What happened 2000-2005?

[Alphamale]

Anyone out there IDNing at this time?

I've spend the last few days mining some more .JP terms.
I found a great Japanese website gift website with thousands of commercial items on, and have been translating and checking availability.

What I have learnt:

1. This website/list no doubt has been done many times before
2. .JP's are not as mined heavily as .coms. .com, everything with an ovt 4k+ i looked was taken, in .jp this threshold is around 8k.
I doubt it will be long before it is mined dry.

3. But I also spent a while looking at registrations, hence the reason for this thread.

I have found many many examples of a .com regged later than a .net
The .net may be October 2000, but the .com is 2005/2006

so what happened?

Either the .net was regged before the .com (unlikely)

or

the .com and .net were regged in a similar time, but later the .com was dropped, only to be regged again in the 2006 gold-rush.

so assuming there was a masive drop, was this one domainer that dropped? or was there a general loss of belief in idn's that saw many people let them go.

If you were around back then, i'd be interested to know.

p.s I've also seen this in .jp/.com/.net where a .net has a regged date of 2000, the .com is 2006, but the .JP is unregistered.

weird

[Rubber Duck]

All dot Com and dot net were originally registered on the Verisign Testbed through Network Solutions in RACE.

ICANN subsequently decided that RACE would not be the standard and Punycode would be adopted.

Verisign allowed domains to be grandfathered across to the new encodement but in the meantime Network Solutions was made independent and subsequently decided that any domains not transferred out would be deleted.

At this time there DNS support was in the process of implementation, there was very little in the way of browser support, just the Verisign pluggin I believe, there were very few other IDN registrars to turn to and many lost faith. For those that were not fluent in English, the whole situation was probably extremely baffling.

I would guess that nearly 80% of all IDN were dropped between 2002 and 2005. Those getting in any when during that period would have had a field day and probably got more than those participating in the original landrush.

[idn]

Here is a strange example of a .com/.net

コンピュータ.com April 30th 2001
コンピュータ.net Nov 10th 2000

November 10th 2000 and February 26th 2001 are the two most common registration dates for premium idns.

[markits]

I think RD is right. Back few months ago, there are quite few .coms are available but their .net versions were regged in 2000.

[Alphamale]

on a side note, there may be a massive portfolio blowout on the way.

I have seen many top tier names regged in 2000 with an expiry date of 7th March 2007, all with the same strange whois details. i.e registrant name/addy missing

[unless they are waiting for the last moment to renew?]

how late does an auto-renew wait, surely -30/-60 days?

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by Alphamale

on a side note, there may be a massive portfolio blowout on the way.

I have seen many top tier names regged in 2000 with an expiry date of 7th March 2007, all with the same strange whois details. i.e registrant name/addy missing

[unless they are waiting for the last moment to renew?]

how late does an auto-renew wait, surely -30/-60 days?

I think you will find that whole point of an Auto Renew is that it renews on the due date.

Yes, it has been noted by other that the TDC portfolio is due to renew very soon.

I somehow think it is unlikely that such a portfolio would simply be allowed to drop. Lets face it they have got this far, so unless that whole renewals process is dependent on one individual that either walking around with total Amnesia or is six feet under, then I wouldn't raise you hopes too far. Even if they wanted to throw in the towel, just letting them drop is not the most likely option.

Lets face it, it is unlikely that nobody is going to attempt to exploit a potential business opportunity before the whole lot ends up at Snapnames. We know that there are large investors out their starting to kick the tyres, I cannot see them passing that one up if there was any reasonable liklihood of a result.

[markits]

TDC portfolio? Yummy!

I have been offering a total of $xxxxx to a few of his domains but without success. No, not that he did not receive my offers, we actually had quite a few email communications. It would really surprise me if TDC forgot to renew his portfolio.

[Olney]

People gave up I believe
There are members on here who I remember saying they used to own premium domains that members now own.
The owner of the seed investment company that funded the company I work for let me get his jp drops. He's in the position where he just doesn't need the money anyway.

For the jp instance they know they couldn't really promote jp until ie7 & Vista are commonly used. Japanese people would complain too much. That's also what gives me a good feeling about this DName thing. They wouldn't have companies keep these IDN.jp registrations for years & then suddenly make them obsolete. ICANN wouldn't, but JPRS would have multi thousands of lawsuits on it's hands.

[markits]

Originally Posted by Olney

They wouldn't have companies keep these IDN.jp registrations for years & then suddenly make them obsolete. ICANN wouldn't, but JPRS would have multi thousands of lawsuits on it's hands.

Good point really!

[Rubber Duck]

I fail to understand why people would assume that they are not going to automatically get the IDN equivalent of their dot JPs. That is pretty much already written in stone. ICANN is just trying to confirm which countries are laying claim to which representations and whether or not any of these have conflict with existing extension of common computer file types, prior to implementation. The only other outstanding question is whether the NS or DNAME mechanism will be used.

JPRS is unlikely to fly in the face of what other ccTLDs are operating as established policies, but in any event they may not be able to provide two distinct resolutions anyway. It is likely that even using NS instead of DNAME the two versions would be linked at the DNS in such a way that separate registeries would be a total impossibility.

If there are any questions outstanding, they relate to gTLDs where mega-multiple aliases will be required maybe up to 2000 for each extension. Even here, it is only those those that have not read all the transcripts coming out of ICANN, or those that applied zero objectivity either due entrenched vested interest or total lack of intellect that seriously expect there to be emergence of a dot com registry in each language. Nobody has even put forward a remotely plausible explanation of how such a disasterous alternative could reasonably be implemented, or why anyone would wish to use these Alternative IDN extensions rather than just sticking with the established dot com. These Aliases will only ever be meaningful if they are genuine aliases for dot com. If they are effectively Phishing Aliases, that are just intended to fool people into thinking they are actually dot com, then the chance of them being widely accepted, other than by those that subscribe to names on alternative roots, is just about bugger all!

[Clotho]

In October of 2000 I received an email informing me that Multilingual domains were now available to be registered in .com .net and .org in Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Knowing what this meant, I loaded up an online dictionary and checked a few terms for availability. Low and behold, they were available so I registered them.

When I read the first email confirming my purchases I discovered that the names weren't really registered at all but had only been entered into a Pre-Registration pool that would be submitted at the same time as many other Registrars on Nov 10, 2000. As I waited for Nov. 10 to arrive I pre-registered many more and learned some interesting things.

I learned how some people had cheated the system and hand-registered names like sex and golf (in Japanese) and bypassed the pre-registration.

I learned what RACE and NAMEPREP meant.

I learned how Network-Solutions was working with the IETF, ICANN and other registrars to make all this happen.

I learned that this was only a test-bed but could see that the dollars involved and the players involved would ensure that these were the names that would eventually become functional.

You can imagine the tension as Nov 10 rolled around and I waited for the historic email that would inform me if I had been successful or not. Finally it arrived. I eagerly opened it and to my delight almost all of my names had gone through!

For many months I continued to register names and learn as much as I could about the different languages. The tools available at that time weren’t as well developed as they are now. It was very difficult to determine if any term was properly translated or if it was in common use. I remember being very excited to see that someone native had registered the .net or the .org of a .com that I owned. Also, the same names came up over and over again with regards to these multi-lingual domains so it was clear that some people believed very strongly in them.

Months passed, Then years. Watching the IETF work through the process was excruciating. I remember watching them take forever to develop another encoding format called punycode and then watching them scrap it because one of the companies involved had patented it. With a patent in place they would have been able to demand a royalty on every domain registered.

At first the domains in the test-bed could not even be made to resolve to websites. After a few years they had kludged together a system using a browser plug-in that would allow these domains to resolve. Rather than be excited by this development, I think many saw it for what it was; a reason to justify the renewal fees that were charged. It was clear that the world at large wasn’t going to adopt this plug-in method. The only real solution was for Microsoft to build it in to their browser.
This is about the time that many names began to drop. It had already been several years without proper functionality and there was no end in sight. I know I let a few thousand go but I kept what I thought were the very best. This is why you will see some .net’s regged since 2000 with the .com still available. Some people renewed and some didn’t. Some people took the time to learn what terms were good and some didn’t. Some people kept everything. Some people kept only a few. Many people gave up all together.

[Alphamale]

thanks Clotho, thats real interesting.

so you must have some nice gems tucked away

7 years in - well done in keeping the faith.

i think those of us who are only approaching their first anniversary, have a lot to learn from this, and can't really complain too much about having to wait so long for results.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by Alphamale

thanks Clotho, thats real interesting.

so you must have some nice gems tucked away

7 years in - well done in keeping the faith.

i think those of us who are only approaching their first anniversary, have a lot to learn from this, and can't really complain too much about having to wait so long for results.

Speculation is about investing in unrecognised value and then waiting for general perceptions of value to align with fundamentals. Of course getting the information out there can speed the process up a bit, but it doesn't change the basic pattern.

Clearly, a lot of people on here do not understand these principles clearly. This is why taking valuable terms that have not previously been registered in unspeculated extension and then trying to flog them the following day, just does not work. The terms are well known and so are the extensions, the only thing that is new is that somebody is buying them. The fact that they are buying them to flip them underlines the fact the value that was previously lacking is still lacking.

Such investments would only ever start to appreciate once there was belief that speculators were buying these as long-term holds or with the view of developing them. Even then, many are going to remain sceptical until there is evidence that the developments are producing results.

[blastfromthepast]

One lesson from the Testbed days: if ICANN says it is in testing mode, it means it is permanent. Notice how all the RFCs are standards, even though the name RFC stands for Requests for Comments and not Standard Definition. Was there on day 1 myself. Dropped names in 2003.

[markits]

CLOTHO
My hats off to you!

[Alphamale]

Originally Posted by blastfromthepast

... Dropped names in 2003.

really?

f*ck, that's gotta hurt. did you drop everything?

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by Alphamale

really?

f*ck, that's gotta hurt. did you drop everything?

Even more so when you realise that regs back then were 35 bucks a year!

[markits]

Originally Posted by blastfromthepast

One lesson from the Testbed days: if ICANN says it is in testing mode, it means it is permanent. Notice how all the RFCs are standards, even though the name RFC stands for Requests for Comments and not Standard Definition. Was there on day 1 myself. Dropped names in 2003.

Unbelievable!!

No wonder some top portfolio owners (eg Rd) only started regging from 2003 onward and yet sit on top of most of us.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by markits

Unbelievable!!

No wonder some top portfolio owners (eg Rd) only started regging from 2003 onward and yet sit on top of most of us.

Yes, and for a small minority that loose their nerve history could repeat itself. Before you go there, ask one of the old timers what it feels like to be sitting on a shadow of their original portfolios.

[Giant]

The registration date Nov. 9, 2000 and Nov. 10, 2000 are the same depends on where the Registrars located.

Since IDNs were not functioning as NSI promised, VeriSign (or NSI) compensated the owners by extending the expire date for every IDN for 4 months in 2002. So all IDNs registered on opening-day would have an expire date on Mar. 9 or Mar. 10.

A few important "standards" (or RFCs) for IDN were contributed by a team of researchers from Singapore, China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea. VeriSign was having disagreement technically with these proposals around 2000 - 2002. If you understood the uncertainty of the "standards" at that time, it's very logical you would drop all your IDNs.

I had my confidence in IDN only when VeriSign adopted the IDNA protocol (2003) proposed by the research team I mentioned above.

Today, standards for IDN are firm and solid.