Yesterday, Christmas.com.au was sold on the expired auctions (Netfleet) for $12,555 + GST + Buyers Premium. The buyer was Cobra Car Alarms.
It’s a great domain name, but with all the uncertainty over “direct registrations” – and who might be entitled to Christmas.au if and when they do come in – it’s a very brave buyer who forked out this sort of money yesterday.
Perhaps Cobra didn’t read “The Elephant In The Room”? Or if they did, they are willing to gamble?
Here Are The Issues
♦ The create date for Christmas.com.au starts afresh as from yesterday. i.e. 1 September 2017.
♦ If direct registrations do ultimately come in, and auDA decides to adopt the recommendation contained on Page 41 of the “Phase Two (Quantitative and Qualitative II) report”, then the longest license holder will get Christmas.au.
♦ Who is the longest license holder? It’s the registrant of Christmas.net.au – the Christmas Island Tourism Association. According to the WayBack machine, they have continuously had this domain since 1999.
Market Uncertainty Has To End
Until the if, how and when of “direct registrations” is finally determined by auDA, then I’m certainly not going to be buying any expensive domains on the expired auctions. I’d rather buy aftermarket domains that keep the original “create date”.
It’s this uncertainty and continuous delay that caused DomainShield to make a protest by suspending their “drop-catching” service.
With everything that has happened at auDA over the past 20 months – and taking into account the failures of .uk and .nz – I think the best thing auDA could do is make an announcement that “direct registrations” are off the table for the foreseeable future.
As with most things in life, people and businesses much prefer a clear direction. At least you can plan accordingly.
Ned O’Meara – 2nd September 2017
Disclaimer
Agree. I think AUDA has no genuine mandate to bring in .au for the follow reasons,
1. Most of the arguments from the Names Policy Panel 2015 Majority report have been invalidated in the years since the report.
2. Most of the board members who voted for .au have resigned or been sacked.
3. The main party pushing for direct registrations, Ausregistry, has not had its contract renewed.
The board should officially scrap the .au proposal and restore confidence back into .com.au.
Excellent story.
In my opinion, some in supply have pushed for the unneeded additional competing proposed .au extension purely for their own potential profits.
The mistruths and Yes Only Vote campaign played a major part to even get it to thus stage.
If auDA proceeds, I think there is a potential Class Action possible.
.nz and .uk have both failed and they spent a fortune on them. As the Domain Name Commission New Zealand announced, many people even dropped and did not even renew their shorter .nz after the first year.
The facts is .co.uk,.co.nz and .com.au are now the recognised, safer trusted option.
Does auDA and the Board really think people will let them continue this mess and damage to over 2.5 million .com.au owners and investors?
Deloiite told the auDA CEO the .au should not go ahead. The CEO says he also has his doubts.
Follow the Money.
Publisher Note: This post has been modified.
Well said, the same proposal in other countries and it has turned out to be a complete waste of time and money, plus it has done a large amount of damage to those namespaces.
Maybe you could reach out to Cobra Car Alarms for comment?
Interesting domain for a car alarm company.
Always intriguing. I think people would pay $50 for “sealed section” access to see the full posts!
They’d have to pay more than that Paul!
Sean always makes good points, but unfortunately, some are simply not safe enough for me to publish. So I am protecting both of us by doing some “editing / modifying”.
Hopefully, the message still gets conveyed.
Personally I think this is the best name that has dropped so far this year.
The real question to me is how could the previous buyer have let this go?
From my research, the next closest bidder was a few grand under this final price, but why risk losing the name for a couple of grand when this name is EASY a six-figure domain. If not this year, then the next, or in five years…
Although it’s possible for Direct registration rules to go either way, I think we all secretly feel it’s going to go to the .com.au holder. Can you imagine if it didn’t?
The only thing I would ammend to this statement made by Ned:
Would be this:
… or hurry up and set the date of the first and final rules to be revealed!
Hi,
The whois contains the original registration date so that does not hold water Ned.
Sorry Rod – disagree. And I speak as someone who used to buy on the drops.
If you read my original article, you will see that I compared an aftermarket domain purchase with an expired domain purchase. We did a “password recovery” which also gives you “create dates”. This verified the point I was making that “expired domains” effectively start again.
Two other registrars (involved in drop catching) also confirmed this.
I can confirm that there are two dates stored at the Registry in connection with the create/registration date of a domain name.
For the majority of domains the create date and the registration date are identical.
When you sell a domain name the Transfer (Change of Registrant) process results in a new registration date, however the original create date is kept too. If ever the age of a domain name becomes important then we should all ask for the “Create Date” to be considered rather than the “Registration Date”.
When a domain expires and is picked up during the drops BOTH dates are reset, so the registration date and the create date are equal to the moment the drop catcher caught the domain name.
What whois contains the original registration date? The creation date is Sept 1st 2017.
guys,
If your the registrar of record you can see the complete log files with the original create date.
That is correct the registrar of record can see two dates, the create date and the registration date.
The good news is that Domain Owners can also get a record of their Create Date. They need to do a password recovery via AusRegistry which emails them the password AND it sends them the “Create Date” which in the case of an aftermarket purchase is older than the “Registration Date”.
All of the above is not relevant to the domain in this post because the domain as passed through the purge process, which results in a brand new Create Date and Registration Date which are the same and refer to the moment the drop catcher caught the domain.
Anthony, thanks for your two posts which clarify this situation.
It was you in fact who first alerted me to this potential problem, and I put it to the test with my own domains (those that I have bought on the aftermarket – compared to those that I had bought on the drops). The password recovery tool says it all.
Hopefully, we don’t get into this ludicrous situation if and when direct registrations are introduced. But at the moment, all we have to guide us is the recommendation contained on Page 41 of the “Phase Two (Quantitative and Qualitative II) report”.
As Ned and Anthony have pointed out this is very concerning.
However, with this fact as it is, surely auDA will have to IGNORE the silly recommendation contained on Page 41 of the Quantitative Report because the people making this recommendation obviously had NO IDEA that Creation Dates and Registration Dates were being RESET once dropped.
This has now been made very public information, a few times now, so auDA need to CANCEL this as an option. They simply have no choice. There is NO WAY any domain name holder will let this rule fly, now that this information has come to light.
Let’s face it, once this possible option is taken off the table, surely this means that the rules are going to HAVE TO BE that the .com.au holder gets the name.
Now, let’s stop dragging this thing out!