Comments Off on Jeftovic: Bitcoin isn’t Tulipmania. Domain names were.

In my new blog I have just posted “This Time Is Different” Part I: What Bitcoin Isn’t where I examine the substance of numerous arguments against Bitcoin. Tulipmania is a favourite, and after I looked at it I realized what happened with Tulipmania was much closer to what happened with domain names than with Bitcoin.

Read here or on Medium

Comments Off on Only at NamesCon: Early Release versions of Managing Mission Critical Domains (signed)

I’ll be at NamesCon this year, I’m honoured to be taking part in the Cyber-Security, Domain Theft and Hijacking panel and O’Reilly will be sending down some rare, early release editions of my book Managing Mission Critical Domains & DNS, word is I’ll be doing a book signing on those on Sunday.

I’m really looking forward to meeting a lot of domaining legends there. Conferences are a rarity for me, so some of you I’ll be meeting in person for the first time!

Thanks to Jothan and Richard for having me on. Happy to participate!

Comments Off on Police demand summary domain takedown to hijack the traffic or else they’ll report RAR to ICANN

This morning easyDNS received a summary domain takedown request from the City of London (UK) police department, demanding that easyDNS take down a bittorrent search engine and redirect the traffic to an IP address that promoted competing, commercial music services, all based out of London UK.

The takedown order made veiled threats that the registrar could lose its accreditation if it failed to comply and “reserved the right” to refer the matter to ICANN.

The bittorrent search engine is based in Singapore, easyDNS in Toronto. easyDNS has declined in the absence of a legal court order.

Full story here.

Comments Off on Wow, you can still hand-register 3-char .ORG domains.

Had an idea tonight which involved the string “0wo” (zero-w-o) and was surprised to be able to hand register 0wo.org. Also note that a few in this line are still available: 7wo.org, 9po.org, etc. They’re there if you look around. Not that NLL.org are worth anything but they can be useful for URL shorteners, etc.

On a related note, I’ve owned dom.org for a very very long time and will be finally putting it use. Watch this space and I’ll tell you all about it (it involves bitcoin).

Comments Off on Dem SuperPAC snags BinderFullOfWomen.com

When I heard about the Mitt Romney debate gaffe on “binders full of women” immediately going viral  (I didn’t watch the debate as the electoral process makes me near suicidal) I just knew that some quick thinking person was going to snag it instantly. That enterprising party was The American Bridge PAC who promptly redirected BinderFullOfWomen.com to their homepage who’s lead off story is “Romney’s Record on Women”

Still, I really wonder how much direct navigation type-in these “flash in the pan” memes can still generate in this era of social media dominance. But at the price of a hand registration, you can’t lose.

[ Update: Looks like TheDomains picked this up moments before I did. ]

Comments Off on Breaking News: .pro domain spotted in the wild

Holy Crap! It’s a real live actual .pro domain!

I think I would have an easier time believing it if I had just seen a UFO or sasquatch, but today I actually saw a real live .PRO domain in the real world. It was weird, you know that feeling you get when your eyes are plainly relaying information to your brain but your mind has extreme difficulty parsing it. It was like “WTF is that?” Being in the business over 15 years, I have an eye for domain names that is probably way past compulsive. Over the course of my day I routinely observe, make note of, memorize and lookup dozens of domains. When it comes to domain names very little goes unnoticed to me, so believe me when I tell you this: Read more »

Comments Off on The Map is not the Territory

Can a domain name be the difference between success and failure in a business? Are domain names the single best investment one can possibly make in one’s business? These are the main questions debated in an ongoing chain of posts, then my comments, and a follow-up post, and another of my comments and yet another post between myself and Andrei over at DomainingTips.

The conventional wisdom among domainers is that without the domain name, you’re nowhere, or, investing in domain names is the single best thing you can do to achieve some kind of “edge” in the competitive marketplace.

My opinion is different. I think the people who care most about domain names, are domainers. I don’t think that a domain name will be the key to success or failure and I can’t even parse the assertion that anything is “the best” investment because I think that statement is more rhetoric than anything else.

Let’s dissect.

Read more »

Comments Off on Verisign domain takedown proposal very worrisome.

Under a proposed Verisign initiative, all .COM/.NET domains exist at the pleasure of the United States government.

Verisign just released an overview of their proposed “Anti-Abuse Domain Use Policy” Under ICANN’s Registry Services Evaluation Process. The program’s chief aim is to provide a takedown mechanism of malicious websites distributing malware. In itself, not a bad thing, considering some registrars are unresponsive toward abuse or network stability issues.

However, lumped in with the conditions under which Verisign can invoke their takedown capabilities are some troubling “add ons”, as quoted below:

(read the rest on the easyDNS blog)

Comments Off on How to tell if a new TLD will succeed (and most won’t).

I just read Rick Spence’s “What’s in a name? It could be a fortune on the Internet“, (HT to HybridDomainer), which seemingly dials the needle back to (pick one), 2005 or 2007, or maybe 2010 and drinks the Kool-Aid every domainer has on an IV drip: the notion that fortune and success can be achieved simply by virtue of “owning the right names” (i.e How can we be bankrupt? Don’t we own TenMillionDollars.com?)

Only in this case, he’s talking about the seemingly impending new top-level-domains. “New domain names will rank above the current crop”, he gushes. Really? You mean now I get to defend my trademark in .www, .website, .bank, .toledo, .xxx and .FML ? Great! I think what we will see happen is a buyers’ strike in defensive names. It will become impossible to defend one’s names in all possible TLDs, brand owners will simply stop doing it, defensive registrations in new TLDs collapse, kicking out one of the two legs holding up most new TLDs (the other being speculative registrations). Read more »

Comments Off on easyDNS launches .SUX Top Level Domain

/04/01/11 TORONTO/ – easyDNS Technologies Inc., the ultra-cool DNS guys, today announced it is moving forward to secure .SUX under the ICANN new TLD process.

The .SUX domain is not intended to encourage registrations which disparage any company or entity.

“A number of factors have converged to make this possible”, said CEO Mark Jeftovic, “the new rules permitting vertical integration allow us as to function as Registrar, Registry, root DNS provider.”

Under the proposed terms of the new TLD, sunrise claims will be subject to a non-refundable $10,000 application fee. Landrush applications will ring in at $100/year with an  initial term minimum of 10-years. Conflicting applications will be automatically entered into an auction process subject to high-pressure sales tactics and shill bidding.

Jeftovic downplayed assertions that everybody on the internet would be held hostage to defend their marks under a TLD with less-than-flattering connotations, “Nonsense”, said Jeftovic, “there are lots of other perfectly legitimate reasons people would want to register names like citibank.sux, bp.sux or maybe gawker.sux” he explained.

Easydns.sux  would be reserved under the TLD and unavailable for registration.

(original post)