If You Pre-Ordered One Of These .Sexy Domains Don’t Blame Uniregistry Blame Your Registrar

February 28, 2014 by Michael Berkens 28 Comments

So a lot of people seem to be disappointed not getting the .Sexy domain name they pre-ordered.

Including myself.

While many names seemed to be reserved by the registry over 6,500 domains were blocked by the ICANN collision report.

Each new gTLD had the option of either launching now, subject to its turn and not allowing registrations of any domain name contained on the collision list for each new gTLD string or waiting to launch until the ICANN made a final determination regarding how to handle the domains contained in the collision report.

Almost every new registry elected to launch now, agreeing not to allow the registration of any domain on the collision report.

There is a separate collision report for each new gTLD.

The list has been out for months and publicly available to all including registrars.

I published a sample below of less than 1,000 of the 6,500 domains contained on the .Sexy collision report.

The collision report contains a lot of nonsense, as well as brands which also could not get their domains in sunrise.

Not all the names listed on the collision report would be one’s you would want to register, but many are no doubt domains you wanted to register and that registrars took pre-orders on.

Since these domains could not be registered now, registrars should have scrubbed any pre-orders against the collision list and not taken the order, not taken the money and in fact some registrars in did this, but many did not.

If you paid money to a registrar for any of the domains below or the other 5,600 domain names on the collision report then you should bitch at them.

I have privately.

And now doing it publicly.

You were never going to get any of these domains when the registry opened and therefore the registrar should have rejected the order when you tried to place it and not should not have taken your money.

If a registrar took your money and gave you hope that you might get the domain, they screwed up.

Bitch at them.

Here are about 900 domains of the 6,500 on the .Sexy collision list:

aaa

abc

abg

abs

act

action

actors

adult

africa

african

ahh

aim

aio

alabama

alex

alexandra

alive

all

always

amateurcams

amazon

america

american

ami

amigo

amour

anal

and

andre

andrea

android

andy

angel

angela

angelina

animals

anita

annuaire

annuaires

ans

anti

anu

anuncio

anuncios

any

app

apple

apps

arab

arabic

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

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Comments

Konstantinos Zournas says

February 28, 2014 at 1:23 pm

No Mike that didn’t happen with Donuts.
This only happened because uniregistry did not mark reserved domains in whois.
It was uniregistry’s fault only.

Reply
Michael Berkens says

February 28, 2014 at 1:28 pm

But the registrars could have pulled the collision lists and blocked those domains back in November, domains reserved by the registry is another matter

Reply
Konstantinos Zournas says

February 28, 2014 at 1:34 pm

I am talking about collision names too.
Registrars query whois for availability.
They dont keep lists.

Why did’t this happen with the 29 donuts new gtlds?

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Konstantinos Zournas says

February 28, 2014 at 1:37 pm

Also collision domains could then be reserved by the registry. Registry is responsible for all.

Reply
Michael Berkens says

February 28, 2014 at 1:48 pm

Konstantinos

Frank is only 1 of 2 new back end registries in this whole process all the other registries including Donuts have a back end that has been used before for other extensions including ccTLD’s which they operated or handled the back end for.

The only other registry that has a new back end that has never handled an extension before is Google.

The registry had problems, the whois was down for hours.

Its not my deal but for me its not shocking it happened on it first outing

If people want certain domains they can do there homework and they can pull the blocked lists as well, and not try to go for those domains.

I had about 20 domains taken out of my Godaddy account that they awarded to me from various Donuts extensions telling me someone else got it.

I know one guy who has well over 200 new gTLD domains he was awarded pulled back from his Godaddy account, all on Donuts domains only to see them awarded to someone else.

Its a new process.

Its hard, its expensive, its going to have a certain amount of errors at the registry, registrar and who knows what level, but if your going to try to get some stuff early its what your going to face.

And we are just starting

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Colin.club says

February 28, 2014 at 2:53 pm

Michael,

.CLUB is currently reviewing this issue. We believe that names on collision will simply be delayed a few extra months. Once we gain a little clarity on the ICANN position if it simply delays the launch by 4 months we will allow names in collision to come out in Landrush. We have already allowed names in collision to be registered in Sunrise.

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John Berryhill says

February 28, 2014 at 3:36 pm

“we will allow names in collision to come out in Landrush. We have already allowed names in collision to be registered in Sunrise.”

One of the things to keep in mind through all of this is that registries are going to set their own policies and their own implementation of ICANN requirements, which are not always models of clarity, particularly when their requirements appear to conflict.

The treatment of names on the collision list is a good example. Different registries are going to come to different answers. Uniregistry looked at the question from the perspective of “can we provide the service people are paying for?” if they thought they were getting a sunrise domain name, but it was on the collision list. Either way, someone is going to be unhappy, especially if they didn’t know the name was on the collision list. So given a choice between (a) some being unhappy at not being able to register a sunrise name on the collision list, or (b) some being unhappy at having paid for a name they now find out they can’t use; we went with (a) because what Uniregistry is providing are domain name registrations. IMHO it is easier to tell the folks in group (a) that ICANN prevented them from getting a name, instead of telling the folks in group (b) “we took your money for something you can’t use anyway”.

Likewise, there has always been considerable controversy about “prereservation” schemes in TLD launches – all the way back to the year 2000 round – for a number of reasons, and ICANN compliance has made various inquiries to new TLD applicants about anything that hints at allocation of names in any order other than a limited number of required reserved names, followed by Sunrise, and then followed by GA. Reservation services, which offer to seek to obtain domain registrations ahead of a TLD launch are registrar services. In point of fact, quite a few of the Registrar Stakeholder Group have themselves raised questions with ICANN about registry involvement in any sort of pre-allocation or pre-reservation system.

For that reason, based on a cautious reading of the ICANN and TMCH requirements, Uniregistry did not designate anything as reserved (save for the narrow exceptions which are placed ahead of sunrise), until after the close of sunrise. It is my understanding that, unknown to Uniregistry, there were registrars who were checking availability ahead of GA to populate their queues. One registrar was sending create commands on a regular basis long before GA had even opened. But while Uniregistry is going to be taking a look at registrar services, and how various registrars implement those services, in order to better accommodate them in the future, (a) it is an out-of-band service in relation to what ICANN requires, and (b) reasonable minds will differ on how to interpret and apply the ICANN requirements in the context of providing better support for the various ways in which registrars offer and describe their pre-reservation services. That also means that registries are going to have different implementations which may or may not be compatible with design assumptions that are not based on any particular model specification.

Reply
Rich says

February 28, 2014 at 3:54 pm

i just got an e’mail from Godaddy that one of my .TODAY domain names was puled out from my account and rewarded to some one else AFTER 9 DAYS being in my account.The curious thing i did not preregister it i bought it right when they opened up on 19 of feb.
This does not look right.I have a feeling i was raped by donuts.
Come on after 9 days and purchase it when it was available for the public…this is not right.

The domain name is FLYING.TODAY

VERY VERY DISAPPOINTING BY Donuts

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Michael Berkens says

February 28, 2014 at 4:08 pm

Rich

As I said this is all very new and its not going to work perfectly not for the registry nor the registrar side.

I can sit everyday and write about crap that happened domains that got pulled back by the registry to the reserved list after there were already pre-orders on it, domains that registrars said you got only to take them back, registries screwing up, but I choice not to rather to understand shit is going to happen hopefully you will get enough good stuff at good prices by being in front of the curve that will make it all worth it in years to come.

The people who moved out west early and got to stake their claim on a huge amount of land didn’t have it easy either.

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Alan says

February 28, 2014 at 4:13 pm

They should suspend registering .sexy until this mess is cleared up……….I bought 5 and am wondering how long it will be before they are pulled from my account.

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Rich says

February 28, 2014 at 4:19 pm

Michael,when is it safe that i own the names that i got?its 9 days for crying out loud !
They could come back in two months and say the same BS, it’s someone else’s
I’m not a happy camper.

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Michael Berkens says

February 28, 2014 at 4:41 pm

Rich

I’m understand

I’m not a happy camper with some stuff I Lost that godaddy awarded me than took back.

My point was simply that Uniregistry isn’t the 1st nor will it be the last problem/issue to arise

Reply
John Berryhill says

February 28, 2014 at 5:01 pm

From the horse’s mouth:

http://blog.icann.org/2013/11/pre-reserve-a-domain-name-or-not-icann-answers-the-question/

Reply
Bret Fausett says

February 28, 2014 at 6:36 pm

A correction and a comment.

On the correction, the whois was never down. It was at all times responding with data for registered domain names, according to the specifications and requirements in the ICANN contract and the relevant RFCs. We have now updated the whois to also provide messages about unregistered and unavailable names, to assist prospective registrants who wanted to use the whois to run availability queries.

On the comment, Uniregistry withheld a very limited number of premium names in Sexy and Tattoo, which we expect to release next year. You can read a little about the philosophy behind that here: http://uniregistry.com/premium-names Coupled with the names collusion blocks, this meant that many names people wanted were not available. The registry hopes to release all of those next year.

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frank.schilling says

February 28, 2014 at 6:43 pm

Mike, great points. In the early 2000’s when I was really worked up about the inequity of generic names and the UDRP, somebody told me: “Frank, if you’re in the domain name business you are going to have to accept that you’re going to lose names”. This landrush phase reminds me a lot of that. If you want to participate on opening day/week, you are going to have to accept that there will be ‘some’ level of inconsistency and interruption. I would like to predict that the established registries, Nuestar, Affilias, Verisign will have their own “glitches” and problems before the last blog post on this subject is written. So far only Donuts and Uniregistry have gone to open GA on an ASCII string in this round. Let he who has operated without some technical short-coming cast the first stone. : )

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Konstantinos Zournas says

February 28, 2014 at 7:51 pm

@Michael
Your and others problems with Go Daddy were registrar problems.
This was clerly a Uniregistry problem.
And the fact that the rookie lost the final it doesn’t make it any better.
The final is lost. Better luck next year.

Reply
Konstantinos Zournas says

February 28, 2014 at 8:05 pm

@Michael
As I said before the registrars are not to blame on Uniregistry’s whois problem.
And people were doing what they should: they were checking whois.
You can’t expect the average person to go through, ICANN reserved lists of countries in several languages, organizations, collisions, 2 letters etc. just to register a domain.
And that can only be emphasized more by Uniregistry’s problem with http://www.sexy.
The domain was on the collision list and yet it was delegated. Now it’s on hold.
DomainIncite.com mentioned this and Verisign picked it up too.

By the way the whois problem is not fixed completely.
Several 1 letter domains appear to free to register.

Reply
frank.schilling says

February 28, 2014 at 9:03 pm

@Alan nobody has lost a .SEXY name yet : ) Primarily because we didn’t try to get prereg’s that we can’t place. You may have tried to get Greatname.sexy and not gotten delivery but that’s different than getting greatname.sexy and having it taken back. If you got it. It should be yours unless there is an ICANN provision, URS or other proceeding that would unseat you.

Konstantinos. It’s 3:49AM in Greece. Maybe tomorrow, when the Ouzo wears off, you want to pull yourself together and apply your efforts to actually building something better, on your own rather burning tires in the street. Some registrars are indeed to blame for the poor implementation of new G’s. They are relying on the registry to do some of the lifting that they should do. I respect a contrarian viewpoint and constructive criticism. I can even take a slap in the face every now and then, but you are quickly becoming a clown in the circus with nothing too offer except empty vitriol. Nobody respects that.

Reply
frank.schilling says

February 28, 2014 at 9:43 pm

For the record, http://www.sexy was reserved as a registry asset (for marketing) long before the ICANN names collision list existed. We caught that and immediately added server-hold to keep the registration but to prevent the name from appearing in the DNS. A similar issue happened with many domain names at Donuts and in their case names were in the root and active right from delegation. This is a new process. We are all working hard to uphold and maintain fluid and evolving standards. The characterization that 1 character names are showing available is false. We are showing them in whois as non-existent because it does not exist, but these names show unavailable in EPP. For the benefit of domainers and outside laypeople who are trolling registry-provided whois and who do not realize that this type of whois is a tool for retrieving information on registry objects that exist, (not an availability-check for objects that do not exist), we are modifying these services to become more consumer centric – so that our insider’s registry whois becomes more like a consumer version of whois. Thanks to all for your patience : )

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chrishughesuk says

March 1, 2014 at 8:09 am

Frank – why were the registrars only briefed about the list of premium names that you wanted to withhold the day before the TLDs went live?

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frank.schilling says

March 1, 2014 at 11:01 am

@ chrishughesuk .. poor communication internally (which we have remedied)

For the record, http://www.sexy was reserved as a registry asset (for marketing) long before the ICANN names collision list existed. We caught that and immediately added server-hold to keep the registration but to prevent the name from appearing in the DNS. A similar issue happened with many domain names at Donuts and in their case names were in the root and active right from delegation. This is a new process. We are all working hard to uphold and maintain fluid and evolving standards.

The characterization that 1 character names are showing available is false. We are showing them in whois as non-existent because it does not exist, but these names show unavailable in EPP. Domainers are hitting “registry” whois and expecting it to respond the same way public facing whois (like domaintools.com or registrar whois) does. For the benefit of regular folks who are polling “registry-level” whois and who do not realize that this type of whois is a tool for retrieving information on registry objects that exist, (not an availability-check for objects that do not exist), we are modifying these services to become more consumer centric – so that our registry whois becomes more like a consumer version of whois. When our “registrar” launches this week, ‘that’ whois will function more like traditional outward facing services people expect.

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Richard Merdinger says

March 1, 2014 at 3:31 pm

Sorry for the late post here, but I need to clarify something regarding the issue that “Rich” had with FLYING.TODAY as noted earlier in this thread.

This one is a GoDaddy issue. We apologize for it taking 9-days to notify the customer, but please know it was awarded to someone who pre-registered the name.

Rich Merdinger, GoDaddy

Reply
Konstantinos Zournas says

March 2, 2014 at 12:09 pm

@frank.schilling
I just got the notification for your comment 2 days later.

So you are calling me a drunk and a clown… Thanks
I will not resort to name calling like you do. Nobody respects THAT.
I will not continue with FACTS.

I will start with the fact that I don’t like ouzo.

If you really want to talk about registrars you better name them.
Go Daddy had problems with donuts and pre-registrations.
What did that had to do with you?

99% of the problems on your new gs that registrars had were because of whois issues.
When you can’t handle collisions you can’t expect registrars or drunk paying customers to do better.

Common people don’t check EPP. They check your whois that still has problems:
========================================
OK:
========================================
Domain Name: g.tattoo

>>> This name is not available for registration:
>>> This name is registry reserved by Uniregistry.
========================================
OK:
========================================
Domain Name: i.tattoo

>>> This name is not available for registration:
>>> Current ICANN policy prohibits the registration of this domain name
>>> at this time because it is subject to a “names collision” report.
>>> You can learn more about the names collision issue on the ICANN
>>> website at http://www.icann.org/en/help/name-collision. This domain
>>> name may become available for registration in the future when the
>>> names collision issue is resolved.
========================================
NOT OK:
========================================
>>> No match for “e.tattoo”;

>>> Last update of WHOIS database: 2014-03-02T06:03:00.000Z <<<

================================================================
Konstantinos. It’s 3:49AM in Greece. Maybe tomorrow, when the Ouzo wears off, you want to pull yourself together and apply your efforts to actually building something better, on your own rather burning tires in the street. Some registrars are indeed to blame for the poor implementation of new G’s. They are relying on the registry to do some of the lifting that they should do. I respect a contrarian viewpoint and constructive criticism. I can even take a slap in the face every now and then, but you are quickly becoming a clown in the circus with nothing too offer except empty vitriol. Nobody respects that.

Reply
Bret Fausett says

March 2, 2014 at 1:35 pm

Konstantinos, the purpose of the whois system is to provide registration and contact information for registered names. It is not intended to be a mechanism for checking availability. Nevertheless, Uniregistry is updating its whois responses to provide a comprehensive set of responses for all unregistered but unavailable names. All one-character names will registry reserved. You may see different messaging on these, however, because, in our view, the names collision report takes precedence over the registry reservations. So if a domain name is on the names collision report, you will see that message over the registry reservation message. Either way though, the name is not available for registration at this time.

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Konstantinos Zournas says

March 2, 2014 at 1:39 pm

Bret that is not correct.
Whois is also used to check domain name availability.

And again this is NOT correct:
>>> No match for “e.tattoo”;
>>> Last update of WHOIS database: 2014-03-02T06:03:00.000Z <<<

Fix it.

Reply
John Berryhill says

March 2, 2014 at 1:53 pm

“I will start with the fact that I don’t like ouzo.”

Well, no wonder you’re so grumpy.

Reply
Owen Frager says

March 2, 2014 at 9:28 pm

Well I guess we cleared up the debate about who would ever want these crazy extensions.

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Owen Frager says

March 2, 2014 at 9:30 pm

Domainers are like rats. Put some cheese in the trap and no matter how many of their friends lie burnt and dead in traps next to the trap, they always take the cheese.

Reply

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