Written by admin on Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 in Industry News.
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Written by admin on Sunday, April 23rd, 2006 in Promos.
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Written by admin on Sunday, April 23rd, 2006 in Promos, Free Domains.
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Written by admin on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 in Industry News.
Internet governance issues usually attract the attention of a relatively small number of net users. However, concerns associated with the current system have begun to grow, writes internet law professor Michael Geist.
Kofi Annan at the World Summit on the Information Society
Net governance was discussed at the UN internet summit last year
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), the US-based body charged with managing the net’s domain name system, just wrapped up a week-long meeting in Wellington, New Zealand on Friday, and it now finds itself the target of criticism from some its closest allies.
Icann, which then-US President Bill Clinton established in the late 1990s, initially viewed itself as a technical body mandated with ensuring that the net functioned in a stable and secure manner.
While stability and security remain an important objective, today no one seriously questions the fact that internet governance extends far beyond technical concerns.
The introduction of new top-level domains is a major issue for domain name registrars, who rightly note that Icann exerts strong regulatory control over the size and scope of the domain name marketplace.
It has moved frustratingly slowly in establishing new domain name extensions, with only handful, such as .biz or .info, appearing on the market in recent years.
Online politics
Governments have also taken an increasing interest in Icann, focusing primarily on their own national country-code top-level domains such as .uk for the United Kingdom.
The power of Icann, and by extension the US government, to influence these domains has raised serious questions about the intersection between the internet and national sovereignty as governments maintain that they should be final arbiters over their country-code domains.
Michael Geist
Internet governance policies strike at the core of free speech, privacy, and a competitive marketplace
Many governments have also wondered why Icann has been so slow to establish multi-lingual domains that would allow their citizens to register domain names in their native language. While the issue has been a priority for many developing countries, Icann has not moved at net speeds on the issue.
Other Icann policies have attracted the interest of a diverse group of communities. The privacy community has worked with Icann for years without success to establish an appropriate “whois” policy, which addresses the conditions under which the personal information of someone registering a domain name is publicly disclosed.
The free speech community has actively called on Icann to examine its policy for resolving domain name disputes, expressing disappointment that the current policy has been used to shut down legitimate criticism websites.
Despite the mounting frustration with Icann, until recently it could count on support from the US government and the administrators for several leading country-code domains.
At last year’s World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia, Icann overcame opposition from Europe and the developing world to retain responsibility over the domain name system. Over the past month, however, even Icann’s most ardent supporters have begun to express doubts about the organization’s lack of transparency and accountability.
Pressure on Icann
Last week, US Congressman Rick Boucher called for a Congressional investigation into Icann and its recent decision to settle litigation with Verisign, which manages the lucrative .com registry.
The settlement, which awards Verisign near permanent control over the .com domain, has faced sharp criticism from across the internet governance community.
Chinese internet cafe
Countries like China want a greater say over how the net is run
In Canada, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, Cira, recently published an open letter to Icann calling on it to implement greater accountability, transparency, and fair processes.
Backing up its words with actions, Cira said that until Icann addressed these concerns, it would suspend payment of thousands of dollars in contributions and cease consideration of a new contractual agreement with the organisation. Moreover, Cira added that it would no longer host or sponsor any Icann-related events.
The net supervisory body has also come under fire from the Public Interest Registry, PIR, which manages the .org domain.
Last week it called on Icann to address concerns over the thriving business of grabbing domain names that have not been re-registered.
PIR noted that many registrants are unaware that their domain names are valuable and that allowing them to lapse may lead to their misuse.
It pointed specifically to one instance where a domain name associated with a rape crisis centre was not re-registered and soon after pointed to a pornographic website.
Internet governance policies strike at the core of free speech, privacy, and a competitive marketplace.
Icann’s seeming inability to address these issues in an accountable, transparent, and timely manner has alienated some of its strongest supporters, opening the door to the prospect for major changes to the global internet governance landscape.
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Written by admin on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 in Industry News.
(PRWEB) April 3, 2006 — Domain name research and appraisal services firm Zetetic reports that the median domain name aftermarket resale price increased by 24 percent between 2004 and 2005, while the average increased only 8.5 percent.
“We all know the domain name market is hot. But even though the supply of domains available for purchase has increased in 2005, buyer demand is very strong for value priced domain names,” Zetetic Senior Analyst Keith Pieper said. “Premium priced names have not shown the same annual price appreciation, likely because the new influx of domain names are mostly value priced names from many new, main stream exchanges.”
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Zetetic is an independent research and appraisal company that tracks the secondary domain name resale market. They have collected over 16,000 domain name sales transactions from over 70 resale sources since 2003.
“This market has attracted several new entrants and opened the domain resale market up to a large number of small, casual sellers,” Pieper said. “Established exchanges like SEDO and Afternic have enjoyed market dominance and relatively high average sale prices. However, leading registrar GoDaddy’s new exchange has dwarfed SEDO in the sheer number of resale transactions it manages, yet on average these are smaller sales.”
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Pieper points out that GoDaddy’s sale transactions are likely casual sellers who happen to register their names with GoDaddy, casually willing to sell at any price. “Based on our sample of 697 GoDaddy sales, the average sale on GoDaddy in December 2005 was $692 compared to the reported average sale on SEDO of $2,558,” Pieper said.
GoDaddy grew to become the largest domain registrar in 2005 and subsequently launched a domain name aftermarket exchange service which now leads that market in volume of transactions. As of this writing, GoDaddy reported over 10,000 domain name sales in the past 30 days.
Domain name brokers are cashing in on the market frenzy and some sellers have misaligned expectations from the publicly reported domain sales transactions. “Domain name sellers often get glazed over by reading the sale prices posted at industry trade sites like DNJournal and the many press releases that are distributed each month,” Pieper said. “In reality, most domain name sales are much lower than what domain name brokers tend to reveal. Due to the commission based resale structure, domain brokers and exchanges are inherently incentivized to inflate market valuations and tend to publicly report only their top sales.”
Zetetic analyzed a random sampling of domain aftermarket sales reported on DN Journal in 2005 (excluding expired and dropped names) and compared it to Zetetic’s broader sampling of its transaction database. The median sale price reported on DN Journal was US$4,733 compared to US$900 for the broader market.
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“Having a top sale published on DN Journal is a feather in any domain broker’s cap,” Pieper said. “It brings credibility and sellers looking for the power broker that can drive the highest sale price, but does very little for setting realistic price expectations in the market.”
“The real wild card in all of these valuations is the private market,” Pieper said. “There is a very secretive underground market of private domain name transactions that more than often exceed past records but can’t be publicly reported. We estimate that no more than 20 percent of the dollar volume of domain names sold are ever made public. The other 80 percent of the market value are what drive the ‘irrational exuberance’ and greed many domain name sellers exhibit. And with good reason – it’s almost impossible to know if the guy you’re negotiating with might pay US$20 million for the domain name you’re willing to unload for US$5,000.”
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Written by admin on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 in Industry News.
DomainMart (domainmart.com), a provider of quantitative and analytical domain-name services, introduced today a service to estimate a domain name’s liquidation value.
The report points out three important concepts of value: intrinsic, market, and liquidation. In a well functioning market, the intrinsic value and market value converge.
There are two major distinctions between a fair market value and a liquidation value, according to the report. Liquidation creates a situation where the sale must occur within a specific, short period of time and when there are no motivated buyers for the domain name at the fair market price. Thus, the seller needs to offer a reasonable discount to attract buyers. The liquidation value is an estimate of such a discount price.
According to DomainMart’s report, current domain name appraisal models have been developed to estimate the fair market value. The lack of a liquidation-based model is due to the current demand for appraisals being driven primarily by motivated buyers and sellers, and by the nonexistence of a robust scientific approach to estimate a domain name’s liquidation value.
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Written by admin on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 in Industry News.
Cambridge, Massachusetts - (Cheap Web Hosting Directory) - April 4, 2006 - Domain name aftermarket seller, Sedo, has made its considerable available domain name database available to Name.com, a prominent domain name registration company.
According to the terms of the new partnership, Name.com users will have the ability to instantly bid on Sedo’s domain name listings. When an interested party searches for a particular name that is no longer available for registration at Name.com, there will be a link to Sedo.com if the domain is available for sale, allowing that party to make an offer through Sedo’s marketplace.
According to the companies, the integration will not only increase renewals and new registrations for Name.com, but will also provide their customers with greater convenience by providing them with more information on how they can acquire a domain that is no longer available through their registration service. For Sedo, the partnership provides an additional sales channel and increases awareness for the secondary domain market to traditional consumers and businesses.
Jude Augusta, Director of Partner Development for Sedo explained, ”Name.com is leading a charge to become a one-stop shop for all domain needs including new registrations, email packages, as well as digital brand management and protection. It is only fitting that users can now search for pre-registered domains right on Name.com, thereby accommodating all clients’ needs. As other domain registrars have seen, while Name.com’s renewal rates are already healthy, integrating Sedo’s secondary-market domains in domain search results is statistically proven to significantly boost renewal rates.”
Bill Mushkin, CEO of Name.com added, ”I can’t think of a better partner than Sedo. We love their worldwide reach. Sedo’s aftermarket domain inventory is incredible and our direct access to that inventory provides our customers with a great domain purchasing experience. This partnership, along with our ability to provide customers with online purchasing of over 60 domain extensions, gives our clients an unparalleled domain buying experience.”
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