Tag Archives: ICM

Was .xxx’s launch disappointing?

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The weekend box office numbers are in, and .xxx didn’t put as many bums on seats as might have been expected.

ICM Registry sold 55,367 new .xxx domain name names in its first 24 hours of general availability, giving it a total of almost 159,351 registrations, according to the company.

That’s pretty good going for a TLD which, despite the spin in ICM’s recent TV commercials, is intended for a limited customer base, and which is selling for $80 to $100 a year.

Given its $60 registry fee, ICM will have taken over $3.3 million in revenue yesterday, over $550,000 of which will be given to its sponsoring organization, IFFOR.

However, the 159,351 total includes non-resolving domain names, ICM has confirmed.

Due to the unique trademark protection mechanisms put in place for non-porn companies, it’s possible to pay for a .xxx domainnames that will only ever resolve to a standard registry placeholder.

ICM has previously said that it took almost 80,000 sunrise applications, and that the landrush phase put its total “comfortably over 100,000″.

It did not, however, break out the mix of Sunrise A (resolving) and Sunrise B (non-resolving) domain name.

That’s an important distinction, both for ICM’s ongoing revenue and for gauging demand for .xxx among registrants.

Each Sunrise B domain names gave ICM a $161 windfall but, unlike every other TLD launched to date, has the sale had no recurring revenue component.

I think it’s possible that 50,000 to 60,000 sunrise names were non-resolvers, which would give .xxx a total of roughly 100,000 active domain under management after one day of GA.

(My assumptions are that all 80,000 sunrise applications were unique and approved, and that roughly two thirds were for Sunrise B non-resolving domain name).

Assuming all the active domainname are renewed, it’s a $6 million a year business (or $5 million, if you exclude the mandatory IFFOR donation) for ICM already.

The .xxx zone is already bigger than .travel, .pro, .jobs, .aero, .coop, .museum and .cat. It will likely be bigger than .name, .tel and .asia by the end of the month.

So why suggest that it’s a disappointing result?

Pre-reservations

First, for a few years ICM was accepting no-cost .xxx “pre-reservations” through its web site, while its gTLD application was in ICANN limbo.

It racked up over 900,000 such reservations for roughly 650,000 unique .xxx domain names before shutting the offer down in July this year.

One might expect that most people interested enough in .xxx to pre-register a domainnames months or years in advance might also be interested in grabbing that domain during landrush, sunrise or at the moment of GA. That apparently didn’t happen.

.CO

Let’s also compare .xxx to the launch of .co by .CO Internet last year.

While .CO did not have anything like the long-term media exposure as .xxx, it did of course have the advantage of offering a completely generic string priced at a third of .xxx.

Within its first 24 hours of general availability, .CO said that it had 233,000 domains under management, about 39,000 of which were landrush or sunrise registrations.

Even at the cheaper registry fee (about $20 a year) .CO still made more money in day one than ICM (although ICM wins hands-down in terms of premium domain sales).

.CO, incidentally, also only had 10 accredited registrars at launch (not counting resellers) compared to ICM’s over 70.

Go Daddy

Go Daddy is responsible for roughly half of all new .com registrations, with similar numbers in other TLDs including .co, but it does not appear to be promoting .xxx very heavily.

For the last few days, its homepage has contained only one small below-the-fold reference to .xxx domainname. Its TLD drop-down menu has .xxx in tenth place, between .biz and .ca.

Conversely, ICM has been promoting Go Daddy (and DomainMonster) more heavily in its own marketing – notably on gavin.xxx, the site “owned” by its TV commercial character.

Expectations

So is .xxx on track to meet expectations at this early stage?

ICM CEO Stuart Lawley has previously predicted 300,000 to 500,000 registrations in the first few months, and that’s still an achievable goal given its day-one performance.

.CO Internet, for example, more than doubled its 233,000 first-day take within two months of going into general availability.

The new Russian ccTLD .рф registered 200,000 domain names in its first six hours when it launched in November 2010, and hit 800,000 by April this year.

While .xxx clearly hasn’t yet smashed estimates in the same way as its sunrise did, I think early indications are that it’s looking pretty healthy.

Related posts:

  1. ICM reveals .xxx launch dates, extends sunrise
  2. The .CO launch, by the numbers
  3. .SO launch date is November 1

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The University of Texas is buying up a bunch of potential porn websites.

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UT buys .xxx domain names to prevent adult parodies triple x Texassports.xxx, texasboxoffice.xxx, hookemhorns.xxx and the universityoftexas.xxx

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Ammar Kubba: Newest Spokesman for .XXX Domain names Registry

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After seeing the perfectly manicured adult film star-esque mustache currently being rocked by Ammar Kubba in support of Movember, the ICM Registry has hired Kubba to be its newest .XXX domain name spokesman / spokesmodel.

Kubba will be working alongside Ron Jeremy, as the two primary male .XXX spokesmen. Said Kubba, “I take my work very seriously, much like my mustache. It’s an honor to team up with Ron Jeremy, someone whom I have admired for a very, very long time.” Kubba continued to tell a story about the first time he learned about Ron Jeremy, but unfortunately, I can’t publish it on this blog.

Charitably, all earnings from Kubba’s spokesman position will be donated to the Movember foundation, which is helping to “raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men.” To date, Kubba has helped to raise over $2,300 for the organization. To donate to this great cause, visit http://mobro.co/Kubba

Ironically, the first event Kubba and Jeremy will be appearing at is a prostate cancer screening event sponsored by .XXX. (Kubba and Jeremy will not be doing the screenings).

Important Disclaimers: No animals were harmed by Ammar Kubba in creating the mustache. Neither Ammar Kubba nor the ICM Registry approved the contents of this article. Ron Jeremy may or may not be a spokesman for .XXX. The entirety of this article was fabricated, except for the mustache part.

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You Porn.com sues ICANN and ICM Registry over .xxx

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One of the biggest porn companies in the world has filed an antitrust lawsuit against ICANN and ICM Registry over the introduction of the .xxx top-level domains.

Luxembourg-based Manwin Licensing and California-based Digital Playground allege “monopolistic conduct, price gouging, and anti-competitive and unfair practices”.

Manwin runs You Porn.com, Brazzers and, under license, several Playboy-branded web sites, while Digital Playground is among the largest porn production companies in the world.

Together they are demanding an injunction on .xxx altogether, for ICANN to be forced to impose price constraints on ICM, and to open up the .xxx contract for competitive rebidding.

The complaint, apparently filed in California today, essentially alleges that everything ICM has done to date, from its application with ICANN to its sunrise period policies, is wrong and bad.

It claims ICM’s sunrise period amounted to extortion and that ICANN willfully created a monopoly by agreeing to a registry contract with presumptive renewal but no price caps.

ICM, the complaint says, reacted to the approval of .xxx earlier this year “with the anti-competitive behavior expected of a monopolist”.

It has, for example, improperly exploited the newly created market for .XXX defensive registrations by making such registrations unreasonably expensive and difficult, and by placing onerous burdens on parties seeking to protect their intellectual property rights.

Manwin claims that the recently ended sunrise period, which saw over 80,000 defensive registrations, was priced too high given that ICM handed out free domains blocks to thousands of celebrities.

It also claims that ICM should have enabled companies to defensively block typos of their trademarks, and that porn companies without trademarks should have been able to block their brands.

It takes ICANN to task for not operating a competitive bidding process for .xxx, and claims ICM used “misleading predatory conduct and aggressive litigation tactics” to push through its approval.

I’m not a lawyer, but often antitrust cases swing on the way the court decides to define the relevant “market”.

Manwin claims .xxx is the market, whereas it could be argued that because porn sites are free to use .com or almost any other TLD, that the names industry as a whole is the market.

The complaint states:

The market for blocking services or defensive registrations in the .XXX TLD is a distinct and separate market in part because there is no reasonable substitute for such registrations. For example, blocking or preventing others’ use of domain name in a non-.XXX TLD is not such a substitute. Blocking use of a domainnames in a non-.XXX TLD does not prevent use of the name in the .XXX TLD.

…

ICM has a complete monopoly in the market for the sale of .XXX TLD blocking or defensive registration services through registrars.

I’m not sure if my legal thinking holds water, but this sounds rather like arguing that BMW has a monopoly on making BMWs or Coca-Cola has a monopoly on Cherry Coke.

But Manwin says that .xxx is the only porn gTLD and ICANN has basically ruled out the creation of any future porn-centric TLDs with clauses in ICM’s registry contract.

It also notes that .sex and .porn would be unlikely to be approved in the next round of new gTLDs due to the restrictions on controversial strings imposed by the Governmental Advisory Committee.

ICM president Stuart Lawley said in a statement:

The claims are baseless and without merit and will be defended vigorously. They also show an apparent lack of understanding of the ICANN process and the rigorous battle we went through with ICANN over eight years in full public scrutiny to gain approval.

The .xxx story really is the gift that keeps on giving.

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IFFOR hires McCarthy to handle .xxx spin

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Kieren McCarthy, CEO of the .nxt new top-level domains conference, has reportedly joined the International Foundation For Online Responsibility to manage policy communications.

IFFOR is the sponsoring organization for ICM Registry’s new gTLD, responsible for setting the policies that will govern .xxx domain names.

ICM’s opponents in the Free Speech Coalition fear IFFOR, claiming it will be both toothless in the light of ICM’s “veto power” over policies (which ICM disputes) and dangerous to .xxx domain holders.

As well as outreach, McCarthy will be tasked with “developing the tools through which Internet community members and IFFOR Policy Council members can reach consensus positions”, according to Xbiz.

He has the right background. He’s the former general manager for public participation at ICANN, and lately one of its fiercest critics. More recently, he’s also done some consulting work for ICM.

Hopefully one of his first actions at IFFOR will be to add DI to the press release mailing list, so I don’t have to source Xbiz the next time the organization has news to report.

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