Showing posts with label Registry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Registry. Show all posts
06 June 2016
Domain Name Registrant, Registrar, Registry, A Primer
source: Registrar, Registry, Domain Name…A Quick Primer… | Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC - JDSupra
more news links below (on mobile go to web version link below)
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29 September 2014
Domain Names Industry, ICANN, Regulatory Capture
"ICANN has been largely captured by the [domain] names industry"
What is "capture?"
Regulatory Capture: definitions--
Regulatory capture - Wikipedia: "Regulatory capture is a form of political corruption that occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or special concerns of interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. Regulatory capture is a form of government failure [or Internet governance failure in the case of ICANN]; it creates an opening for firms to behave in ways injurious to the public (e.g., producing negative externalities). The agencies are called "captured agencies"."
Regulatory Capture Definition | Investopedia: "Regulatory capture is a theory associated with George Stigler, a Nobel laureate economist. It is the process by which regulatory agencies eventually come to be dominated by the very industries they were charged with regulating. Regulatory capture happens when a regulatory agency, formed to act in the public's interest, eventually acts in ways that benefit the industry it is supposed to be regulating, rather than the public."
"... regulatory capture occurs because groups or individuals with a high-stakes interest [ICANN's high-stakes stakeholders--e.g., Registries, Registrars, and Registry service providers] in the outcome of policy or regulatory decisions can be expected to focus their resources and energies in attempting to gain the policy outcomes they prefer, while members of the public, each with only a tiny individual stake in the outcome, will ignore it altogether.[1] Regulatory capture refers to the actions by interest groups when this imbalance of focused resources devoted to a particular policy outcome is successful at "capturing" influence with the staff or commission members [i.e., ICANN groups, committees, Board of Directors] of the regulatory agency [ICANN], so that the preferred policy outcomes of the special interest groups are implemented..." (source: Wikipedia, supra)
Regulatory economics - Wikipedia: "... Countering, overriding, or bypassing regulation is Regulatory Capture where a regulatory agency created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or special concerns of interest groups that dominate the industry that the agency is charged with regulating. The probability of regulatory capture is economically biased, in that vested interests in an industry have the greatest financial stake in regulatory activity and are more likely to be motivated to influence the regulatory body than dispersed individual consumers, each of whom has little particular incentive to try to influence regulators. Thus the likelihood of regulatory capture is a risk to which an agency is exposed by its very nature..."
This is a well-known flaw at the heart of multistakeholderism. To paraphrase George Orwell, within ICANN, all stakeholders are equal, but some are more equal than others. ICANN's high-stakes stakeholders with vested interests--e.g., domain name registry operators, service providers, and registrars--have "captured" the organization, dominate its decision-making, policies and outcomes, Board of Directors, and are generally over-represented throughout its organizational structure. The most effective counter to powerful commercial vested interests are governments, but in the case of ICANN, governments are relegated to an advisory capacity except for the United States government which still holds "ultimate power and authority" by virtue of its agreements and contracts with ICANN. As for domain name registrants, who are the actual customers or consumers of domain names (and who pay a fee to ICANN included as part of the registration fee for each domain name), they have almost no representation within ICANN--there is no "Registrants Group" within the ICANN structure (unlike the multiple groups who represent registries (one for gTLDs, one for ccTLDs, etc.) and registrars. Unsurprisingly, ICANN's record of protecting domain name registrants from price-gouging and other abusive registry and registrar practices is almost non-existent. So much for the multistakeholder model of Internet governance as practiced by ICANN.
A good example of ICANN's capture by the Domain Names Industry is ICANN's new gTLDs program where ICANN, ridden with conflicts of interest at its highest levels, subverted the wider public interest in favor of the high-stakes stakeholders' interests--
Ethics Fight Over Domain Names Intensifies - New York Times March 18, 2012: "The Commerce Department ...warned the organization [ICANN] that it needed to tighten its rules against conflicts of interest or risk losing a central role.... ICANN has come under heightened scrutiny because of an initiative to increase vastly the number and variety of available Internet addresses. Under the plan, which ICANN is putting into effect, hundreds of new “top-level domains” — the letters like “com” that follow the “dot” in addresses — are set to be created. Some business groups say the expansion of domains will cause a rise in trademark violations and cybersquatting, while some governments object to Icann’s move to create address suffixes like .xxx, for pornography. But the initiative has been cheered by companies that register and maintain Internet addresses. A number of current and former members of the ICANN board have close ties to such registrars or to concerns involved in other areas that stand to benefit from the expansion... [Rod] Beckstrom [former ICANN Chairman]... “... all [ICANN] top leadership is from the very domain-name industry it is supposed to coordinate independently... “A more subtle but related risk is the tangle of conflicting agendas within the board...”... the United States government is also dissatisfied with ICANN. The Commerce Department said it had canceled a request for proposals to run the so-called Internet Assigned Numbers Authority because none of the bids met its requirements: “the need for structural separation of policy-making from implementation, a robust companywide conflict of interest policy, provisions reflecting heightened respect for local country laws and a series of consultation and reporting requirements to increase transparency and accountability to the international community.” Eyebrows were raised last year when Peter Dengate Thrush, former chairman of ICANN and a fan of the domain name expansion, joined a company that invests in domain names. [Read more at the link above--a version of this article appeared in print on March 19, 2012, on page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: Ethics Fight Over Domain Names Intensifies.]
See also:
more news links below (on mobile go to web version link below)
Follow @expvccom
What is "capture?"
Regulatory Capture: definitions--
Regulatory capture - Wikipedia: "Regulatory capture is a form of political corruption that occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or special concerns of interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. Regulatory capture is a form of government failure [or Internet governance failure in the case of ICANN]; it creates an opening for firms to behave in ways injurious to the public (e.g., producing negative externalities). The agencies are called "captured agencies"."
Regulatory Capture Definition | Investopedia: "Regulatory capture is a theory associated with George Stigler, a Nobel laureate economist. It is the process by which regulatory agencies eventually come to be dominated by the very industries they were charged with regulating. Regulatory capture happens when a regulatory agency, formed to act in the public's interest, eventually acts in ways that benefit the industry it is supposed to be regulating, rather than the public."
"... regulatory capture occurs because groups or individuals with a high-stakes interest [ICANN's high-stakes stakeholders--e.g., Registries, Registrars, and Registry service providers] in the outcome of policy or regulatory decisions can be expected to focus their resources and energies in attempting to gain the policy outcomes they prefer, while members of the public, each with only a tiny individual stake in the outcome, will ignore it altogether.[1] Regulatory capture refers to the actions by interest groups when this imbalance of focused resources devoted to a particular policy outcome is successful at "capturing" influence with the staff or commission members [i.e., ICANN groups, committees, Board of Directors] of the regulatory agency [ICANN], so that the preferred policy outcomes of the special interest groups are implemented..." (source: Wikipedia, supra)
Regulatory economics - Wikipedia: "... Countering, overriding, or bypassing regulation is Regulatory Capture where a regulatory agency created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or special concerns of interest groups that dominate the industry that the agency is charged with regulating. The probability of regulatory capture is economically biased, in that vested interests in an industry have the greatest financial stake in regulatory activity and are more likely to be motivated to influence the regulatory body than dispersed individual consumers, each of whom has little particular incentive to try to influence regulators. Thus the likelihood of regulatory capture is a risk to which an agency is exposed by its very nature..."
This is a well-known flaw at the heart of multistakeholderism. To paraphrase George Orwell, within ICANN, all stakeholders are equal, but some are more equal than others. ICANN's high-stakes stakeholders with vested interests--e.g., domain name registry operators, service providers, and registrars--have "captured" the organization, dominate its decision-making, policies and outcomes, Board of Directors, and are generally over-represented throughout its organizational structure. The most effective counter to powerful commercial vested interests are governments, but in the case of ICANN, governments are relegated to an advisory capacity except for the United States government which still holds "ultimate power and authority" by virtue of its agreements and contracts with ICANN. As for domain name registrants, who are the actual customers or consumers of domain names (and who pay a fee to ICANN included as part of the registration fee for each domain name), they have almost no representation within ICANN--there is no "Registrants Group" within the ICANN structure (unlike the multiple groups who represent registries (one for gTLDs, one for ccTLDs, etc.) and registrars. Unsurprisingly, ICANN's record of protecting domain name registrants from price-gouging and other abusive registry and registrar practices is almost non-existent. So much for the multistakeholder model of Internet governance as practiced by ICANN.
A good example of ICANN's capture by the Domain Names Industry is ICANN's new gTLDs program where ICANN, ridden with conflicts of interest at its highest levels, subverted the wider public interest in favor of the high-stakes stakeholders' interests--
Ethics Fight Over Domain Names Intensifies - New York Times March 18, 2012: "The Commerce Department ...warned the organization [ICANN] that it needed to tighten its rules against conflicts of interest or risk losing a central role.... ICANN has come under heightened scrutiny because of an initiative to increase vastly the number and variety of available Internet addresses. Under the plan, which ICANN is putting into effect, hundreds of new “top-level domains” — the letters like “com” that follow the “dot” in addresses — are set to be created. Some business groups say the expansion of domains will cause a rise in trademark violations and cybersquatting, while some governments object to Icann’s move to create address suffixes like .xxx, for pornography. But the initiative has been cheered by companies that register and maintain Internet addresses. A number of current and former members of the ICANN board have close ties to such registrars or to concerns involved in other areas that stand to benefit from the expansion... [Rod] Beckstrom [former ICANN Chairman]... “... all [ICANN] top leadership is from the very domain-name industry it is supposed to coordinate independently... “A more subtle but related risk is the tangle of conflicting agendas within the board...”... the United States government is also dissatisfied with ICANN. The Commerce Department said it had canceled a request for proposals to run the so-called Internet Assigned Numbers Authority because none of the bids met its requirements: “the need for structural separation of policy-making from implementation, a robust companywide conflict of interest policy, provisions reflecting heightened respect for local country laws and a series of consultation and reporting requirements to increase transparency and accountability to the international community.” Eyebrows were raised last year when Peter Dengate Thrush, former chairman of ICANN and a fan of the domain name expansion, joined a company that invests in domain names. [Read more at the link above--a version of this article appeared in print on March 19, 2012, on page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: Ethics Fight Over Domain Names Intensifies.]
See also:
- Most New gTLD Domain Names Are On Life-Support, Infecting Other gTLDs
- ICANN Board of Directors, Conflicts of Interest
- For Domain Name Registrants, ICANN Is Useless
- ICANN Process for New gTLDs Dysfunctional -- from the beginning
- ICANN, New gTLD Domain Name Renewal Fees, Price Gouging
- ICANN Fails to Prohibit Warehousing OR Speculation in Domain Names by new gTLD Registry Operators and Registrars
- ICANN, Kurt Pritz, Conflict of Interest, new gTLD domain names program
- New gTLD domain names, exorbitant prices, ICANN Incompetence
- Does ICANN Exist Primarily to Enrich Insiders and Contractors?
more news links below (on mobile go to web version link below)
Follow @expvccom
04 August 2014
Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway Increase Stake in VeriSign Again
Legendary investor Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., and related entities, have disclosed in an SEC filing that they now control 12,985,000 shares of common stock of VeriSign, being 10.4% of all outstanding shares of the domain name registry for .COM and .NET.
According to 247wallst.com, Buffett/Berkshire Hathaway's ownership in Verisign has been increasing:
According to 247wallst.com, VeriSign's total market value is $6.7 billion which puts the Warren Buffett/Berkshire Hathaway 10.4% stake worth almost $700 million. Berkshire Hathaway’s total market value is now more than $300 billion, its public equity holdings are in excess of $100 billion, and as of June 30, it was holding $55.5 billion in cash.
more news links below (on mobile go to web version link below)
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According to 247wallst.com, Buffett/Berkshire Hathaway's ownership in Verisign has been increasing:
- As of March 31, 2013, it was 8.174 million shares.
- As of December 31, 2013, it was 10.96 million shares.
- As of March 31, 2014, it was 11,685,654 shares.
Both Verisign and Berkshire Hathaway closed up Monday (August 4, 2014):
VRSN $54.55 +$1.35 (2.54%) VeriSign, Inc. - NASDAQ
BRK.A $194305.00 +$5026.00 (2.66%) / BRK.B $129.73 +$3.90 (3.10%)
Berkshire Hathaway Inc - NYSE
According to 247wallst.com, VeriSign's total market value is $6.7 billion which puts the Warren Buffett/Berkshire Hathaway 10.4% stake worth almost $700 million. Berkshire Hathaway’s total market value is now more than $300 billion, its public equity holdings are in excess of $100 billion, and as of June 30, it was holding $55.5 billion in cash.
Follow @expvccom
21 July 2014
Google Profit Beats on Unexpected Ad Sales Gain (video)
Google Profit Beats on Unexpected Ad Sales Gain: Video - Bloomberg:
(Allow video to load after clicking play or go to link above)
Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde breaks down second-quarter results from Google as ad sales grew and how the company will deal with the loss of Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora. She speaks on “On The Move.”(July 18 - Bloomberg)
More info on Google 2Q 2014 results and Google info: go to Google including Registry and Registrar links - Google Registry, Google Registrar (Google Domains)
more news links below (on mobile go to web version link below)
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(Allow video to load after clicking play or go to link above)
Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde breaks down second-quarter results from Google as ad sales grew and how the company will deal with the loss of Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora. She speaks on “On The Move.”(July 18 - Bloomberg)
More info on Google 2Q 2014 results and Google info: go to Google including Registry and Registrar links - Google Registry, Google Registrar (Google Domains)
more news links below (on mobile go to web version link below)
Follow @expvccom
14 December 2012
Registry and registrar not liable for infringing domain names
Registry and registrar not liable for infringing domain names - International Law Office: "In an October 19 2012 decision the Paris Court of Appeal ruled that the Association Française pour le Nommage Internet en Coopération (AFNIC), the registry for the '.fr' country-code top-level domain, was not liable for failing to freeze or block an infringing domain name on notice by an interested party without a court order. The court also held that EuroDNS, a Luxembourg-based registrar, was not liable for failing to monitor the registration of potentially infringing domain names, even in the case of well-known trademarks. . . .
ICANN opens ticket purchases for their new gTLD Lottery
Domain Name News
ICANN has opened their ticket sales for the lottery for new TLD applicants earlier today. Ticket sales end on December 17th at 11am PST. Due to the lottery laws in California, the tickets have to purchased for $100 in person. Originally ICANN had ...
32 end user domain sales from $1000 to $80000
Domain Name Wire
Capella Education Company bought the name of its CEO, KevinGilligan.com, for $2,595. Investment firm The Capital ... $2,588 for FlatFeeLegal.com. Blaze Clearing Services dropped the hyphen from its domain by picking up BlazeServices.com for $1,395.. . .
Local Corporation Granted U.S. Web Domain Name Patent
Business Wire (press release)
IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Local Corporation (NASDAQ:LOCM), a leading online local media company, today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted the company patent number 8,312,125, which covers a method and ...
Domain Name System Solicitations Baffle Businesses
Delta News Web
11, 2012 – Business owners and their employees report puzzling statements in the mail that appear to look like bills or invoices for Internet domain “cloud” services. Since September 2012, Better Business Bureau has seen a sudden uptick in complaints ...
Investing.com Is 2012's Priciest URL, but the Real Money Is Still in Sin
DailyFinance
In the Olympic marathon that is the world of online business, Investing.com wins the 2012 gold medal as the most expensive domain name sold this year -- and one of the most expensive website names sold in the history of the Internet. The news hit the ...
ICANN opens ticket purchases for their new gTLD Lottery
Domain Name News
ICANN has opened their ticket sales for the lottery for new TLD applicants earlier today. Ticket sales end on December 17th at 11am PST. Due to the lottery laws in California, the tickets have to purchased for $100 in person. Originally ICANN had ...
32 end user domain sales from $1000 to $80000
Domain Name Wire
Capella Education Company bought the name of its CEO, KevinGilligan.com, for $2,595. Investment firm The Capital ... $2,588 for FlatFeeLegal.com. Blaze Clearing Services dropped the hyphen from its domain by picking up BlazeServices.com for $1,395.. . .
Local Corporation Granted U.S. Web Domain Name Patent
Business Wire (press release)
IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Local Corporation (NASDAQ:LOCM), a leading online local media company, today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted the company patent number 8,312,125, which covers a method and ...
Domain Name System Solicitations Baffle Businesses
Delta News Web
11, 2012 – Business owners and their employees report puzzling statements in the mail that appear to look like bills or invoices for Internet domain “cloud” services. Since September 2012, Better Business Bureau has seen a sudden uptick in complaints ...
Investing.com Is 2012's Priciest URL, but the Real Money Is Still in Sin
DailyFinance
In the Olympic marathon that is the world of online business, Investing.com wins the 2012 gold medal as the most expensive domain name sold this year -- and one of the most expensive website names sold in the history of the Internet. The news hit the ...
What Is A One Word .INFO Worth To You? | Morgan Linton
By Morgan
This morning I wrote an article about the sweet spot in the Domain Investing world, one and two word . ... .info, and ,us have really taken huge hits in the past year, yes they are one keyword generics, which are always desirable in any tld, but with all these new extensions coming online, one really shouldn't be spending $10k on these type of names. Yes, very ... So, if a dot com with such a namecan dispense information from oil change to SEO, why then would one need a dot info site?. . .
By Morgan
This morning I wrote an article about the sweet spot in the Domain Investing world, one and two word . ... .info, and ,us have really taken huge hits in the past year, yes they are one keyword generics, which are always desirable in any tld, but with all these new extensions coming online, one really shouldn't be spending $10k on these type of names. Yes, very ... So, if a dot com with such a namecan dispense information from oil change to SEO, why then would one need a dot info site?. . .
more news links below
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