Law Enforcement Agencies, Authority, and new gTLDs

This Regulation shall enter into force on the twentieth day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union:

Competent authorities should be able to request any relevant information from any public authority, body or agency within their Member State, or from any natural person or legal person, including, for example, payment service providers, internet service providers, telecommunication operators, domain registries and registrars, and hosting service providers, for the purpose of establishing whether an infringement covered by this Regulation has occurred or is occurring.

Read my publication on CircleId.

The .ING new gTLD is a crazy idea

Please see no offence in that Title because this new gTLD could be an innovation.

Reading the newsletter from Corporate Registrar CSC, I noted that the .INC new gTLD is about launch (in January 2019, the 16th). For the note, the .INC Top-Level Domain "the definitive domain ending for business".

Not alone
There are many TLDs for the business and I listed them in the new gTLD report dedicated to Companies, but another interesting thing to me is that the TLD is similar to two others: the .INK (for writers to tattooists, to print shops), and the .ING new gTLDs also exist.The .IN country code Top-Level Domain (for India) is a pretty close one too. I wrote the list of similar Top-Level Domains here for those interested.

The .ING new gTLD is a surprise
First I thought that the .ING was the .BRAND new gTLD from the same Bank: you know..."ING", but it's not. It is an extension created by Google and its description is rather surprising. The application explaining the project says:

The proposed gTLD will provide the marketplace with direct association to the term, ʺing,ʺ a common suffix utilized to denote the gerund form of a verb (singing, sleeping). The mission of this gTLD, .ing, is to provide a dedicated domain space in which registrants can enact second-level domains that provide content related to the registrantsʹ usage of the term ʺing.ʺ Charleston Road Registry expects these uses may include but are not limited to offering content that is centralized around a second-level domain name, such as sail.ing or cook.ing.

What a strange idea to develop a new Top-Level Domain. I admit innovation here and I also see the possibility to shorten domain names more. Now...will that work and catch the attention of the public?

The Real Estate new gTLD business is average

I just finished the update of the Real Estate new gTLD report and noticed a few things:

• Real Estate Trademarks are not present in this business and very few applied for their personalized .BRAND new gTLD.
• Only Fresenius uses its domain names ending in ".fresenius", with 40 domain names registered in October 2018.
• The .REALTOR grows in number and is the highest in this category in terms of domain name registered with a total of 45,566 this month.
• All new gTLDs dedicated to Real Estate, but the .REALESTATE new gTLD, have lost registrations - at least once - since January from a month to the other. Note that it does not mean that their registrations have decreased since then (I excluded TLDs with less than 100 domains registered for this calculation).
• 7 of these Top-Level Domains have less domain names registered in October 2018 than what they had in January : this is a bad sign to me.
• One TLD had more than 55,000 registrations in January, it now has a little more than 2,000 (...)
• Would I buy a .MAISON domain name if I sold houses in French: an innovative business model should be invented just for this TLD ;-)
• The .LOFT and .MLS new gTLDs stick to one single domain name registration but were delegated in August and April 2016.
• I just noticed that none of the .HOME applications (11 of them) passed and were either withdrawn or not approved so I'll definitely change them to "withdrawn" in the monthly report.
• There are more .VILLAS than there are .HOMES domain names (...)

Check the full report here.

Another reason to register "jean.best"

I went to my registrar and tried to register my first name for my blog but unfortunately, my name is short and it appears that I won't be reach enough. The .BEST Registry is launching a promotion and I just grabbed jean.best for €9 instead of more than €93,000.00 for the same name ending in ".blog".

I'd like to register https://t.co/AAWRBLidRI but it will cost me $106,000 at my registrar. I pass.#blog https://t.co/yS5GWm3w62

— Jean Guillon (@jeanguillon) 31 octobre 2018

It cost me €9 to register jean.best at https://www.dynadot.com

This is a promotion so I registered for 2 years. Later I explain why ;-)

The .NEW new gTLD is here

Introducing a ✨ .new ✨ time-saving trick for users. Type any of these .new domains to instantly create Docs, Sheets, Slides, Sites or Forms ↓ pic.twitter.com/erMTHOsdyH

— Google Docs (@googledocs) October 25, 2018

Trademark Clearinghouse: Stats

Check the figures on the TMCH website.

The .BEST price drop

Not so many people are using domain names ending in “.best” yet. The reason for this is its price at the registrar: up to €112 per year at some registrars when a “.com” often costs below €10. The Registry recently changed hands and is adapting, offering a serious price drop.

Registration Price will be divided by 10
This promotion, effective 1st November for 3 months, is a good news: many users have been requesting the registrars to lower its price and this is just about to happen. The .Best registry, in its wish to go to the market, has decided to offer a promotion for “.best” domain names. The price will be:

1. Divided by 10 (wholesale registration price)
2. Lower than a “.com”
3. Available for multi year registrations: it means that it will be possible to register the domain name at this special price for up to 10 years at some registrars.

.BEST in SEO and SEM

At the moment, my Registrar wants to charge me €88 for a single year of registration but such price, even if already low compared to other registrars, is still too high for me and I want to register a “.best” domain name for the simple reason that “best” is a very strong keyword when it comes to promoting a business, and also because it benefits the SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Moreover, according to a study from GlobeRunner, .Best domains beats .com domains in SEM (Search Engine Marketing) having a Better CTR (Click-Through Rate) and a Lower CPC (Cost Per Click).

All .BEST Names are “still” available
What is great with this promotion is that .BEST has actually a low volume of domain names on the market (around 3,000 domains in total). This makes “.best” domain names a fantastic opportunity for Registrars, Trademarks and domain name investors. For example, many industries are covered with generic keywords available for registration: consulting.best, umbrella.best, perfumes.best, teeshirt.best, skirt.best, cards.best, sunglasses.best, expo.best, desk.best, equity.best, cryptocurrencies.best, homeloans.best … As a wine fan and producer, I will probably be looking for short names in that direction.

Note that such price will only be available during the promotion period starting 1st November of 2018 and ending in 31st January of 2019 (right after the Namescon 2019).

Schedule of Working Group and new gTLD Work Track 5 Meetings

ICANN63: Schedule of New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP Working Group and Related Meetings.

Working Group and Work Track 5 Meetings:

1. GNSO - New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Work Track 5 (Geographic Names)
   9:00 - 13:15, Sat, Oct 20, 2018 -- 117 GAC)
   Remote Participation: https://63.schedule.icann.org/meetings/901599
   Agenda wiki page: https://community.icann.org/x/shVpBQ
2. GNSO - New gTLD Subsequent Procedures (1 of 3)
   13:30 - 15:00, Sat, Oct 20, 2018 – 114 (ccNSO)
   Remote Participation: https://63.schedule.icann.org/meetings/901662
   Agenda wiki page: https://community.icann.org/x/IBZpBQ
3. GNSO - New gTLD Subsequent Procedures (2 of 3)
   15:15 - 16:45, Sat, Oct 20, 2018 – 114 (ccNSO)
   Remote Participation: https://63.schedule.icann.org/meetings/901663
   Agenda wiki page: https://community.icann.org/x/IBZpBQ
4. GNSO - New gTLD Subsequent Procedures (3 of 3)
   17:00 - 18:30, Sat, Oct 20, 2018 – 114 (ccNSO)
   Remote Participation: https://63.schedule.icann.org/meetings/901664
   Agenda wiki page: https://community.icann.org/x/IBZpBQ

Related Meetings:

1. GAC: New gTLDs Work Tracks 1 - 4
   9:30 - 10:15, Sun, Oct 21, 2018 -- 117 (GAC)
   Remote Participation: https://63.schedule.icann.org/meetings/901602
2. GAC: Geographic Names WG/WT5 Discussion Meeting
   17:00 - 17:45, Sun, Oct 21, 2018 -- 117 (GAC)
   Remote Participation: https://63.schedule.icann.org/meetings/901610
3. Middle East Space - Applicant Support Program for the new gTLD Subsequent Procedure
   10:30 - 11:45, Mon, Oct 22, 2018 -- 116 (ALAC)
   Remote Participation: https://63.schedule.icann.org/meetings/901573