Web 2.0.11562 beta

Proposed pricing changes in the upcoming contracts for .info .org and .biz would introduce chaos to the domain market. Here is a good article about it and here is the forum to comment on it.

Lots of folks were unhappy about the recent changes to Verisign’s contract for .com - well I can assure you the effects of that will be gradually impacting the market to the tune of 7% per year. This on the other hand creates the opportunity for dramatic changes. Registries are free to set arbitrary prices on domains they want to affect. Do you think a blog site criticizing PIR at some domain like pir-sucks-and-should-be-made-fun-of.org would be allowed to engage in free, albeit ignorant speech? No, the renewal price would simply be adjusted to, say $1 million and that would be the end of that. Not to pick on PIR too much, they’re really much better netizens than some of their competitors.

OK so I’m following Kevin Murphy’s lead again, but I’m intrigued by the nation of Cameroon’s inevitable rise to type-in traffic stardom. I’m referring to their change in policy to allow any requests for any unspecified .cm domains to resolve to a PPC page that they can make money from. I remember the outcry when Verisign tried it, but as pointed out Cameroon does not fall under any jurisdiction that has any power to make them stop. Even OpenDNS can not help here, since HTTP requests to .cm domains may in fact be legitimate. Well OK, I may never have gone to a .cm site before today, but the point remains valid.

In other news, Moniker.com was apparently bought by Kanoodle. When you look at some of the ethically-challenged registrars operating today I think they picked a winner! Elsewhere it was noted that iREIT purchased some additional portfolios consisting of some 40,000 domains including CreditReports.com and FarmLoans.com. Nice.

Kevin Murphy has this awesome expose quantifying the domain kiting phenomenon first publicly sounded by GoDaddy’s Bob Parsons.
http://texturbation.com/blog/2006/07/31/domain-kiting-hall-of-shame/

Can it really be true that the Miami company he named controls, without paying for, some 16 million domains? We all want to see the market continue to appreciate, but this artificial scarcity created by certain registrars is not a healthy subsitute for actual demand from end users.

Correction 8/5 - due to the fact that controlled domains must be deleted then grabbed again within 5 days it would seem my number too high by a factor of six. I stand by the basic point, but an accurate number is probably closer to 2 million domains. Thanks Kevin for pointing it out (see comments for details)

Wouldn’t it be nice to have some ratings system from a not-for-profit group in order to provide some guidance for would-be investors in country code TLDs. Of course it’s important to study the aftermarket sales for that extension to set your expectations for ROI. But remember that assessment also involves judging the stability and competence of the national government and the individual registry associated with a given ccTLD.

AAA ratings could be awarded to the gold-standards, like .de .uk .us .ca etc. But for those registries with troubling incidents that could be documented, lower ratings could be published. Communist or totalitarian governments could also qualify as a criterion for awarding a lower rating.

Ratings criteria, appeal process and the ratings assignment process itself should all be documented of course. This would provide a basis for more standardized financing of domain portfolio investing. It should also increase the levels of investment in domains from, and development of sites in high-rated ccTLDs. Anyone interested in providing this service to the global ccTLD investment community?