I was on the west coast this morning and decided to get up early and take a shot at registering some .tube domains at Uniregistry.
I threw a bunch of domains into the system, include the single letter domain a.tube and out of the bunch of 100 or so, only a.tube and one other domain name, Filthy.tube came back available to be registered at normal registration prices.
Once I got confirmation of a.tube being registered I went to the ICANN whois and saw that the domain was registered with my contact information.
I quickly threw in other 25 letters of Alphabet and the number 0-9 .tube domains
So in all out of 26 potential one letter and 10 one number .tube domains, I wound up getting 17 of them.
The other 19 single letter/single numbers domains were registered by someone else (like i.tube which was registered by someone in China) according to the ICANN whois at the time.
The 17 domain names remained in my account until around 1pm when I was formally notified by Uniregistry that:
“The TUBE Registry Operator (Latin Telecom) had originally requested that all 1 position (one letter/one number) domain names be reserved. Due to processing errors, these domains were inadvertently available for registration. We were advised by the Registry Operator to delete these domains after they were registered.”
So to be crystal clear this was not Uniregistry fault or problem.
The domains were available to be registered and were in fact registered and showed up as registered in ICANN whois.
The reversal of the registrations were ordered by the registry Latin Telecom.
I was pointed to the TOS of the .Tube registry:
“R3.74.1 You acknowledge and agree that .TUBE reserves the right, at its sole discretion and at any time and without limitation, to deny, suspend, cancel, redirect, or transfer any registration or transaction, or place any domain name(s) on registry lock, hold, or similar status as it determines necessary for any of the following reasons: (i) to protect the integrity and stability of one of its registries; (ii) to comply with any applicable laws, government rules or requirements, requests of law enforcement, or any dispute resolution process; (iii) to avoid any liability, civil or criminal, on the part of .TUBE, its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers, directors, contracted parties, agents, or employees; (iv) to comply with the terms of the applicable registration agreement and .TUBE policies; (v) where you fail to keep your Whois information accurate or up-to-date; (vi) if the domain name use is abusive or violates the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), or a third partyʹs rights or acceptable use policies, including but not limited to the infringement of any copyright or trademark; (vii) to correct mistakes made by a registry operator or any registrar in connection with a domain name registration; (viii) as needed during the resolution of a dispute; or, (ix) for the non-payment of fees to the Registry”
So looking at (vii) “to correct mistakes made by a registry operator or any registrar in connection with a domain name registration” the registry has the right to take the domain names back by stating the registrations were allowed in error.
For the record here are the domain names that were registered and were sitting in my Uniregistry account for hours:
1.tube
2.tube
5.tube
8.tube
9.tube
a.tube
e.tube
g.tube
k.tube
m.tube
p.tube
q.tube
s.tube
t.tube
u.tube
x.tube
y.tube
As for the other domain names I attempted to register they appeared to be reserved (as opposed to being available like the one’s I was able to register) or had premium price.
For the premium priced domains I also checked out Name.com for pricing for .Tube premiums
.Tube premium domain names, that I checked on were priced up to $112,500.
Reality.Tube, Real.Tube, Mom.Tube, Home.Tube and Shopping.Tube were all priced at $112,500 (interestingly the shorter domain name shop.tube is only priced at $56,250).
Other Big priced domain names I checked on were:
Big.Tube priced at $56,250.00
Looks like their programmers didn’t bother to test.tube.
Suck.tube
F%ck.tube
might still be available.
I feel for you Michael
Test.Tube
Fuck.Tube
Suck.Tube
All appear to be reserved domains
>”like i.tube which was registered by someone in China”
Take special note of that, people. The letter “i” valuable in China.
Not exactly, John. The English vowels and the letter v are the 6 letters that reduce the value of any Chinese domainer inventory,although the re applies less for L names than 2L, then really kicks in at 3L to 5L. Best, Simon Cousins, Allegravita
You’ll just have to read my earlier reply below to Michael. I’m talking about a needed revision of standard “religious dogma” and groupthink about domain commerce, not a wholesale denial of elements that are valid or valid more often than not while exceptions exist (and are usually the subject of the needless and costly denial).
(My earlier reply to Michael is down below.)
John
i.tube was the only name I checked in the ICANN whois before it was deleted I noticed it was a Chinese registrant.
Well I’m underlining that, Michael, because it seems to me that if “i” is not prized then you would not have seen a Chinese registrant there The standard “orthodoxy” about vowels and China/Chinese appears to be partly flawed nonsense to me. I’ve personally been contacted by a Chinese suitor via QQ mail for a domain in which the “i” is one of the two most important features. After doing some research, it seems clear to me that not only do Chinese value “i,” but sometimes it’s extremely prominent and even essential in what they even name their companies. And the popularity of Apple “i” products over there doesn’t exactly hurt I would think.
On a side note, I would say that the standard and limiting “orthodoxy” about short vs. long domains in general is also unfortunately and unnecessarily flawed to some degree (though obviously the best short are *usually* more valuable), and has unnecessarily cost the industry a great deal of money.
Some of the current “religious dogma” about domains should be revised imo. Otherwise people are leaving money on the table for no good reason other than group think and ideological momentum.
You guys continue to waste money, dime a dozen, when registry operators tell you this space is not for domainers, you should take notice.
M B I guess you got 35 million reasons to throw your money away, but these other guys need to be careful.
@Ryan,
I bet any money you own at least 10 gtlds.
[expressing a personal opinion here]
Events like this dissolve the emotional infrastructure underneath new TLDs. One cannot ignore the stark contrast between the “AW YEAH!” feeling of scoring that great domain and the “WTF?!?!” feeling when the registry or registrar pulls the carpet out from under your feet on it.
new gTLD Registries want registrant confidence and use of names to grow – as part of that they need to really pay attention to how they handle clawbacks such as you experienced and/or the premium repricing / recategorizing domains in new gTLDs.
While there is always some clause in some agreement to quote and justify the clawback event – there’s a lot of damage done to the registrant confidence and sentiment.
Agree with you once more Jothan. I’ve had a similar experience at one point purchasing some domains from a registry owned registrar. Considering that this seems to happen time and again, you’d think too that registries would add this to the testcases they work with before releasing something to the public.
/FM
I think it goes beyond registrant confidence and sentiment. Where is the business ethics and professionalism?? You create a one-size-fits-all legal agreement which protects you from practically anything, and don’t give a crap about your customers should something go wrong!
Ryan
I think you would agree that any single letter or number domain is worth $30 if you can register it for that.
What a monumental f up by Latim Telco.
Wow in one shot they’ve managed to piss off both MB and FS ( by implying it was a Registrar mistake on ‘viii’ item above), at the
same time.
Tried to register many of the same early in the morning at 101domain and they all came back as might be available, give us a call. Sounds like a glitch in the system, I’ve had domains in my full control for 3 or 4 days, then taken away as reserved and sorry we messed up excuse.
I hope they give your money back, so you can register domains with a better extension
.tube will not go anywhere
Whocares.Tube
NtldsSuck.Tube
6 figures to register certain .tube domains. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
I was at the store the other day and I bought a $6 item with a $10 bill.
The cashier handed me back three $1 bills and a $20 bill.
After that $21 was in my hand, the cashier noticed he had mixed in a $20 bill and DEMANDED that I give him back the $20 for another $1.
Imagine the nerve of that guy. There I was with $21 that I OWNED because he handed it to me, and he had the gall to claim he made a “mistake” and ask for that $20 back. He was the guy that handed it to me, and he kept saying “oops, there was a twenty mixed in with the ones.”
I’m never shopping there again. I’m so cheated.
John I hate to provide counterargument to anything you say because I respect you so much, and you’ve chosen a perspective representation that is a sound and perfectly fair one – yet I think it doesn’t quite fit.
This is more where the manufacturer effed up and packaged the gold and diamond cufflinks in the tin box, and customers bought them up – it is more of a manufacturing glitch at the factory than a store owner handing the incorrect change.
In retail, the store or manufacturer eat the loss , they don’t go to your home and take the cufflinks back.
My favorite card in Monopoly was “Bank error in your favor, collect $200.”
Oddly enough, in real life, every time that has ever happened, I didn’t collect the $200.
Last year my Missus bought goods from China, paying with one of my cards, some of which she returned. The total value of the goods was around £200. A week later my account was credited with £20,000.
We called the supplier who told us they only sent back the £200 owed, so I figured what happened is a mistake was made during the FX transaction, purely fat fingers.
I only put money into this account as and when I need it, it limits my vulnerability to cloning etc. So I transfer the £20,000 into the savings account with the same bank. I also limit my day to day account so that there’s no overdraft, if anything ever does get stolen it is my money to lose.
Anyway, 6 weeks later my day to day account is showing a balance of negative £20,000. They must have realized their error, as I suspected they would once they tallied up intermittently, and, without so much as a call or letter, dipped into the account and took the money back out.
They usually charge me £10 if I do go into negative balance, but they didn’t this time.
So close, and yet so far.
John
Not the same John
If a registry screws up and makes a domain available for registration, god knows they have plenty of time to submit a list of each and every domain name they don’t want sold, or place a premium price on those they want to and leave domains off of it, it’s their mistake.
They had full control and the ability to reserve these domains which they did not.
Forgetting to reserve domains (regardless of its written intent) its the fault of the registry, and sometime you have to eat your mistake not just take registrations back as you see them coming in realizing you screwed up.
Its a matter of honestly like giving back extra change you are given by the cashier.
You either do the right thing and give the money back or you screw the cashier and take the cash and stick it in your pocket.
Here the registry took the cash and put it in their pocket
Mike:
I’m sorry, but I’m also very surprised by your position. This was an unfortunate situation, but you and I were still talking about this when you decided to open up this issue. You know that we were not pleased about what transpired.
The names were already pulled back within minutes of Neustar noticing the issue, not the other way around. You know that the Registry did not do anything to harm you. Indeed, when you reached out to me, I was quite surprised by the situation as well. We continued to speak after you brought the issue to my attention and you decided to take this openly hostile position.
So, no the Registry did not act improperly, as our backend realized and remedied the technical error within minutes. For the record, all 1 and 2 character domains were reserved and blocked. In fact, the Registry has not yet sought approval from ICANN to release these names.
Everyone knows that 1 character .anythings are worth more than $30. You already knew that many names were priced very high when we spoke the night before (even too high in your opinion).
If you received an invoice for a new BMW for $500 and were leaving the lot and the dealer said no the car is $50,000, would you chastise BMW? What you did not know is here, it’s even more of an issue, as we were not yet allowed to sell the “car.” That’s why they are all blocked.
The effort it takes to build a Registry and the technical back end issues are significant. Yes, mistakes happen and yes technologies, data bases, and people fail, but to wrongly accuse us of acting improperly, when I WAS speaking with you to see how we could make things “right by you” is offensive.
We talk about wanting to grow the domain industry, about building confidence and trying to create greater value. That’s really difficult to do when we fight internally and misrepresent things.
As I discussed with you the night before launch we are trying to build something new here. To create value. I told you pricing is high for some names and low for others. It’s hard to strike the right balance between keeping domainers happy and trying to encourage businesses to get great names that they want to build out and create value. If a business has a plan for a great vertical then the investment is worth it.
I love our domainer family and would never do something to hurt domainers (or you for that matter). It’s easy for everyone to criticize Registries for every action they take, now I understand how it feels to be on the other side. I also know how much work, dedication and effort it takes to build something new.
Before we always jump to attack the Registries or their operators, let’s remember that there’s always a lot more to the story.
So thank you John. And Jothan and Frank Michlilck, as I noted above, it was a technical issue and one that we are very upset about. This was not a matter of us “playing games” or “missing something.” We reserved the names and did not have approval to release the 1 and 2 characters.
As Rodney King once said “can’t we all get along”?
I understand that you are upset. You have my mobile phone, I’m here to talk.
[These are my personal opinions here]
Sure, Jason, these things happen – I am all for the new TLDs getting their fair shake – especially with all the costs and delays and _stuff_ that they have had to endure to get to market. I’m also not trying to single out .tube or bitchslap registries so much as to elevate awareness of the registrant experience.
I say this as a consumer who has experienced this at least both Minds and Machines, Google and other registry GA launches. All registries could benefit from putting the customer first on these in some manner and considering an approach that makes the registrant not have a sucky experience.
In this case it was clawback of names, in other cases it is an invoice later for the premium price. The registrant experience is “no so bueno” to transition from elation to flustration over the matter.
Absent ICANN spending any of the auction or application funds on advertising and awareness, as people adjust to the new normal and start to acquire registrations in new TLDs, having events like this with early adopters is not helping.
This will blow over, and I am certain that .TUBE will do fine, and there’s likely a preference that the situation hadn’t gone wide – Mike happens to have this blog.
And I hate that this gives the .com-o-philes that seek to hate on new gTLDs a hook to hang something on. I think we all would have preferred to have heard a story here about how .TUBE did right by a registrant in remedying a glitch vs what we saw here.
He most likely did it for the ratings and traffic
Please don’t ever compare your worthless extension to a BMW and who do you think you are to come on here and chastise Michael ?
Jason, this is a surprising comment:
“For the record, all 1 and 2 character domains were reserved and blocked. In fact, the Registry has not yet sought approval from ICANN to release these names.”
You know completely well that statement is misleading, since the Registry does not need to seek approval from ICANN to release all of those names.
Here is the ICANN information page for .tube:
https://www.icann.org/resources/agreement/tube-2015-06-11-en
“Authorization(s) for Release of Reserved Names
All Digit/Digit, Letter/Digit, and Digit/Letter Two-Character ASCII Labels at the Second Level (01 December 2014)”
The .tube Registry has been expressly authorized to release that class of two character names since before launch.
Secondly, and I mean this as a honest question, could you please point to me in the .tube registration agreement to the language that restricts the release of single-character names, such that ICANN authorization would be required to release them?
In the .tube Registry Agreement, there is:
“SPECIFICATION 5
SCHEDULE OF RESERVED NAMES”
The categories of names required by ICANN to be reserved are:
1. “EXAMPLE”
2. Two-character labels. (amended as noted above)
3. Reservations for Registry Operations. (NIC, DNS, WWW, WHOIS, etc.)
4. Country and Territory Names.
5. International Olympic Committee; International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
6. Intergovernmental Organizations
Each of those categories is fleshed out further.
Maybe I missed a memo, but can you point to me where ICANN authorization is required to release single-character domain names? I’d like to know where that is.
Now, there was a statement at the nic.tube website to the effect that single character names would be released later in GA, but I would like to know where, specifically, ICANN authorization is required to do so, or that the registry must request authorization to do so.
John: Yes, I see. I had thought it applied to both single and two characters. We made the decision to block all single and two characters and treated them the same from the outset.
What a bozo this guy is, everyone knows that ICANN removed those blocks, trying to blame ICANN, FAIL!
The Registry already needs Reputation Repair, so far it is down the Proverbial.Tube
Hope .today doesn’t turn around after over a year of owning shop.today and say its reserved lol.
.ooo registry cancelled my single letter domains 9 months after registration, one that was even developed!
There is no requirement to ask ICANN for release of single character domains; only two character domains require doing such a request. And even among two-character the letter/digit combinations (like a1, b2 etc.) are allowed thru a wholesale release that is listed in the .tube agreement page:
https://www.icann.org/resources/agreement/tube-2015-06-11-en
(look for Authorization(s) for Release of Reserved Names)
So, the only domains that would be required to have their registrations reversed would be the two-letter ones.
That said, it’s clear to me that this bit of new gTLD program innovation, per-label pricing on the primary market, is still lagging in implementation quality from all players in the chain: back-end operators, registries, registrars, resellers. And after the failure happens, both ways to address that (absorb the loss or clawback it) are bad, one has to choose the lesser of two evils.
Jason
Basically you are telling me and all domainers if you try to register a domain and its under-priced then we should assume there is a mistake and not bother
That’s a reach
I chatted with you the night before the launch about the outrageously high pricing of some of the “premium” domain names I spotted up to $112,500.
You selected your backend provider and for domainers it doesn’t matter if its your fault or the back-end providers the bottom line is people registered domains and then had them taken away.
I got a lot but others got more and they have no voice.
Other than that I don’t have anything to chat about.
“to correct mistakes made by a registry operator or any registrar in connection with a domain name registration;”
Does this give them the ability to take away domains even a year later?
Lets say they honestly made a mistake -isnt their a time limit?
It devalues the whole extension…
Also legally, there must be a time limit where are product can be taken back.
I come to your store and buy something and then you say…oops… it wasnt for sale or it was for sale for a higher price…
How can the Registry on their grand opening, their moment, their 15 minutes of fame, be satisfied with squirming? They should be doing everything right now to correct this, make a better deal, and rise from this debacle looking proud instead of like weasels.