From January 1st 2021 the UK is no longer part of the European Union and consequently .eu domain names can no longer be registered or held by UK individuals or businesses. EURid, the .eu domain name registry, operate the registry under contract to the European Commission, so they are bound by whatever rules the EC put on them (within reason). Over the last couple of years … [Read more...] about EURid Tweaks Post-Brexit Handling of Impacted Domains
registries
Ethos Capital is Buying Donuts
Ethos Capital is buying a controlling stake in domain registry company Donuts. Donuts recently announced that it was buying Afilias and now it too is being bought. Ethos Capital is the entity that attempted to acquire PIR, the .org domain name registry. Ethos Capital described itself at the time of its attempted acquisition as being "firmly rooted in the belief that … [Read more...] about Ethos Capital is Buying Donuts
What is .art Playing at?
When new TLDs were being introduced one of the arguments in their favour is that they'd offer more choices to registrants. Earlier today the .art registry made a rather odd announcement: https://twitter.com/Art_Domains/status/1346502397644972039 Apparently they're now offering "3rd level domains" What now? According to the blog post: ART’s third-level domains … [Read more...] about What is .art Playing at?
Donuts’ Afilias Deal Closes
Back in November many were surprised by the news that Donuts was acquiring Afilias. While mergers and acquisitions happen all the time, this deal was big news and to many observers probably a little surprising. Yesterday the deal closed. The "change of control" had been on the agenda of a recent ICANN Board meeting, but nothing of any substance came out of that. … [Read more...] about Donuts’ Afilias Deal Closes
DotGay Donates $90k to LGBTQ Non-profits
The .gay registry committed to donating to LGBTQ charities when it was launching. The donations are linked to the sale of .gay domain names with 20% of the wholesale revenue being set aside by the registry. Earlier this week .gay announced that they'd made a donation of $90k to LGBTQ non-profits, which brings their total donation this year to over $124k. However at the … [Read more...] about DotGay Donates $90k to LGBTQ Non-profits
PIR Hiring for APAC
The .org domain name registry (PIR) is hiring a channel sales manager to cover the Asia Pacific region. Full details of the role and its requirements etc., are detailed in the job posting here. It sounds like the position is based out of PIR's headquarters in Reston, VA, which seems a little odd, as they'd never be in the right timezone for any of their … [Read more...] about PIR Hiring for APAC
Donuts to Buy Afilias
There's been a lot of mergers and acquisitions in the domain name space over the last few years. However Donuts acquiring Afilias is more than just "big" news. I'd have to sit down and work it out in more , but I think with this merger Donuts becomes the single biggest registry operator in terms of TLDs. Centralnic is probably the diversity king, as they seem to have … [Read more...] about Donuts to Buy Afilias
Radix Reports Premium Sales Increase
Radix registry have reported close to $2 million in revenue from premium domain names in the first half of 2020. That's an increase of 19% on the second half of 2019. While renewals contribute to the overall revenue reported new registrations made up roughly 50% of the total revenue. The overall volume of premium domain registrations was up by 41% compared to the previous … [Read more...] about Radix Reports Premium Sales Increase
Neustar Registry is now GoDaddy Registry
Back in April, at the height of the pandemic, GoDaddy announced its acquisition of Neustar's registry business. Any acquisition takes time to finalise and this was no different and in the middle of a pandemic I suspect the entire process may have had extra complications (it's not exactly easy to physically go onsite anywhere and travel restrictions would have added an extra … [Read more...] about Neustar Registry is now GoDaddy Registry
Kelly Hardy Joins CentralNic as Policy Chief
Domain industry veteran Kelly Hardy is now Head of Policy for Centralnic's Registry Services division. The announcement was made at the end of last week and it sounds like she'll be covering both ICANN's GNSO, the ccNSO as well as several other Internet governance fora: Kelly will head up CentralNic's Policy Consultancy, helping both ccTLD and gTLD registry partners with … [Read more...] about Kelly Hardy Joins CentralNic as Policy Chief