Seven Mile

…Pre-emptive rights to "PG" in all future TLD’s (assuming they can duke it out with the Motion Picture Association of America’s rating system).

> The cc.com business relies on confusing users and leaves them in the hands of a commercial institution with no oversight,

Such issues are not inherent in the two-letter strings themselves.  If there is an issue relating to how the strings are used, that is probably outside of the scope of domain name policy per se.

There is no reason why an entity named Hu is required to be beholden to the nation of Hungary for that entity’s inability to register its name as a domain name, any more than endeavors in the fields of electrical engineering or information technology (ee.jobs, it.jobs) should be blocked by "claims" of the nations of Estonia and Italy.

Must Procter & Gamble buy out the nation of Papua New Guinea simply to register their own trademark as a domain name?

PS – UM, MR. and MS. user, this sort of NO IQ BS BY policy fiat IS bad PR for US, of the kind that SO makes ME want TO throw things AT MY TV (IE – BE IT AN AX or similar instrument).

(That sentence is brought to by the ccTLD’s for Palestine, United States Minor Outlying Islands, Mauritania, Montserrat, Norway, Iraq, Bahamas, Belarus Iceland, Puerto Rico, the United States, Somalia, Montenegro, Tonga, Austria, Myanmar, Tuvalu, Ireland, Belgium, Italy, Netherlands Antilles, or Aland Islands.)

Play on CC TLD’s courtesy of Dr.John Berryhill

http://www.tiawood.com:80/2007/proof-of-domain-ownership/

Tia Wood is going through an emotion that all domain registrants go through at some point. "How can I prove that my valuable domain names are really mine and protect myself from getting hurt (intentionally/unintentionally) by my registrar"?

Unfortunately the best thing you can do is buy a domain registrar of your own, or leave your full name on the whois record so that www.domaintools.com and other whois services can cache that record.

I think Jay’s www.nameintelligence.com could provide a record keeping service where he takes a cache snapshot of each of your whois records, dates it and stores it in case of a rainy-day when your registrar blows up, or as evidence for a trial. Ultimately you probably wouldn’t get much relief because most registrars ‘terms of services’ (which you have to agree to) are written to protect the registrar and offer you little protection.  That takes me back to running your own registrar.

Fortify the servers and batten down the hatches Paul and Richard.  While I’m not crazy about the extension, I would be remiss not to point out that 53,000 so called premium names drop into the available pool for registration on a first come, first served basis tomorrow at 1pm Pacific Time. Visit www.enom.tv. Let me know if you get some good ones

I love win-win days. Aside from Demand Media, Verisign and a few lucky people, the big winner will be CNET. In my opinion, CNET’s TV.com is half as valuable as the entire .TV namespace.  Why?  DemandMedia could have bought TV.com and given away free subdomains with every purchase..  (ie> buy books.tv and get books.tv.com for free)  That would have made .TV the extension much much more potent IMO. CNET’s TV.com gets more valuable with every .tv registration taken. I think that single domain (TV.com) is worth 10-20 million.  Net.com anyone?

Need more proof that the line between Advertising and Content is contining to blur?  My colleague David Ulevitch sends this lovely link to a blog post that made me say Wow!..  (I said it out-load of course. So my wife asked what was wrong, I said: "nothing, just blogging.", and she reminded me I was over my one post a day limit..  That’s another story though.)

Here we have a site which delivers content,  but it’s really advertising.  How can you better use the daily impressions from your network of domain names to make much, much more money in the future? Consider all the practical applications that this ebay window represents. Look at this (and other applications you’ve seen) then ask yourself what domain parking might look like in 5 years.

Thank God for Ajax and Java.  Thanks for the link David.

Haven’t been to Rick Schwartz’s blog in the last week or so but really enjoyed going back today and reading the April 25th and April 24th posts.  Thought you might like them too.

http://www.suntimes.com/business/363986,CST-FIN-Net30.article

The only reason I posted this is because they are still calling it "return of the dot-com". The Internet crashed and burned on flimsy no-profit foundations in 2000/1. Todays next generation is doing its part to soak up the some of the world’s excess liquidity with business concepts that involve arbitraging the cost of PPC traffic from Google or Yahoo against some form of "join-in" or eyeball value. The only difference is that this time around the company names are worse. That’s one less thing to sell at the bankruptcy sale I suppose.  At least they’re dot com’s.  Special thanks to the investors for the millions in .com branding.

… Das a lotta money mang.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/?p=616

Don’t get me wrong..  it’s a fine purchase..  My only question is the valuation.  How long a multiple is that?..  and domains are expensive!?..  Sheesh.

A long time ago I heard a Yahoo exec espouse that the biggest problem with paid search in general is lack of inventory.  The rebirth of banner advertising might just be what a lot of us thought was coming:  Less advertising sold for more money..  or the same advertising, priced to reflect its ability to brand, ‘as well as’ convert.  Expect less middlemen in the future, or middlemen making less money.

Related story re: Google / DoubleClick here

http://blogs.mediapost.com/performance_insider/?p=17

Summary: Story implies that CPA affiliates are somehow "pilfering your brand through paid search".  The premise goes:  Type "Columbia House" at Google and see scores of sites using "Columbia House" (a trademarked term) to draw visitors to their affiliate site making money for leading people back to Columbia House. The problem is, as an affiliate of Columbia House, you need to describe the product/offering somehow and Columbia House wants you to beat the bushes for more people to bring to their door.

Years ago there was a domain dispute for Webergrills.com where a Weber dealer was taken through UDRP for assorted names by the manufacturer. The manufacturer lost because the dealer was given express authority under his licensing arrangement to advertise the Weber brand.  Result, of that precedent?  If you own HondaCars.com and you’re a Honda car dealer,  you’re doing nothing wrong.

Are affiliate relationships relating to paid search really any different? If you sign up as an affiliate of Columbia House,  is that ‘manufacturer’ not giving you express authority to promote their brand? This is a lot different than buying "Columbia House" keyword traffic and selling it to "itunes".

Where is the line relating to domain names? If you run a hypothetical business called DealerDomainNames.com and you’re in the business of supplying and managing domain-names to assorted manufacturer’s dealers (as your usual course of business), could you be acting in good-faith by holding a basket of trademark containing domain names for resale? Could you make a valid legal argument for keeping those names?

I don’t plan to push that envelope, but an interesting thought all the same.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUKN2936340820070430

I could see a bunch of newspaper advertisers banding together to create a central system for taking and sharing advertising, based on this "fast search" platform. Large and Small domain portfolio owners could sell ads directly using a version of this platform too. The key is getting large enough to be able to drive enough inventory..  one domain guy couldn’t do it..  But 3 or 4 big ones could.

I blogged about this a while back. It may not look like it..  but this system is the beginning of something revolutionary.  It links previously unlinked buckets of names so people looking for a domain name can take their pick from the best of all worlds, available inventory and privately held inventory. In the past you could only make money from your domains in paid-search and re-sales were spotty and unpredictable. This is going to value the long-tail of your portfolio which makes no PPC revenue, because it is going to drive a more consistent stream of offers and create a more reliable and vibrant secondary market for domain names:

Dear Frank Schilling,

As you may have already heard, Fabulous.com has launched its Domain Distribution Network (DDN) that allows access for domain portfolio owners to list their domains across multiple aftermarket domain sales platforms.

Some of these platforms include Registrars, Aftermarket Portals, WhoIs query websites, and Lead Generation Affiliates. In addition, Fabulous also enables domain owners the ability to have domain sale functionality embedded on their own parked domains with only a 3% (bank fees*) transactional cost for successful domain sales.

Our current implementations include a real time aftermarket sales process (during registration attempts) with the world’s largest registrar. We also expect live implementations to extend to four of the top five ICANN registrars progressively between the next few weeks and October. The sales to date have been very encouraging.

The advantages of the Domain Distribution Network:

-Dramatic increases in domain sale exposure through registrar registration processes
-Access to new Lead Generators
-Real time settlement “Instant Transfer Protocol” (60 second settlement)
-Use of domain classification, pricing tools and live customer support
-Centralized management of domain sales and traffic
-Discounted fees for sales generated by your own domains (X%)*
-High commissions for generating leads as an Affiliate
-Fixed and/or Make Offer pricing**

Fabulous.com is ready to actively sell your domains via the world’s largest registrars and affiliates. Please contact your Fabulous.com representative for more details. You could be live this week!

Cheers,

Dan Warner
COO
Fabulous.com