pressing for the inclusion of the URS in the three renewal agreements that are the focus of this reconsideration request.

Unless and until the URS is adopted as a Consensus Policy for all gTLDs, ICANN staff should not be initiating the registry agreement renewal process with any legacy gTLD by suggesting that new gTLD RPMs be the starting point for contract negotiation as, given the inequality in bargaining power, this can have the effect of making the URS a de facto Consensus Policy notwithstanding the fact that the regular order PDP outlined in and required by the Bylaws has not been followed. Such GDD staff actions make a mockery of and undermine the integrity of the GNSO’s upcoming PDP review of RPMs.ICA will continue to use all available means to assure that the policies imposed on the registrants of more than 100 million legacy gTLD domains are determined through the policymaking process mandated by ICANN’s Bylaws and not set by the whims and coercive pressure of GDD staff.

BGC action on a RR is generally supposed to take place within 30 days of its filing. The RR process is constructed in a manner to provide multiple procedural grounds for summary dismissal without ever reaching the merits of the situation. While that unfortunate avoidance tactic could be utilized, we are hopeful that the importance of this precedent-setting situation, as well as the fact that a similar RR was jointly filed by ICANN’s Business Constituency (BC) and Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG), will convince the BCG to do the right thing and address the RRs on their substantive merits.

And we will of course comment upon the recently issued Preliminary Report on Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs and participate in any subsequent policy development process (PDP) to ensure that RPM Consensus Policies are balanced, and respectful of the procedural and substantive due process rights of domain registrants.

This article by Philip Corwin from the Internet Commerce Association was sourced with permission from:
www.internetcommerce.org/rr-on-urs/

Majority Comments say “No URS by Contract at .Cat & .Pro” – While Staff Report on .Travel Comments is Two Weeks Past Due by Philip Corwin, Internet Commerce Association

Philip Corwin imageOnce again, as it was with .Travel, the vast majority of comments on the proposed renewal Registry Agreements (RAs) for the legacy .Cat and .Pro gTLDs are united in their opposition to imposition of Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) and other new gTLD rights protection mechanisms (RPMs) by contract, arguing that this is a consensus policy decision that can only be fairly made through the policy development process (PDP)

Philip Corwin imageOnce again, as it was with .Travel, the vast majority of comments on the proposed renewal Registry Agreements (RAs) for the legacy .Cat and .Pro gTLDs are united in their opposition to imposition of Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) and other new gTLD rights protection mechanisms (RPMs) by contract, arguing that this is a consensus policy decision that can only be fairly made through the policy development process (PDP).

Comments following this general line of reasoning were filed on .Cat by, among others, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, IP Justice, ICANN’s Business Constituency (BC) and Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG) — and of course the ICA along with individual comments filed by ICA Board member Nat Cohen and ICA members Jay Chapman and Greg McNair.

As we saw with the comments on .Travel, the only commenters supporting URS by contract at legacy gTLDs were ICANN’s Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) and new gTLD portfolio registry operator Donuts.

An identical list of commenters and positions appears at the comment forum for .Pro.

A Staff Report on the .Cat and .Pro comments is scheduled to be filed on July 21st. But odds are that these will be late, given that the due date for the staff report on .Travel comments was July 5th but all that appears at its website is this – “Report Overdue”. It’s difficult to understand why it is taking staff so long to complete and post that document, because that Staff Report is supposed to be an objective compilation and summary of the comments received – and not a defense brief to justify the staff action of proposing the inclusion of URS in these renewal RAs that has drawn such broad criticism and opposition.

We will continue to monitor the .Travel website, along with those for .Cat and .Pro, to see when those Staff Reports are filed and what they say.

Meantime, here is what ICA said in the additional comments we filed on both .Cat and .Pro:

This comment by the Internet Commerce Association incorporates by reference and supplements the comment letter we filed in regard to the proposed renewal registry agreement (RA) for .Travel on June 21st.

The issues are essentially identical, in that:

  • The proposed RAs for. .Cat and .Pro are completely identical to .Travel in regard to incorporating the URS in Section 2 of Specification 7.
  • .Cat and .Pro are legacy gTLDs created before and for which the URS is a non-relevant implementation detail of the current new gTLD program, and is not a Consensus Policy enforceable against all gTLDs and contracted parties.
  • The notice published by ICANN regarding the proposed renewal RA clearly states that “ICANN has proposed” that the new gTLD RA be the starting point for contract renewal discussion and negotiation.

This issue of staff creation of de facto Consensus Policy arose several times at the just concluded ICANN 53 meeting held in Buenos Aires. At its opening session on Sunday morning, June 21st ICANN’s GNSO Council met with senior staff of ICANN’s Global Domains Division (GDD). Many Council members raised their own strong concerns about the staff action and its destructive impact on the GNSO’s role in making gTLD policy. GDD staff provided the weak response that “we did not push anyone to accept” the URS, maintaining that .Travel, .Pro, and .Cat registry operators had all “volunteered” to include it in their proposed renewal agreements. That justification strains credulity given that GDD staff proposed its inclusion as the starting point for registry agreement renewal.

As we stated in our comment letter regarding .Travel–

There can be no doubt that this is a staff attempt to create de facto Consensus Policy, as is clearly documented by the fact that the same objectionable provision appears in the proposed renewal RAs for .Cat and .Pro, both released for comment on May 28th. This evidences a deliberate and illegitimate attempt by contracting staff to create a series of precedents that would lead inevitably to the imposition of the URS on major legacy gTLDs such as .Org, .Net and .Com when they come up for renewal, despite the fact that the URS is not an ICANN Consensus Policy.

GDD staff also said they would change their position if the GNSO told them not to seek to impose new gTLD RPMs on legacy gTLDs – which is not only an impossibility for this proposed renewal RA, given the time required for the GNSO to establish policy via the standard PDP, but completely misunderstands and reverses the proper relationship between the stakeholders and staff. It is stakeholders who create ICANN policies through a bottom up process, which are subsequently administered by staff – not staff given free rein to initiate policy in a top down and unaccountable manner via contract negotiations until the stakeholders stop them.

The same concerns were raised when the Council met with the ICANN Board on the afternoon of June 21st, where they received a far more sympathetic reception. Several Board members agreed that staff should not initiate policy changes.

In addition to the concerns raised by Council members, and at community members at the Public Forum in Buenos Aires, the comments filed on .Travel ran overwhelmingly against incorporation of the URS in the renewal RA.

Only two comments supported the action by GDD staff to propose it as a starting point:

  • The Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) stated that it “encourages Registry Operators to voluntarily go above and beyond the minimum rights protections. Whether adding new restrictions against abusive registrations, implementing blocking or creating new dispute procedures, those best practices should be encouraged and do not require a PDP for TLD Operators to implement”. We strongly disagree that there is anything voluntary about a process in which a supplicant registry in need of having its contract renewed must negotiate with ICANN staff who propose that inclusion of specific RPMs be the starting point for negotiations.
  • We therefore believe that legacy gTLD registry operators are not free to create and adopt new RPMs that alter the rights of existing registrants at the time of contract renewal because there is no one in the negotiating room to speak for the due process rights of their registrants. Indeed, such negotiations take place behind closed doors and are not transparent to affected stakeholders.
  • Further, the IPC’s claim that “there is clearly no requirement that an RPM must become consensus policy before it can be adopted by a registry. We have already learned that from Donuts and Rightside Registry, both of whom adopted a form of “blocking” as an RPM, which was also not consensus policy” completely misunderstands the critical difference between revenue-generating blocking policies promulgated by portfolio gTLD operators and dispute resolution policies. Blocking policies prevent domains from being registered in the first place and therefore have no impact on existing registrants, while alterations in dispute resolution policies can result in an existing registrant having its domain suspended, extinguished or transferred.
  • The IPC also fails to recognize the difference between a new gTLD, in which potential registrants have clear notice of any supplementary RPMs, and a legacy gTLD in which registrants should expect that additional RPMs will be adopted through a standard PDP that creates Consensus Policy.
  • The new gTLD portfolio operator Donuts, which maintained that the STI-RT that created the URS “never considered” whether it “should not be included in legacy TLDs”. All we can say is that Donuts’ recollection is quite different from ours, as we recall this question being raised multiple times and receiving assurances from STI-RT participants and others involved in the development of the new gTLD RPMs that they would not and could not be imposed on legacy gTLDs absent a subsequent review, followed by a PDP which adopted them as Consensus Policy.

In closing, we repeat the conclusion of our comment letter regarding .Travel —

Consensus Policy regarding RPMs must be vetted within the community to assure a proper balancing of the interests and rights of both trademark owners and domain registrants.

In order to assure that balance two indispensable steps are necessary:

  • The attempt to impose new gTLD RPMs on legacy gTLDs by contract must be withdrawn in recognition that such action is in violation of ICANN Bylaws. If staff is unwilling to retreat on this initiative then ICANN’s Board must assume responsibility and review all the issues at play, including compliance with the Bylaws, before any legacy gTLD RA with such a provision is made final.
  • Any further modification of the new gTLD RPMs must be considered within the context of a full PDP. We are far past the implementation phase of the new gTLD program. Further, it is clear that the applicability of the RPMs to legacy gTLDs is now primed for discussion. Unless both RPM modifications and legacy gTLD applicability are considered within the PDP framework there is a substantial risk of a bait-and-switch policy process, in which RPMs are made applicable to legacy gTLDs and then substantially altered via a backdoor, non-PDP process.

In addition, we repeat the request that ICA made directly to ICANN’s Board at the Buenos Aires Public Forum –

First, we need a commitment that any further alterations of the new gTLD RPMs will be made through a standard PDP. We are far past the implementation details stage and it is now crystal clear that these decisions will implicate legacy gTLDs as well.

Second, if GDD staff ignores the overwhelming weight of comments and retains the URS in the final RAs for legacy gTLDs, you need to vote up and down on those RAs. You need to “own” that decision and in that way indicate whether you believe this GDD staff action is or is not acceptable.

We hope that GDD staff will recognize that they have overreached on these legacy gTLD contracts and that the proper action is to strike the RPMs adopted from the new gTLD program from them and leave that decision to the multistakeholder community.

If staff does not do the right thing then we will press for an up and down Board vote on this and the other affected contracts before they take effect.

 

Sincerely,

Philip S. Corwin

Counsel, Internet Commerce Association

This article by Philip Corwin from the Internet Commerce Association was sourced with permission from:
www.internetcommerce.org/no-urs-at-cat-and-pro/

ICANN: Proposed Renewal of .PRO Unsponsored Registry Agreement

ICANN logoPurpose (Brief): ICANN is posting for public comment the proposed agreement for renewal of the 2010 Registry Agreement for .PRO, which was originally set to expire on 22 April 2015

ICANN logoPurpose (Brief): ICANN is posting for public comment the proposed agreement for renewal of the 2010 Registry Agreement for .PRO, which was originally set to expire on 22 April 2015.

The agreement was extended an additional 90 days (via amendment dated 24 April 2015) to permit additional time for the parties to finalize the proposed terms for renewal. The renewal proposal is a result of discussions between ICANN and Registry Services Corporation (the Registry Operator for the .PRO TLD).

Public Comment Box Link: https://www.icann.org/public-comments/pro-renewal-2015-05-28-en

Comment Period Opens on 28 May.

This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-3-2015-05-28-en

Are Existing gTLD Registrations Suffering From New gTLDs?

Could .net be one of a number of gTLDs suffering from the success of new gTLDs? As of 30 June 2014, Verisign noted in their Domain Name Industry Brief there were 15.2 million .net domains under management (DUM). But according to the latest figures provided by RegistrarStats, there are now 14,998,404 DUMs.

Could .net be one of a number of gTLDs suffering from the success of new gTLDs? As of 30 June 2014, Verisign noted in their Domain Name Industry Brief there were 15.2 million .net domains under management (DUM). But according to the latest figures provided by RegistrarStats, there are now 14,998,404 DUMs.Domain Incite were the first to report on .net DUMs seeming to be suffering. But looking at other gTLDs it seems it is not the only one to see a decline in registration numbers over the past 12 months or so. The .biz, .pro, .tel and .mobi gTLDs, as well as the ccTLD for the United States (.us), all appear to have all suffered declines in registration numbers over the last 12 months. The .biz, .tel and .mobi TLDs seem to have been particularly hard hit. The .org gTLD seems to have plateaued its DUMs and not seen any significant increase for close to two years.While some of the older gTLDs have been haemorrhaging DUMs for some time. For example, .info has also seen a significant decline in DUMs from a peak of over 8 million around December 2011 to around 4.8 million now. And .name DUMs peaked around 2009 and have been in freefall ever since.But it seems the decline in registrations for .net, .biz, .us and .mobi, and maybe others, has coincided with the release of new gTLDs.

Afilias Requests Removal Of .PRO And .MOBI Cross-Ownership Restrictions

Afilias logoAfilias has made a request to ICANN to remove the cross-ownership restrictions written into the .pro and .mobi registry agreements

Afilias logoAfilias has made a request to ICANN to remove the cross-ownership restrictions written into the .pro and .mobi registry agreements.

To obtain the removal, Afilias has to request ICANN remove the restrictions and a public consultation has to be undertaken.

According to the approved process, in order to lift cross-ownership restrictions, existing gTLD registry operators could either request an amendment to their existing Registry Agreement to remove the cross-ownership restrictions or request to transition to the new form of Registry Agreement for new gTLDs. Any proposed material amendments to gTLD registry agreements would be subject to public comment prior to ICANN approval.

More information on the proposed changed changes for .pro can be found here and for .mobi here.

 

.PRO continues to soar with premium auction results

[news release] RegistryPro’s recent premium auction of one-, two-, and three-character domain names is the most successful .PRO auction to date.

Held in conjunction with GoDaddy.com, the auction began on January 10, 2012, and concluded on January 17. The seven-day event had opening bids ranging from $50-$5,000 in U.S. dollars with bidding activity reaching a frenzy in the final hours of the auction. The stand out sale was Go.pro, which sold for $40,000

[news release] RegistryPro’s recent premium auction of one-, two-, and three-character domain names is the most successful .PRO auction to date.

Held in conjunction with GoDaddy.com, the auction began on January 10, 2012, and concluded on January 17. The seven-day event had opening bids ranging from $50-$5,000 in U.S. dollars with bidding activity reaching a frenzy in the final hours of the auction. The stand out sale was Go.pro, which sold for $40,000.

Karim Jiwani, president of RegistryPro, said, “We are ecstatic about the sale of Go.pro and can’t wait to see what the buyer does with the domain. Registrants of .PRO domains tend to be innovative in their use of the TLD, and we have high hopes for the development of all the domains that were sold in the auction.”

Go.pro is the highest sale of a .PRO domain to date and was won by a private buyer. The Go.pro sale, with 64 bids, represents the second-highest reported non-.com domain sale of the year, based on sales reported to DNjournal.com.

“The success of the auction was not a surprise. There is real value in the extension and we still have a lot of great .PRO domains. The results of this auction are just the beginning of what .PRO is poised to do in the coming year,” added Jiwani.

Other notable .PRO sales from this auction include XXX.pro, which sold for $18,903 (with 125 bids), and Job.pro, which sold for $5,456 (with 91 bids). RegistryPro is planning another auction to be held in the second quarter of 2012.

“The .PRO auction was very successful,” said Paul Nicks, Go Daddy’s Director of Product Development for the Aftermarket. “Go Daddy’s auction platform was a great fit for RegistryPro‘s event. There has been some fascinating buzz around the .PRO top-level domain, and .PRO gives our customers another option to build their business online.”

RegistryPro launched the .PRO domain in 2004. Since then, .PRO has become an important tool for businesses, organizations and individuals in building trusted relationships throughout the world and is reserved exclusively for use by the professional community.

Registrations for .PRO domains are restricted to registrants with proof of professional identity. Tens of thousands of professionals worldwide choose .PRO to enhance their online identity.

This RegistryPro news release was sourced from:
registry.pro/press-releases/2012/0214.shtml

Karim Jiwani Joins RegistryPro as CEO to Lead Growth Initiatives

Registry pro logo[news release] RegistryPro, the exclusive operator of the .PRO top level domain (TLD) for professionals, today announced that Karim Jiwani has become its new CEO. In this role, Jiwani will be responsible for all aspects of the registry’s operations including strategy, marketing and sales, registrar support, expansion and policy. Jiwani intends to increase the industry awareness for .PRO and expand its reach to encompass all professionals in every field.

Registry pro logo[news release] RegistryPro, the exclusive operator of the .PRO top level domain (TLD) for professionals, today announced that Karim Jiwani has become its new CEO. In this role, Jiwani will be responsible for all aspects of the registry’s operations including strategy, marketing and sales, registrar support, expansion and policy. Jiwani intends to increase the industry awareness for .PRO and expand its reach to encompass all professionals in every field. In announcing the news, Lucas Roh, CEO of Hostway Corporation, the parent company of RegistryPro, said, “Our registry is poised to grow significantly in the coming years, as the awareness continues to grow for .PRO domains and our backend registry services for other TLD’s. We wanted someone that could expertly grow the registry and take it to the next level. Karim has proven experience in the domain industry and is well respected in the community. With his knowledge and passion, he is well equipped to take the company to the next level in providing registry services to registrars and other TLD’s.”

Jiwani brings over 12 years of industry experience to .PRO and the benefit of being one of the original board members of Afilias, where he was instrumental in growing the company as a senior director. Prior to his role as Senior Director, he served as the Managing Director EMEA for Afilias Ltd.

Enthusiastic about the great possibilities in the domain space, Jiwani said, “Our industry’s landscape will look completely different in 24 months. I am excited to lead RegistryPro into the new era of the Internet naming space.”


About .PRO, The Internet for Professionals

Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, RegistryPro is the ICANN-designated operator of the .PRO TLD.

Since launching in 2004, .PRO has become an important tool for businesses, organizations and individuals in building trusted relationships throughout the world. In many languages, “pro” is synonymous with dedication, skill, and vision – the .PRO name allows people to capture that distinctive character. Whether developing a brand, refining an identity, or promoting a specialty, .PRO offers every business and professional the opportunity to enhance their image by adding a powerful, easy-to-identify name to their online presence and web-based products.

This RegistryPro news release was sourced from:
registry.pro/press-releases/2011/0518.shtml

America Registry logoTo register your .PRO domain name, check out America Registry here.