Jothan Frakes hosts Antony Couvering from Namesatwork.com

[Commercials]

Jonathan: Hi. I'm Jonathan Frakes; I'm filling in for Monte Cahn this week on Domain Masters, here on WebMasterRadio.fm. Monte's traveling so he asked me to go ahead and fill in for him. And, I'll tell you a little bit about myself and I'll tell you a little bit about my guest; fill you in on some of this week's domain sales that have occurred. We've got some six figure transactions that have happened over at DNJournal.com.

So, I'll tell you a little bit about myself. I've been doing the domaining industry since about 1993. I've run a few ccTLDs, worked for Verisign for a block of years; I'm currently the Vice President for Business Development at Name Intelligence. You'd recognize us for the Whois.sc domain name. We operate a big Whois look up portal. Some name spinning. And one of the things I'll talk just briefly about in this session on Domain Masters – the Domain Roundtable Conference is something that I worked to promote and put together and we've got another one of these coming up here in April.

After the break, I'll be bringing in Antony Van Couvering, who's friend who also got a great deal of experience here in the domain name industry and he'll be talking about some of what he's seen here in his tenure here in the domain name industry. And he'll be talking a bit about a company called Name At Work that he's working on building, so we'll get right back to that coming up here.

Just wanted to talk a little bit about ICANN. A lot of us that are in the industry were at the ICANN Conference in Vancouver this past week and it was a pretty exciting set of sessions in the open comments period. There's quite a bit of buzz about the current ICANN/Verisign discussions surrounding .com that got pretty lively. There was an interesting company, kind of group there, working on a community project called ICANN Wiki that kind of brings faces to names and let people interact and share information about ICANN. Today is a very big day because today marks the sunrise launch of the .eu top level domain. There's been a discussion about that. As always, there's been a lot of buzz about the Domain Roundtable Conference and what we'll be doing coming up in April.

So, let me get to the domain name journal DNJournal.com, Ron Jackson's site, where he aggregates some of the top sales. And in the top 20 sales of the week for domain names; had a pretty hot week here after Thanksgiving. We had two six figure transactions for MyBlog.com and Sofa.com, coming in at 400K and 200K, respectively. Also, in the top twenty we saw some three different types of variant domains. And we also saw two ccTLDS and one .info in there. So we're seeing a lot of variety in the top twenty for the week after Thanksgiving.

Well, right here after the break we'll come back in with Antony Van Couvering of Names At Work, and he and I will spend a little time talking about what we saw at ICANN and then we'll talk a bit about ccTLDs, if you're interested in ccTLDs. You can catch us online and on the IRC Chat if you go to WebMasterRadio.fm at the IRC, or at IRC.WebMasterRadio.fm, in the %WebMasterRadio's group.

So, coming up after the break, we'll have Antony Van Couvering, and if you have questions, as always go ahead and bring them into the comments section over on the IRC Chat. We'll talk to you in a minute.

[Commercials]

Jonathan: Okay, welcome back to Domain Masters. I'm Jonathan Frakes. Monte is out traveling but we're going to be just fine doing Domain Masters because I've been a longtime listener and Monte contacted me to step in for him and do a guest spot here and I think, you know, I was delighted at the opportunity to do it. And, so, what I've got for you this week, I've got an opportunity to talk with somebody who I have a great deal of respect for in the industry who's been around with ccTLDs and corporate naming and he's been around the industry for quite some time. I'll go ahead and let him talk a bit about himself. Antony Van Couvering is joining us from Names At Work. Antony, are you on with us?

Antony: Hi, Jonathan, how're you doing?

Jonathan: Doing great, doing great. Thanks for joining us on Domain Master on WebMasterRadio here.

Antony: I think you're doing a great job. You have a new future.

Jonathan: Thank you.

Antony: Thanks for the intro. I've just started a company called Names At Work, which is an Internet marketing company. And the idea behind it is that there are three ways that people are finding their customers or more important, their customers are finding them. And two of them you're probably familiar with, which are search engines and blogs, but I think domain names have a great deal, a great role to play in that and this company is treating domain names really as just keywords. They're another thing that people type to find what they're looking for. And at the ICANN Conference which we both attended, I did an unofficial poll of all the people who's business cards I collected and asked them what percentage of traffic on the web comes from typed in words. And, I think its about 15% to 20%, which is a big proportion. So, that's what I'm doing now; I just launched a couple of weeks ago, and I have a blog too, which is a lot of fun, at NamesAtWork.com\blog.

Jonathan: And I'll put that up on the conference here so they can find the blog there. Now tell us a little bit more about yourself and your background in the domain industry.

Antony: Well . . . let's see . . . I have a mug here that I'm staring at from BBS Con 1995 in Tampa, Florida, so I know I've been around that long – that was a little bit before the web, I think. And I've been working a long time with ccTLDs and more specifically with large companies and their domain portfolios and their worldwide operations and how they deal with their brands and their intellectual property on the Internet around the world. So for a long time . . . I started a company called Net Names USA and another one called Name Engine, both of which I sold. And both did pretty much the same things, which was to help big companies figure out what the landscape was like out there and what they should do to protect their names and what they ought to do when somebody took their name.

Jonathan: So, what are some trends that you're seeing in the corporate name use; like, typically, the domain industry seems to be something that [inaudible] own marketing department, the legal department and often the IT group within a site of a large corporation touches. What, what's going on with that?

Antony: Well, it depends on the company. I mean, this all began in the IT department when domain names were just a kind of IP address and then it moved over into the legal department when people began to see domain names as an analog to trademarks and increasingly its moving over to the marketing department where people are seeing them as ways to drive traffic. Its mostly in the legal department and the trend I've seen over the last few years, is like unlike when this first came on the scene for companies, and they began to register everything they could get their hands on as the only effective way to prevent other people from getting it, now they seem to be cutting back on their portfolios as you have things like the UDRP and laws in different countries which allow them to take back names which they rightfully own. So I think now with domain names being treated more and more as marketing assets, I think you'll see some of those large companies' portfolios increase again.

Jonathan: Now, you touched a little bit about ccTLDs, and I think its worthwhile for listeners and people who are participating in this web cast to know a little bit about your background with ccTLDs. Now, how many ccTLDs have you been involved in? Because I remember you were involved in the early stages of What.pw.as and . . .

Antony: Yeah, well, in the early days, not all the ccTLDs were actually delegated yet. And what you had to do was you had to fill in a little email template (like you used to have to do for .coms) and you sent it off to Jon Postel at IANA and it was just like a domain name form. You had to put in your name and the name of an admin contact and the name of a tech contact and the billing contact (although there was no charge) and the only rule was the admin contact had to be from the place that the domain was. So what I did in a few cases was find somebody (or they would find me) from a particular place and we would send in the application and I would effectively do, you know, some of the policy development and the marketing and the technical stuff and the administrative contact would be there on the ground in the country and handle that side of it, which sometimes was significant and sometimes not. So that I did in TM, which is Turkmenistan and AS, which is American Samoa and BT which is Bhutan and PW which is Palau, and I also ran name servers for countries that just didn't have any technical infrastructure (and I just did that as a favor) – that was Montserrat and Libya. And I was also involved in the pre-ICANN thing called GTLDMOU and I was actually chair of the meeting that set up the DNSO, now called the GNSO, which is the General Assembly of ICANN. So I've been involved in Internet governance things for quite awhile.

Jonathan: Yeah, you . . . we had an opportunity to talk a little bit about things at the ICANN Conference and you know, I touched a little bit about that at the beginning of the web cast, where, you know, there were discussions on the Verisign/ICANN settlements and people talking about some of the ccTLDs, some of the gTLDs; did you . . . there was one thing that really struck me which was Ray King from Snap Names is doing with the ICANN Wiki.

Antony: Oh, it's a great idea and its, its . . . you know, ICANN has been accused of being not quite as transparent as its charter would suggest, and they've always said things like, its on the website; and this has often been compared in the past to the sign that the Vogans put up on Neptune in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which said, you know [chuckles], we're building a road here; we're going to destroy the Earth in 50 years, you know – if anyone had gone on to Neptune they would have seen it. So the ICANN website does have a lot on it but sometimes its really hard to find and the Wiki software that Ray King has put together is terrific because you're going to find many of the players there and their bios and links to their companies; there's a nice glossary of terms . . . its very, very useful and I really congratulate Ray for putting it together, it's a great thing.

Jonathan: Well, Ray played a really helpful role in putting that together and I saw a lot of sort of a mixture between that and the Domain Roundtable and what we were doing to try to converge the world. Now, you were out at the Domain Roundtable, in fact, we were on a couple of panels together.

Antony: Right.

Jonathan: Now, as far as how the Domain Roundtable Conference was for an experience for you, I mean, without, I guess, coaching you, I mean, you know, sincerely, instead of talking to the person to promote the . . . .

Antony: It's very difficult to [inaudible] . . . [laughs]

Jonathan: [laughs]

Antony: I . . . I mean, it opened my eyes. I though it was terrific. I had sold my company to Verisign and part of the deal was I had to enter into 2 years of indentured servitude with them and I'd pretty much sworn off domain names. I thought this is awful; I don't want to do any more of this. And then I came to the Domain Roundtable in Seattle that you hosted and I began to see how the industry had changed and one thing that I saw were that a lot of people in the Pay Per Click industry had suddenly appeared; and I had never seen them before. I just thought that they just lived in trailer courts in Fresno and ordered pizza and never saw the light of day. And actually, I found out that they were interesting and intelligent business people who had found a new way to deal with domains and the majority of them as far as I can see are saying, look, we don't even want to do trademark violations; sure, that's a quick hit of money but it's a huge trouble and I'm a real businessman and I want to live within the law and make a living just like anybody else. And, they actually gave me ideas for names that work, because it occurred to me, why does a company spend a lot of money sending cease and desist letters out to people who are out there monetizing domains that belong to the company? Why aren't companies registering these names themselves? After all, they're the best positioned people in the world to make money on their own brands. That's what their companies are set up to do. So the Domain Roundtable Conference was really a terrific thing for me and a lot of pollination of ideas and set me to thinking and eventually I came up with names that work and you know, I'll really always be grateful for that experience.

Jonathan: Well, we're hoping you'll come back out again in April. I posted the information in the IRC but we have the conference coming up in April, the 19th through the 21st, and Monte, who's normally your host here at DomainMasterRadio will be coming out. They had a really good footprint at the Domain Roundtable, a really good session for them, and we're talking to them about doing an event for one of the evenings that would impress people from, I think, all walks of the industry. Now, I heard it likened to ICANN minus the politics, plus, kind of an opportunity for domainers and search engines to get together. Would you summarize the Domain Roundtable like that? Or . . .

Antony: Well, I don't think there's ever an absence of politics and the politics is in some way the juice, you know? When you have people meeting together and making deals together and talking, the politics are necessary. What you don 't have there are the governments. You don't have the slow, ponderous politics but you have a lot of deal making – I thought it was terrific.

Jonathan: Well, you know, we tried to put together something that was really valuable, you know, a lot of good social scenarios, people with interests and development deals and building trust away from the monitor. But you know, given what we've both experienced in the domain industry, part of what people tune in to Domain Masters Radio show here on WebMasterRadio.fm and listen to Monte for is sort of some tips and tricks; things that help them kind of grow in the business . . .

Antony: Right.

Jonathan: And, so, I do want to touch on those as we're talking here, and I know one thing here that I have to take my hat off to you – and for maybe people in the audience who aren't aware – Antony and I actually work at competing companies on name suggestion technology and Name Intelligence has some name spinner product that they've had out for about 5 years, and Antony works for a company called Domain Spot, who also has a name suggestion technology. This is kind of an example of what Monte refers to as co-opetition, where we're doing a lot to kind of build the domain industry itself instead of focusing on the fact that we're competitors; we're working here sort of collaboratively to build, to grow interest on the domain space and help grow into, you know, beyond its infancy, which its in now. So, Antony, what do you think . . . one of the things on the ICANN meeting (and I don't know that I saw a lot happening for it) – Overstock.com had a big footprint at the ICANN Conference.

Antony: They had a booth. And a lot of hats with a big logo on them, and I didn't know what that Big O meant and of course I got to imagining that it meant something else (and it did); Big O . . .

Jonathan: [laughs]

Antony: . . . but what they were saying was we really should have one-letter domains again. Of course, there are only, what, 26 plus the numbers, so 36 and a few of them were registered long ago, so leaving a few, so they were basically making a big push to have O.com, so they could be instead of Overstock.com, they could be O.com. And I thought, okay, interesting, you know, they put some effort into it and they had a few veteran lobbyists there who were become suddenly interested in their cause. You know, I mean its good in the sense that, you know, businesses who are not in the domain name industry are there and having an interest but you know, I went up to them and asked them about IDNs and what they were going to do about the O umlaut and the zero and things like that and they looked at me like they've never heard of such a thing.

Jonathan: [laughs]

Antony: So, it was . . . it was good. The hats were pretty.

Jonathan: They did do a good job with that, and interestingly enough at the ICANN conferences because they have such a mix of people, I talked a lot with people who are in the intellectual property realm . . .

Antony: Yeah.

Jonathan: . . . you know, I tried to venture away from the CCNSO and some of the registrar and the registree meetings and listen in on what's going on in the other meetings and I got a change to meet with some folks from the intellectual property constituency and kind of talk with them. And the arbitration on internationalized domain names is something that's started to come up and its created a lot of opportunity for people who are creating arbitration groups in local languages.

Antony: I would imagine that it does; I mean it would have to be . . . it's a very complicated field technically and politically and I would imagine that you would need very specialized confidency to decide not only if the trademark but the trademark in a different language and a different script; you know, China doesn't even speak Chinese, they speak about 10 kinds of Chinese so it's a tough thing and I can imagine if there are specialized groups who are doing that. One of the problems with IDNs, from the point of view of intellectual property, is that you really can't search them. So, you know, you can search on an exact match but you can't do anything like you can do, well, with your product, where you can find related names or anything like that. So it's a big issue for them and I expect that we'll see a lot more interest in this field in the coming years.

Jonathan: Well, okay, and I heard an odd comment. This is, I don't know, off-color or whatever. There's actually a Korean character in the Korean language that is identical to a Swastika and the response was that French law, that that would be illegal under French law . . .

Antony: Right.

Jonathan: So, you know there's some odd edge cases that IDNs bring out. Big, big opportunity and undiscovered territory.

Antony: Well, you know the classic examples . . . the problem is the homonyms, that is to say they're not even . . . they look the same but they're different and the classic case is the CCCP, which was the old Soviet Union – USSR – it looks like CCCP to us but in Cyrillic it really is USSR and which is right? And you know, you have to have one language that trumps the other in order to make these decisions, so IDNs work very well on the ccTLD context, where there is a language for that country. But when you put them into the gTLDs, which are sort of global, its very difficult to decide who wins those kind of clashes and the chance for confusion is obviously great.

Jonathan: Well, we're going to take a break right now real quick and then when we come back we'll be talking a little bit about some of the gTLDs that were at the ICANN Conference and we'll clear up a couple of rumors that were floating around the ICANN Conference about Moniker.com. You know, the reason I'm doing this, the guest hosting experience, is not because Moniker has changed hands; just to clear up – that was one of the big rumors floating around at the ICANN Conference itself.

Well, we'll be right back after this break and I thank you for listening to Domain Masters on WebMasterRadio.fm. Stick around, Antony.

[Commercials]

Jonathan: Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to Domain Masters on WebMasterRadio.fm. I'm Jonathan Frakes filling in for Monte Cahn, who's out traveling; he's on a plane. And I was just grateful that he reached out to me and offered me the opportunity to guest host for him here on WebMasterRadio.fm, the Domain Masters show.

With me is Mr. Antony Van Couvering of Names At Work and we've been talking a little bit about sort of a recap on the ICANN Conference in Vancouver. We've been talking a bit about the Domain Roundtable Conference that's coming up in April, the 19th through the 21st. And about Antony's company Names At Work.

Now, we're open to questions in the Chat Room, if there are any. We can answer almost any question about ccTLDs, I think, between the two of us. And I did want to go ahead and let Antony talk just a little bit more on corporate names and some of what you heard at the Domain Roundtable and some of what you're experiencing with your new company, Names At Work. And then let's talk a little bit about ccTLDs and circle back around on gTLDs.

So, Antony, tell us a bit more about Names At Work. This is a new endeavor.

Antony: Yeah. It's pretty new. Pretty much I've began working on it in June and there's, you know, we've got the website up and I was at . . . one of the reasons I was at the ICANN Conference was to buttonhole some people who I thought would know about the space and give them my pitch and see if they thought I was insane. And the good news is that I'm sane. [laughs]

Jonathan: [laughs]

Antony: And I have a lot of interest in it and people who are going to run over and talk to their clients about it – and these are people in the registrar industry who have corporate clients; these are IP lawyers who have corporate clients – and really, the pitch is very simple. Most companies have fairly large domain name portfolios that cost them anywhere from $100,000 to over $1,000,000 a year to maintain and it's a bill that is paid by the legal department, who hates it and that's why they always hate new top-level domains. For them, its just more names they have to register; it doesn't do them a bit of good. And so what I said was, hey, these are not a legal expense; these are a marketing expense. You, as brand protectors, have an obligation to make sure that no one is passing off goods using your name but as far as the brand name is concerned, that is something that the marketing people ought to be using to drive traffic and in fact they do. They're out there buying ad words, they're out there buying all kinds of things to use their brand to drive traffic and domain names are just another one of those and as I said earlier, its probably about 20% of all traffic and they're just sitting on a storehouse of brand equity. So that message was very, very well received, and especially when I combined it with the search and the blog areas and really what I'm thinking is that domain names . . . which domain names do you register? Well, you use a search engine methodology. Which keywords do you use on your site? Which ad words do you buy? You have to know who is looking for you and what key words they're using to search for you. And that determines what really you should register. And the great thing for a company is that they have a whole bunch of words that nobody else can touch because they're legally theirs and these are their brands and trademarks. And so, they ought to use them. And so I really got a really positive reception and I've got some projects going even right now, so it was great for me.

Jonathan: Well, that's good and at the ICANN Conference this past . . . in Luxembourg, I've been talking a bit (this is sort of a segue), I've been talking a little bit with the guys from AfterNick, Michael and Roger, they had mentioned to me that they were going to have a sale that was a 7-digit sale this year and I just got an instant message from them that the name finally got published – it was Fish.com coming in over $1 million. And they're actually at the top of the charts on the domain sales this year.

Antony: Congratulations. They're going to have to buy me dinner next time.

Jonathan: Yeah. So, they . . . they're listening, so that's kudos to you guys. That's a big deal. I know Monte and Moniker do a lot with the high ticket names and there's a lot in the aftermarket industry with the domain name industry that was part of the Domain Roundtable as well. You know, we had some sessions kind of segued into the buying and selling of domain names and the valuations. You know, it was interesting because we brought together people from search engines and people who are personal portfolio holders, people who are monetizing traffic or search engine optimizers. There were corporations that were recently formed, things . . . you know, groups that were domain related specifically . . . yeah and then there were groups from corporations who could definitely benefit from Names At Work help . . .

Antony: Oh, yeah. . .

Jonathan: . . . on promoting. But the interesting thing was in gathering together actual property attorneys and the domain registries and registrars. It was actually hearing in one session buying and selling domains. Lawyers who were talking with their clients about pragmatism in pursuing infringing domain names, you know, where if a domain is for sale underneath the market value of a UDRP . . .

Antony: Right . . .

Jonathan: . . . Like, what's the average cost, you know, its about $1,100 plus legal fees.

Antony: Yeah, I think it works out to something like 5k for a lot of them.

Jonathan: Yeah. So, lets say, if there's a domain, for example, for sale at one of the popular sites, you know, like Sedo or BuyDomains or AfterNick, that's, you know . . . sometimes an attorney might actually suggest or encourage their client to go for pragmatism over passion and go direct to the aftermarket companies. It was an interesting thing to hear from an intellectual property or just a domain lawyer.

Antony: Yeah, well, I think you'll hear different things. I mean, different companies take different approaches. One thing . . . its not as if every domain that has a brand in it is something they're going to go after. I mean, they might not care. You might have . . . you know, Intel Corporation is probably very interested in something like Intel Computer but if they had something like, I don't know, Intel in the middle of a 64-character domain name or you know where the brand is actually part of another word like “intelligence,” I mean, they're not going to go after you, for instance, at Name Intelligence, so . . .

Jonathan: I'm knocking on wood right now . . .

Antony: . . . just because there's a brand within a name doesn't mean a company is interested. I think they pick their . . . they pick their battles pretty carefully nowadays.

Jonathan: And did you see as part of some of the sessions that you . . . I mean, you're saying that you kind of started up the company actually after the Domain Roundtable Conference; would say that people are potentially going to get ideas for their next big thing in coming and taking advantage of what we're putting together?

Antony: Oh, definitely. I mean, I just haven't seen the kind of fertilization and you know, now I just went to the ICANN Conference; this is almost a year later, right? And I didn't see it there either. I think that the Domain Roundtable, you know, definitely had the best mix of people from the point of view of generating the best mix of ideas because you really did bring together groups of people that hardly even spoke to each other except on the other side of legal papers. And actually, at the Domain Roundtable, it was very collegial and we heard very interesting things like a guy who was a UDRP panelist saying, well, you know, I just decided a case in favor of the guy who registered the domain because he has a legitimate business. The fact that he is running a company that buys domains and monetizes them we recognize as a legitimate business, so there was no finding of bad faith. And that's just a sea change. So I think that its very good that people are talking and maybe I think in the whole battle - and I think it will always be a battle between intellectual rights holders and people who are registering domains for monetization – we're going to see a great deal more of collegiality and less of the “fire off the cease and desist and lets go to court” kind of stuff.

Jonathan: Yeah. Burn every village.

Antony: Yeah.

Jonathan: I want my domain.

Antony: Right.

Jonathan: So, so, you know, interestingly enough, you know, I talk about ICANN, I talk about the Domain Roundtable Conference; the premise for putting together the Domain Roundtable Conference was actually something from the first time you and I had met, which was Marina Del Ray in 2000, when they were announcing .info and .biz and MOBE co-op, some of the new top level domains . . .

Antony: Right.

Jonathan: . . . and, you know, if was specifically, you know, about the technical coordination and now there were some vendors who were huddled in the hallways or handing out literature and you know, interesting enough, I mean, I remember Aten Elsen and Jason Liebman, you know, they're now with Google in absence but these were people who were outside this conference talking to people, you know, about parking your name and you know, doing these sorts of things. The meetings, the interesting things going on, were not necessarily what was going on inside those conference rooms, where it was all the sidebar conversations and all the social scenarios where there were people who were meeting face-to-face and kind of building trust, talking more loosely about business relationships that they could develop.

Antony: Absolutely. Although, there are a few I would rather meet online than in person. [laughs]

Jonathan: [laughs] Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, that does happen too, you know. You figure you get away from the monitor and meet in person and its going to be better, that's the assumption. But, you know, that was the premise of putting together the Domain Roundtable Conference. And I certainly hope you'll be back for that. You know, circling back around, we've got this new wave of TLDs that's come out. We got jobs and .travel . . .

Antony: Right.

Jonathan: .MOBE; .MOBE's going to be a pretty big one. They've got the mobile content. They're trying to converge a lot of the development languages as part of their scope and it looks to be something pretty big. They've got Neil Edwards, the GM and they're based out of Ireland.

Antony: Yeah, he was formerly Verisign, so, and I know him and he's very competent, so I'm sure they'll do well. And they've got big backing and its one of those things that if it works properly it'll be big, you know. Its something that's going to allow people to access the domain name system and all it has to offer on the go. And that's very smart, if people use it. And we'll see what they're implementation is like.

Jonathan: Well, it sounded like, you know, I got an opportunity to talk to Michael, who's the head of the MAG, which is one of their outreach groups (kind of ties in with the policy) and getting the technology out into peoples hands and you know, just in talking to him it sounded like it was . . . it actually has some potential to grow legs. You know, it seems like its ambitious yet grounded. So it could, in fact, work. [inaudible]

Antony: [inaudible] surprising. I mean, the one I like, I think is interesting, is .cat, which is for, you know, Catalonia, which is part of Spain. It's a region in Spain with strong feelings of independence and they have their own domain name now and Amando Abriliabrou, who is the person who put this together, a long-time ICANN participant, was telling me there's pieces . . . there's long pieces in the press everyday there in Barcelona and its wildly popular. We don't hear about it here because we're not Catalonians but I think when you have domains like that, it's one thing to have a global which kind of interests everyone in the world; its quite another thing to have a domain which works anywhere in the world but which generates tremendous interest locally. And I'm hoping we see more of that kind of thing, too.

Jonathan: Well, I think we will see more of those coming down the road and in fact I think there was somebody there talking about an actual city domain; hopefully one for New York City and [inaudible]

Antony: [inaudible] . . . and I hope to be involved going forward; you know, I like in New York City. That should give you a clue of what that is. And I know the guys from .Berlin were there promoting Berlin as a top level domain, .Berlin.

Jonathan: And, what's you thoughts on .Berlin?

Antony: Well, its six letters; that's not great. On the other hand, it's a well-known capital. The . . . it appears that the people . . . I mean, when you look at that kind of thing, it depends a lot of what the local politicians think about it and it appears that they've rounded up terrific support for that and the people that are promoting it, Alex and Kirk, I think his name is, are very competent. I was very impressed talking to them. So, we'll see, you know, one never knows with these things. It really depends; now there's the what they call the PDP, which is a Process Development Policy going on in the ICANN General Council, about how new top level domain proposals should be put forward and actually, that's just opened for comment. You can comment for 20 days. So, we'll see. I mean, it could be quick, it could be slow, it may never happen. But I suspect it will at some point and we may see some interesting top level domains. One thing I do have to give credit to ICANN for (although they may not have done it on purpose) is to put out domains that have a chance not only at success but at failure. In other words, they're willing to experiment and I think that's quite important.

Jonathan: So, we had a comment to me in the conference room about the length of TLDs that anything greater than a 4-character TLD could break software. And . . .

Antony: Not something that I know anything about, except that we already have “museum” out there and I know “travel” has been approved, so I don't know. I think it might break some software but I don't think its going to break the majority of software. ICANN has been very, very concerned about the number of TLDs and the kind of TLDs that might break software. This is why when ICANN was originally formed, they didn't allow the introduction of lots of new TLDs and they have always been concerned about the technical functioning of TLDs.

Jonathan: So, just if . . . if you had to invent a TLD, lets say you were a business looking at the next big opportunity, would you go out there and start a TLD? Or is the bigger opportunity in the registrar space or is the bigger opportunity in something very specific and precise like what you're company is going to be bringing refinement to?

Antony: Well, you know, you always have to weigh the . . . one thing about being a TLD is that its quite a regulated industry at this point, so unless you have a very good sense that you can make money inside a bureaucratic structure, you best not go after it. Because you're going to have to do a lot of reporting, you going to have a million people making sure you do a good job and so on and so forth. You have to either start a registry yourself, which is probably not recommended, or go and make an arrangement with one of the existing registries to run your backend, so there's a lot of work there. And so, its likely to be long and a bit capital extensive and so on. Whereas, you know, I 'm starting this company effectively on my own and if you wanted to become a registrar, the costs are somewhat less. It just depends what scale you want to operate on and how much of a mass business you want to be.

Jonathan: So, one question in the conference room or just a comment is, you know, have we discussed the shelving of .xxx? And, you know, I did get approached by Stuart Lawly of ICM Registry at the ICANN Conference about kind of where they're at. And [inaudible]

Antony: [inaudible] you can go [inaudible] . . . blog and NamesAtWork.com\blog, which are called XXX.ExcessInterruptus and quite frankly, its appalling to me that its been . . . its been delayed once again and I know Stuart Lawly, its costing him a lot of money. He keeps getting promises its going to happen and once again we run into, you know, the problem of governmental interference, which is how I see it. There are people who have been promoting .xxx or something like it for a long time and when they're confronted with the reality of it, now they have different ideas and you get, you know, basically the whole world is being held hostage by somebody rather who thinks its immoral. Even though, you know, its probably going to have the opposite effect. So, I was not at all convinced by the ICANN board's reasons for allowing a further review which came from the . . . the request came from the Governmental Advisory Committee and if I were him, I'd be hopping mad. And I think a lot of people at ICANN are . . . who participated are angry about it. There's no reason to stop it.

Jonathan: Well, the, you know, the interesting thing about the .xxx was that it did get delayed for a decision until next year and I think there was another TLD, a .asia that's also tabled until next year. Another sort of play on the .cat but more of a super-regional type . . .

Antony: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think its much more like a .eu, although its not positioned as a ccTLD but rather the gTLD. It's a multi-national, regional TLD and I think that whereas .eu was pushed forward by the European ccTLDs (which they might later regret), .asia is going to be facing some resistance from local ccTLDs who see it as the kind of thing that might hurt them competitively. You know, whenever money comes into the equation, you find strange objections to things.

Jonathan: [inaudible]

Antony: My own personal [inaudible] no reason not to have lots of TLDs. I think that would go a long way to opening things up and a lot of people to experiment and we can see actually in practice which ones work best, instead of trying to figure it out beforehand.

Jonathan: So, Antony, any . . . any suggestions for people who are in the domain industry or considering going into the domain industry as far as tips and tricks for enhancing what they're doing?

Antony: Well, you know, its now a very big industry. There's lots of different pieces of it and I would suggest the main thing to do is participate. You know, everyone can hate ICANN – there's lots of things to hate it for – but it's a great place to go and meet people, understand what's going on, talk to people, make arrangements, find jobs; the variety of activities at ICANN is absolutely amazing and for me it's always been a place where I can go and try out new ideas and learn stuff and I have to say that the Domain Roundtable, if I could pick one thing to do, is show up there in Seattle and look around at the people. They're actually nice (most of them). [laughs]

Jonathan: [laughs]

Antony: [inaudible] is; he taught me a lot; and other people there, they're quite generous with their time and their ideas. So that's what I would suggest.

Jonathan: Well, thanks for the plug for Domain Roundtable and so, we've been talking with Antony Van Couvering from Names At Work. NamesAtWork.com is the URL. And he also operates the Names At Work Blog, which is NamesAtWork.com\blog, where you can catch up on Antony Van Couvering and his blog. My name again is Jonathan Frakes and I've been a guest speaker here, kind of hosting for . . . you know, Monte Cahn's got some pretty big shoes to fill but he contacted me and I was grateful for the opportunity and here we are. The . . . I encourage people to come to the Domain Roundtable Conference coming up this April and we may get an opportunity to discuss that again here on Domain Masters. Thank you to everyone who's participated in the web cast or who's downloading. This is one of the top downloaded files as far as web casts and pods on the Internet and we're grateful to our guest Antony Van Couvering and to the folks at WebMasterRadio.fm for doing the great work back there at the production studio.

Antony: Thanks, Jonathan and thank Monte.

Jonathan: Thank you, Antony.

Antony: Take care.

Jonathan: Alright. And with that, we'll go ahead and sign off. And if there are questions, I'll be in the IRC Room for a few more minutes for some follow up. I'll also be posting some URLs there, and we'll be talking to you soon. Cheers to everyone and keep on domaining. This is a great industry and we're all very glad to have you a part of it.

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