.kiwi.nz launch pushes domain names past half-million mark

The .kiwi.nz second level domain opened for registrations at 10am this morning and in the first fifteen minutes over 1000 names were registered.

The total number of registered .nz domain names now exceeds 500,000 for the first time and Debbie Monahan, the Domain Name Commissioner, expressed delight at the half-million .nz registrations and .kiwi.nz launch, describing today as "a landmark day for the New Zealand Internet".

Source InternetNZ

Update: 11:54 AM I've been informed by my registrar that .kiwi.nz is no longer "Provisional" and registrations to it are now just normal registrations. Any domain names that are "delegated" will be placed in the DNS system in the next hourly update.

InternetNZ provisionally approves .kiwi.nz second level domain

InternetNZ (Internet New Zealand Inc) has revealed that it has approved the creation of a new second level domain in the .nz domain name space - .kiwi.nz.This means that people will soon be able to register personalised domain names ending in .kiwi.nz.

The implementation of .kiwi.nz is being managed by InternetNZ’s subsidiary company the Domain Name Commission Ltd. Authorised .nz registrars will be able to take provisional registrations for these names from 10am on Tuesday, 11 September 2012.

As part of introducing a new .nz second level domain, a threshold of 500 provisional registrations must be received before the domain is made active.


Debbie Monahan, the Domain Name Commissioner, is reported as "describing the .kiwi.nz application as fitting perfectly with its previously published criteria for new second-level domains" and saying "We encourage those interested in securing a .kiwi.nz registration to contact a .nz registrar and ask what they need to do to obtain the name of their choice in the .kiwi.nz zone. Registrars will advise prospective registrants that if the threshold of 500 for .kiwi.nz is not met, .kiwi.nz will not be made active and they won’t have their name but we think it is a great opportunity for people to get a true ‘kiwi’ tone into their domain names,"

(The above is summarised from  the InternetNZ press release. Copyright InternetNZ)

.nz open 2ld consultation update

The consultation on opening the .nz second level domain space to public registration has now been going for 2½ months and has just over 1 month to go.

So far (assuming I've counted correctly) there have been 56 submissions published on the DNC website. I've read through all of them and there seems to be considerable support both for and against the proposal. I don't recall reading any well developed arguments in favour and have read several strongly reasoned arguments against.

Interestingly enough, a common reason raised for not opening it is that there is a risk of cybersquatting on existing registrants of .co.nz and I haven't yet seen a good suggestion for a way to prevent this other than allowing them to register during a sunrise period. Given the way that so many small businesses are oblivious to the realities of their Internet presence I can see many of them missing their chance to register If they are genericsquatters I guess it will just be their loss, but if they have a genuine "fanciful" brand name I wonder how many of them really will face cybersquatting ... not that I'd risk it myself. If it goes ahead Tessa and I will certainly be applying for the .nz for our business domain names.

One group that have been noticeably absent from the consultation process so far are the legitimate domain name investors. I've only noticed one submission that's clearly from a domineer and that was against the change. I imagine that many of us are quietly rubbing our hands with glee at the prospect of swapping our .co.nz names for the potentially more lucrative .nz names while others of us have staked out niches and are worried by the instability that may result.  It would be good if a few more active domineers made their thoughts felt, preferably with cogent arguments to support their positions.

In addition to the usual written consultations, the DNC is organising face to face consultations. Net Hui had a session to discuss the subject and they are holding public consultation meetings in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin starting with Dunedin on the 22 August and finishing in Wellington on the 4 September with an on-line consultation on the 5th. Venue and registration information is on this page on their website. I'll be at the Auckland meeting, if you're there say "Hello"

Goodbye .co.nz, Hello .nz

The Domain name commission has published a consultation paper on their plan to open public registrations at the .nz level. The paper and some expanatory background are on this page at their site.

Consultation runs until the 27th of September (nearly 4 months).

.kiwi.nz Consultation Ended

The consultation on this has ended. In the end there were 14 submissions ranging from strongly in favour to strongly opposed.

I did think of summarising for the benefit of readers and may yet do this, but having read all the submissions there was such a total disconnect between those supporting and those opposing that I suspect that the DNC and InternetNZ will find it almost impossible to find any consensus.

.kiwi.nz, proposed new unmoderated 2ld

Donald Clark, one of the InternetNZ councillors, but acting in his private capacity, has formally requested the creation of the second level domain name .kiwi.nz.

Amendment to the .nz Registrar Agreement

In a society governed by the rule of law we all have to obey court orders, but under normal circumstances we can not be arbitrarily detained or have our property seized without a court order.

Google Closes Adsense For Domains

Google have announced that they are closing Adsense For Domains, their domain parking solution. They've had a lot of complaints about running a domain parking service at all and although they have stared down those complaints, I guess this will make their life easier

Their service has never really fired, it's always been the poor cousin of their other services and has never produced good results for me. I was getting a slightly higher PPC from them than from other providers, but their click rate was a lot worse and looking at their templates it's fairly easy to see why.

A volatile few months coming

The Domain Name Commission has released their February newsletter with .nz domain name stats for January 2011.

January saw 7423 new registrations with a net growth in .nz of 2729 compared with 7317 / 3161 for December 2010. It's easy to see this as New Zealand being on holiday in January, but when compared with the figures from last year where they were 6509 / 1949 in Dec 2009 and 7093 / 2931 in Jan 2010 it shows a jump in renewals and registrations early 2010 and a reversed change in 2011.

Christchurch Earthquake Community Response

Following this week's major earthquake, a dedicated volunteer team of Internet people, web masters, programmers, and computer savvy helpers have built the Christchurch Earthquake Community Response site to coordinate help efforts.

If you need help or can offer help, please go there.

Christchurch Earthquake: Are Your Domains Safe?

In the .NZ domain space, your domain registrations are passed through to the central registry that is managed by the New Zealand Registry Services (NZRS) company. NZRS has a main data centre and a hot spare in a geographically remote data centre. Their status page lists the main and hot spare as being up. If I recall correctly neither of these servers are in Christchurch.

InternetNZ donates $50,000 to Red Cross

In a press release, InternetNZ says:

"InternetNZ (Internet New Zealand Inc) has today donated $50,000 to the New Zealand Red Cross in support of those affected by the Christchurch Earthquake. This is one step the organisation has taken, and there will be further action. It is clear that cash is needed right now and an immediate donation is one of the best ways to help, backing those organisations that are there on the ground."

NZ Post vs Yellow Pages settled

In my previous post Cybersquatting court case NZ Post vs Yellow Pages I reported how a trademark and passing off case between the YP Group and New Zealand Post included some domain names.

Last night in some informal discussions I was having before the Internet NZ members consultation meeting I heard from another interested watcher of the case that it had been settled out of court and the disputed domain names had been transferred to NZ Post. The whois for them is still showing Yellow as the owner, but I'm assuming that this is just a timing issue as the sites have already been removed. My informant tells me that the Google Adwords bids on the Localists keywords by YP seem to gone as well.

Obviously it's good that these companies managed to agree to do the right thing, and it's also good that the dispute over a generic name is no longer caught up in the midst of some non-generic names.

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Update 3:50 PM
It's official, Localists have posted on their blog that the dispute has been resolved on "commercial terms" and the domain names are to be transferred.

Cybersquatting court case NZ Post vs Yellow Pages

Update 25 February 2011 - I'm informed that the case has since been settled out of court.

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From the "I don't like you playing in my back yard" file. According to the Herald:

"New Zealand Post's new directories business Localist is suing Yellow Pages Group over allegations Yellow breached the Fair Trading Act by buying up similar web addresses and Google adwords in a deliberate attempt to divert online searches from Localist to itself.
[...]
the Yellow Pages Group had bought a range of internet domain names which were almost identical to the Localist internet address. The addresses include locallists.co.nz and localists.co.nz.

"Those domain names were directing traffic to a web page promoting the Yellow Pages and YPG's other directory services," Localist chairman Sam Knowles alleges in an affidavit.

Localist also alleges that Yellow paid to have its website appear at the top of Google searches of the word "localist".

The interesting thing here from a domaining perspective it that this is going to go to court and we may end up with some real NZ case law on cybersquatting. Both sides of the argument have enough resources to fully put their cases. Hopefully they will get a judge with enough knowledge of the Internet to make a sensible ruling.


One thing to watch out for is that it would be easy to argue that "local lists" is generic, but given the rest of the report and the other names they have it's likely to be difficult to get this accepted as an innocent use of a generic domain name. I'm just hoping that we don't get a ruling that effectively eliminates the protection that generics have had in the past.

Another advantage of owning a .NZ domain name

Interesting piece of chatter on the Internet NZ mail list today. Apparently the US government has seized a Spanish owned .ORG domain name, despite the Spanish courts having ruled that what the company owning the name is doing is perfectly legal under Spanish law.

Long time readers of this and my other blogs will recall that I have long advocated owning the domain name with the extension most appropriate for your target market. Back in 2008 in Branding on the Internet I said you should have .co.uk for Britain, .com.au for Australia, .com for the USA and, of course, .co.nz for New Zealand, and I still stand by that advice. This judicial theft doesn't affect the logic of having the appropriate name for your target market, but does strengthen the message in those cases where you don't have a particular need for any given top level domain name. The Spanish company in question seem to have their name tied up in a number of registries and have just switched to another one.

.nz Dispute Resolution Service Policy Review

The Domain Name Commission (DNC) has announced a consultation on their Dispute Resolution Service that will run until the beginning of April this year.

They are proposing three minor changes

1. a change where the term Mediator will be defined,
2. Increase the fee for Expert determination from $1800 to $2000 (+GST)
3. Increase the fee for appeals of Expert determination from $6,600 to $7,200 (+GST)

All fairly innocuous, but the entire policy is up for review. It was last reviewed in 2007-2008, and at that time a couple of points were raised.

I'll probably make a submission and I'll be watching the review page and hope to report here on any significant developments

Google Analytics illegal in Germany?

According to reports, the state privacy commissioner in Hamburg, Germany, has decided that Google Analytics should be illegal.

"The free internet service Google Analytics gathers detailed information about website visits via a user’s IP address, sending the data back to Google servers in the United States for processing.

"According to the paper [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung], Caspar and data protection officials in other German states believe this practice should be illegal."

Apparently they intend fining German websites that use Analytics (despite it not being illegal yet). It's like something from the siege of Helengrad.

Let's hope this doesn't spread, because once they take Analytics off us, they will be back for Adsense next, then possibly Piwik

Sources

• The Local (An English language German news site)
• Search engine land blog

Advice to the new domainer

I just wrote this at Digital Point forums in reply to a post "Domainers... do they make money?"

This is a lightly edited version of my reply. It seemed too good to leave as a reply that will soon be buried in history so I've copied it here.

Domaining isn't one business, it's several different businesses. Some domainers buy domains to use for the revenue they generate while held, some buy domains to sell on reasonably quickly as stock in hand, and some buy to hold onto for some future payout.

.NZ domain registration wholesale fee reducing by 16% in July

InternetNZ has announced a reduction of the wholesale fee for .nz domain names from NZ $ 1.50 + GST per month to $1.25 per month ($18 to $15 per annum per domain name) from 1 July 2010.

The fee was last reduced in July 2007 and before that in July 2004.

While there is no obligation on registrars to pass on the wholesale fee reduction to customers, InternetNZ President Frank March says he "expects that many will and therefore maintain the competitiveness of the .nz registrar market."

Based on the 2007 experience, we can expect to see the discount registrars taking a short delay before passing on the savings and falling into line fairly quickly once their competitors drop their prices.

See also the Full announcement on Domain Name Commission site .

.NZ IDN Sunrise Registration Period

Background

As previously reported here and here the Domain Name Commission (DNC) has been preparing policies on introducing a limited set of international domain names (IDNs) to the .NZ space to allow the supporting of the Māori language language. This requires adding the 5 macronised vowels ā, ē, ī, ō and ū to the English alphabet.

Policy

They have now written and published the IDN Sunrise Policy (or pdf) for registration during a "sunrise period" that will allow the existing registrant of a Maori name spelled without macrons to register the macronised version of the name.