Daily Snippets – 18 March

Here are today’s snippets about the domain name industry (and other stuff) that I hope you find interesting.

What’s Happening On The Drops

Big day on the drops yesterday with a reasonably high value domain being snapped up. That domain was slots.com.au – and the winning dropcatcher was Domain Shield. Well done to them – and congratulations to the buyer.

Whilst Domain Shield has hidden bids based on price levels doubling up (e.g. $200; $400; $800; $1600; $3200; $6400 etc), my calculated bet based on bidding strategy would be that the winning bid on slots.com.au was probably $3200 (inclusive of GST). 😉 I base this on the losing bid at Netfleet being $4888 +/+; and at Drop $$4510. But, of course, I might be wrong.

There were 32 contested domains on Netfleet – they won 28, and Domain Shield won 4. But Domain Shield wins the day in my book.

 

Domain Disputes In NZ – Part 2

Yesterday I said I would highlight a particular case that went through all three stages of the Dispute Resolution Procedures.

To recap:

Level One – is informal mediation, which is a free service.

Level Two – is Expert Determination. Here, the person making the complaint can choose to continue the process by paying a fee of $2,000 + GST.

Level Three – only occurs if an appeal is lodged. At this point, a panel of three Experts are appointed to make a final decision. This costs $7,200 + GST for the person making an appeal.

The particular domain was childcancer.co.nz.

Complainant was Child Cancer Foundation Inc. of Auckland; and the Respondent was Garth Piesse ( a well-known and respected international domain investor based in NZ).

Highlights

  • Complainant went to Level 2 – both parties lawyered up.
  • A local Q.C. (Queens Counsel) was appointed as Expert.
  • Expert ruled in favour of Complainant and ordered domain transfer.
  • Respondent complained to the Domain Name Commission (DNC) that the Expert should not have been allocated the case given that he had previously been a Partner at the law firm acting for the Complainant.
  • Given the above, DNC offered to pay for the cost of appeal (Level 3). Respondent accepted.
  • I’m not sure what you call a collective of Q.C’s, but three of them were appointed as the Appeal Panel!
  • They ultimately overturned the decision for their own reasons – Garth got to keep the domain name.
  • However, the whole thing left him deeply out of pocket – and very disappointed in the whole system.

You can read the decision here.

 

Website Of The Day

I recently acquired pye.com.au, and so I looked at what was happening at pye.com

It resolved to a site which offered me a vanity email address at this particular domain. Delving a bit further, this is just one of many sites belonging to Real Names.

RealNames is a service of Tucows Inc., an ICANN accredited, publicly-traded company serving thousands of businesses and millions of Internet users worldwide since 1994.

At the heart of RealNames is a unique portfolio of name-based domains. RealNames lets anyone create and use a memorable and more meaningful email address that’s based on their own first and last name.

I think this is one of the best and easiest vanity email sites I have come across. I would love to duplicate something like this for some of my geographic domains. And I know a good mate of mine likes the look of this for all his surname domains!

 

Motivational Quote Of The Day

“You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.”

– Zig Ziglar