Domainer News

If you haven’t already heard, the case brought by Kentucky against owners of domain names related to gambling will proceed. The judge announced today that he will not throw out the case. Think of the ramifications if the governor of Kentucky ultimately prevails. Will a court in China decide that America.com spreads democracy and file an order to seize the domain name?

Kentucky Summit Media Advisory - Domain Seizure Order, Submitted by Michael Collins on Fri, 10/03/2008 - 21:29, MEDIA ADVISORY - Internet Commerce Association to Participate in Emergency Summit on the State of Kentucky’s Domain Seizure Order. ICA’s Michael Collins to Join Panel Focused on the State’s Unprecedented, Wrongful Seizure of 141 Business Domains

The new weekly domain sales report is out at DNJournal.com and this was really a wild week for the aftermarket.

Affiliate law sends e-commerce companies running for the hills. New York residents already feel the pain of high taxes. But now the state has basically shut down many of its resident’s businesses that rely on affiliate revenue, including domain name owners.

Cambridge, MA - Numeric domaining has been a hot, emerging trend in the fast lane of the domain industry this month. Cambridge-based Sedo recently reported a rare NNN.com (3-Number) numeric domain sale- '248.com' (Michigan area code) sold for $175,000.

Unfortunately, we have had a very busy and unstable few months in the industry. Our industry is being hit from multiple sides, and it is hurting a lot of people. Overall we are still doing very well as a whole, but we are at a critical turning point and must remain vigilant or things could end up far beyond the point of no return for us over the rest of this year.

Live & Extended Online Auction at DomainerMeeting - DomainerMeeting - Paris - June 19-20, 2008 - Domainers from across Europe and the World are invited to attend DomainerMeeting Paris. In the tradition of previous "DomainerMeeting" this will be a networking event for regional and International domainers representatives of ICANN and Registries, as well as selected domain name industry representatives.

.CA Domains are reaching record breaking prices early in 2008.

CANADA HITS ONE MILLION DOT-CA (.CA) INTERNET ADDRESSES - OTTAWA, Ontario, April 15, 2008 – The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) announced today that Canadian Internet users have registered one million dot-ca (.ca) Internet domain names. As one of the world’s most wired nations, Canadians continue to use the Internet for personal and business reasons in ever increasing numbers. Reaching the one million dot-ca domain name milestone demonstrates Canada’s strong Internet presence and the popularity of Canadian websites.

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East - The Grand Floridian Hotel - Orlando, Florida -May 20-24, 2008 - Low & No Reserve Live Auction: Tuesday, May 20 at 8:00 p.m. EST/5:00 p.m. PST (in-person bidding only; online bidding not available for this one-hour event). Premium Live Auction: Friday, May 23 at 3:30-6:30 p.m. EST/12:30-3:30 p.m. PST (online bidding available). Online Extended Auction: Friday, May 23 to Thursday, May 29

The Domain Roundtable Conference is April 18 - 21. The conference is organized by Name Intelligence, Inc., the creator of DomainTools, the most robust collection of tools for any domain owner, with almost a half million registered members and millions of users. Don’t miss this opportunity to network with like-minded domain owners, entrepreneurs, industry leading companies, and meet with the staff behind Whois Source / DomainTools and many other industry professionals. The live domain name auction is April 21 and there are some great domain names to be auctioned.

Yahoo Provokes Microsoft With Google AdSense For Search Trial - In what can only be interpreted as a move in its extended chess match with Microsoft, Yahoo has decided to run a two-week-long trial of Google’s AdSense for Search.

The Roundtable is coming in just a few weeks and we are busy reviewing domains for the auction. We have already selected over 150 premium domains and we are VERY excited about the list of several thousand domains that have been submitted to us to pick through. The reserves are set to attract Domain buyers both big and small. We are very selective of what gets in the auction this year

Google Lets Advertisers Opt Out of Domain Parking Sites - Thursday, March 13th, 2008 - Advertisers can exclude ads from showing up on parked domains; lower revenue ahead? - Google Adwords has added a new feature that allows advertisers to exclude ads from showing up on domain parking sites. This will affect parked domains on any of Google’s ad feeds, regardless of whether it is the “search” feed or “content” feed. Examples of domain parking companies using Google include DomainSponsor and Sedo.

March 11th, 2008 - Fund.com sold today for $10,000,000. Recent sales have included record-breaking figures. According to Jay Westerdal of DomainTools.com in regard to the highest proced domain names to-date, "I know of a few domains well above $10M, such as Poker.com and Sex.com, that never officially disclosed their prices. The few runners-up so far have been Business.com and Porn.com which both didn’t quite make it to the $10 Million dollar range but were very close."

Groups Insist ICANN Must Maintain Ties with U.S. Department of Commerce after 2009 Expiration Date - Mar 07, 2008 4:17 PM PST - By CircleID Reporter - ICANN has suggested it should become independent of U.S. Department of Commerce oversight when the current Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with the agency expires in September 2009. However, some people have suggested the JPA should remain in place to provide accountability.

Senate antiphishing bill outlaws...what's already illegal - Using the Internet to steal someone's account information by masquerading as a bank, brokerage, or credit card company has been illegal for many, many years. Back in 2004, the Justice Department won a criminal conviction against a phishing scammer who pretended to be AOL's billing center. The Federal Trade Commission has been busy filing civil lawsuits. At least seven states have enacted antiphishing legislation, and companies including Microsoft and Amazon.com have used those laws to target Internet scammers. Plus, fraud has been prohibited for hundreds of years at common law. In short, there's no obvious lack of laws prohibiting fraud in the form of phishing attacks. But that's not stopping Congress, which, in the spirit of creating a department of redundancy department, is considering new antiphishing legislation that appears to serve no useful purpose.

Is The Crumbling Economy Dragging Down The Search Business? Google (GOOG) shares are down sharply this morning after new data from comScore shows what appears to be a material weakening in the company’s advertising business. Many analysts have commented on the data this morning, and most seem at least slightly concerned. Google’s paid-search data shows sponsored clicks were down 7% in January over December and flat year over year. UBS analyst Benjamin Schachter says the data leaves him “incrementally more cautious” on his outlook for the company and the stock: he trimmed his revenue estimates for Google and cut his price target to $590 from $650.

Bill Proposed to Take Away Your Domains - (At TheDomains.com) February 26th, 2008 - Yesterday Senator Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) with support of Senator, Bill Nelson (D-Florida) and Senator, Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), introduced, a bill entitled “The Anti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act of 2008″ The stated purpose of the bill is to stop the practice of phishing e-mails and websites. A Phishing is a scam whereby people receive e-mails or instant messages directing them to go to websites which are usually set up to look identical to the site that the internet user has an account with, and then tries to get the user to enter personal information into the fake website, such as their login info, user id and password. The scammers then use this information to access the internet user’s actual account and scam them out of their money.

There is a serious and substantial phishing problem going on.  I personally receive these types of e-mail many times each day both from banks and institutions I do business with, and many I do not. Of course, we are all smart enough to know not to answer these, but millions of internet users are not. These are the same people that sent their money to Nigeria and waited for their 30 million to arrive.This part of the bill no one can object to.

This is a scam that must stop. However, the problem we have as domainers is that this bill goes MUCH further.

The State of the Industry January 2008: (At DNJournal.com) "Our Panel of Domain Experts Analyze What Happened in 2007 and Share Their Forecasts for 2008 - It's time again for our annual round up of domain industry experts to get their forecasts for the New Year as well as their thoughts on the key trends that impacted the domain business in 2007"

The Domain Roundtable Conference (April 18 - April 21, 2008) is organized by Name Intelligence, Inc., the creator of DomainTools, the most robust collection of tools for any domain owner, with almost HALF A MILLION registered members and millions of users. Don’t miss this opportunity to network with like-minded domain owners, entrepreneurs, industry leading companies, and meet with the staff behind Whois Source / DomainTools and many other industry professionals.

SnapNames Live Auction Final Catalog Now Available - January 23 and 24, we're putting 400 hundred exceptional domains on the auction block in the SnapNames Live Auction at DOMAINfest Global. Download the catalog and Auction Software. (Software is required to view or to bid. The $100 bidder fee is credited to auction purchase.)

November 16, 2007 - Sedo .MOBI Auction - The third installment of registrar-owned .MOBI domain names will take place November 28th and bidding will close on December 6th.  "Here you can get top domain names from the dotMobi registry.", according to recently published Sedo information.  "Generic domain names as well as domains with an entertainment focus will be featured." Also, it is reported that due to the holiday season Sedo will condense the November and December GreatDomains auctions into one. The "mega auction" is scheduled for November 29th until December 6th

In case you don't subscribe to Ron Jackson's DNJournal email update service and monthly newsletter, I want you to know that DN Journal has just published their "comprehensive review of last week's groundbreaking Domain Roundtable Conference in Seattle." There are 3 pages or stories and photos. DNJournal reports on how The Domain Roundtable hit new tech highs while changing how people interacted with the show and the domain auction.

.MOBI Auction Coming - Sedo has announced that, beginning on September 26, 2007, three auctions will be held showcasing premium .MOBI domains. It is stated that these domains have not previously been available to the public.

Name Intelligence has announced that their fourth annual Domain Roundtable will be held April 18th-20th in San Francisco. This will be the first Domain Roundtable to be held outside of Seattle. Name Intelligence President / CEO and DRT event organizer Jay Westerdal anticipates attracting a lot of Bay Area people and companies for the event.

Name Intelligence Announces the 2007 Show - The event is planned for August 13th-15th at Seattle Washington. Only the top 450 domains will make it to the public event.

DomainTools Live Auction has finalized their list of 450 prime domains to be auctioned in Seattle on August 15. A lot of credit goes to Jay Westerdal and his DomainTools team for bringing innovation, democratization, and just plain creativity to the domain name auction scene.

SEO Book author and Search Engine Guru, Aaron Wall, will be speaking this year at the Domain Roundtable. As reported in Domain Tools Blog, "He and a crew of other SEO professionals will be there teaching the secrets to organic rankings. The marriage of SEO and Domainers in an exciting one." Other SEO stars are also promised for the Roundtable.

Name Intelligence Announces the 2007 Show - The event is planned for August 13th-15th at Seattle Washington. Only the top 450 domains will make it to the public event.

Review the results of the record breaking Live & Silent Domain Auction at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. New York City, Grand Central Hyatt, June 19-22. Live Domain Auction: Thursday, June 21, 3:00 p.m. as sponsored by Moniker.com.

You will want to read the great article by DN Journal's Editor/Publisher, Ron Jackson, titled T.R.A.F.F.I.C. New York 2007: The Domain Business Takes a Bow on the World's Biggest Stage.