Like many in this field, Kevin, originally a family doctor, had no idea that domaining would become his career. Having achieved initial success with a webhost directory (originally a part-time venture), Kevin started offering domain registration services and provided his clients with lists of available domain names. At the the time of the dot com bust, thousands upon thousands of registered domain names were not being renewed. That was good news for Kevin's domain list business, but made it difficult to keep track of things manually. So he built a better mousetrap.

Network Solutions, the sole retail registrar of .com domains at the time, published a root zone file twice daily. This file contained approximately 5 million names and did not show when domains would be expiring. Kevin soon found a way to turn this list into a list of domain names that would soon be available. He wrote a script to compare the current lists contents to the previous one. He determined that names that disappeared from the list would become available 5 to 6 days later in the middle of the night on the West Coast of the United States.

Armed with this exclusive knowledge, Kevin would spend the night attempting to register these domains, typing in multiple browser windows on multiple computers to improve his chances. Many times, he was successful. However, many times he was beat to the punch by other domaining pioneers. He discovered that programmers like Yun Ye (Ultsearch) had developed scripts to register desired domain names instantly upon expiration. Not to be outdone, Ham wrote his own scripts. His success rate increased, but he still felt he could do better.

Kevin Ham made a bold move by going directly to registrars to seek assistance. He helped them write software to grab domains quickly after expiration. In exchange, he paid registrars up to $100 for their help in padding his portfolio.

Kevin was amassing quite a selection of domain names. Most of those were simply blank pages, earning him nothing unless sold in the aftermarket. But then Frank Schilling told him about GoTo.com (later bought by Yahoo!), a search engine that would pay him to place pay-per-click ads on his sites. His first day with GoTo, he made $1,500.

In early 2002, Kevin Ham was bringing in more than $1 million a year. Still, there was more he could do. He began domain tasting, returning the domain names with little traffic for free and registering the most visited domains. In an effort to streamline the whole enterprise, he pulled his domain names from registrars and set up his own. He then founded HitFarm, an ad company designed to do what Yahoo! was doing for him, without the commission.

Kevin’s software was also grabbing plenty of trademark typos for him as well, resulting in claims of typo-squatting by trademark holders. Concerned about legal risks with tasting and typo-squatting, he has since abandoned the practices. He’s found a better way.

Many domainers may be aware that entering almost any domain name followed by the ccTLD .cm results in a search page full of pay-per-click ads. (Example, www.dailydomainer.cm) This, of course is a clever use of Cameroon’s .cm ccTLD to essentially typo-squat every .com domain name in existence, and even those not yet registered. What many domainers did not know until last week is that Kevin Ham is the man behind the curtain.

Cameroon, an African nation of 18 million with just 167,000 computers, was using a very small portion of its virtual real estate. Like hundreds of other domainers, Kevin Ham saw that .cm is a reasonable typo for .com. But Kevin was the only one to seize the opportunity – and he succeeded: His team worked to negotiate a deal with the government of Cameroon, which in turn created a wildcard DNS record to reroute any .cm domain name to Agoga.com. Of course, .cm domains that have actually been registered are not subject to the rerouting, but all other possible combinations of letters, number and hyphens are. Kevin then pays the government of Cameroon an undisclosed portion of his pay-per-click windfall.

The true genius of the system? He did not have to go out and register the millions of domains he is effectively parked on by using the wildcard. Since he does not own those domains, his legal liability to trademark holders is hazy at best. Noted domaining attorney John Berryhill agrees. "You can't really say that [wildcarding] is targeting trademarks. It captures all the traffic, not just trademark traffic."

It’s a scheme so innovative, Kevin Ham took out a patent on it. He’s currently working on deals to make similar arrangements with Colombia (.co). Oman (.om), Nigeria (.ne) and Ethiopia (.et).

What’s next for Kevin? He’s now working on developing some of his most marketable domains. He has started Reinvent Technologies to turn his top domains into valuable companies of their own. His first choice? Religion.com.

Read Paul Sloan's entire article here or get the current issue of Business 2.0.

Daily Domainer comments

The Man Who Owns The Internet is clearly a landmark story for the domain industry, second only to Masters of Their Domains (Dec. 2005), which had introduced Richard Rosenblatt and thousands of new domainers to the power of domains. While several commentators have focused their attention almost exclusively on the .cm stunt (mostly in a negative/jealous way), the article has already started attracting new capital and new faces to the domain industry.

LA Names is marketing the .LA ccTLD as the best address in LA – Los Angeles that is. LA Names also states that Los Angeles is the first city in the world to have its own domain, which is a bit of a stretch given that Los Angeles is effectively borrowing Laos’ TLD.

Does a city, even a large one, merit a TLD? Is LA Names a trendsetter or a company overestimating the public’s desire to have “local” domain names like .LA, .NYC, .Berlin, .London and .Paris?

Technically, the .tv domain is the ccTLD for Tuvalu, a remote island nation located halfway between Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. But in 2000, a deal was negotiated to effectively lease the country’s TLD for $1 million per quarter to DotTV , a private company set up to manage Tuvalu’s ccTLD.

DotTV eventually came under the umbrella of VeriSign, and even though .tv was marginally profitable for dotTV, Verisign felt there was more that could be done.

In December 2006, a deal was announced effectively turning over management of the .tv TLD to DemandMedia. DemandMedia had recently acquired enom and BulkRegister and was the brainchild of Richard Rosenblatt. VeriSign entrusted DemandMedia to turn the slow performing .tv into the next big thing.

Rosenblatt was fresh off his sale of MySpace to News Corp. when the idea behind DemandMedia was revealed to him. He was going to create not just another user-generated content site like MySpace, but but an entire empire of domains filled with this kind of content. In addition to Deman Media's mainstream domain portfolio, .tv is another essential part of this strategy. By owning the registrar and content generation suite, DemandMedia is in a position to change the way people think about .tv domains. Factor in revenue from advertising, and the company stands to make money on every step of the process.

One of the first actions DemandMedia took with .tv domains was to freeze 53,000 premium .tv domain names that were anticipated to be in high demand. The list price for these domains ranges from $52 for gaps.tv to $500,000 for business.tv. On May 1, 2007 these domains became available for public sale, and within the first 24 hours, sales totaled approximately $500,000 even though renewal fees and procedures are unclear.

Simultaneously, DemandMedia rolled out me.tv, a new social networking suite for personal video sites. Picture MySpace, with a twist. Users can link to friends, share photo albums and of course show off their own version of what a TV channel should be. But as opposed to MySpace, each personal video site is on its own .tv domain.

DemandMedia has enlisted Carson Daly as its celebrity spokesman and is expected to showcase several A-list celebrities in the coming weeks. Of course, Richard Rosenblatt also has his own me.tv page.

Will .tv have a chance to take off? Yes, if Demand Media provides clear guidance on actual renewal fees. Right now, buyers of premium .tv domains do not know what they are getting themselves into and whether the amount pay is a once-off purchase price or an annual renewal fee.

As is the case in any form of investing, domainers like good odds. One way to evaluate the chances of a TLD taking off and thus increasing the equity of its domain names is to watch what the big money is doing. With investors such as VISA, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, Vodafone, Sony and Telecom Italia, .mobi has attracted the support of investors with deep pockets and strong track records in backing the right horse.

That is not to say that everyone is in .mobi’s corner. Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera, is one detractor. Tetzchner is adamant that .mobi violates a cardinal tenet of the Internet, that of device independence:

What if you're using another device? Should we have .gameconsole? .car? .fridge? .plane? We don't need .mobi at all.

Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that he would like to promote usage of mobile browser application Opera Mini.

Still, .mobi has attracted some weighty supporters, and that is lending credibility to this young TLD. The .mobi TLD is particularly attractive to travel-related sites due to appeal of being able to reach out to travelers en route with content tailored to their mobile devices. SAS was the first airline to embrace .mobi (even though SAS.mobi now seems to redirect to MobilePortal.se). Amtrak and Hilton will follow with .mobi sites of their own in coming months. News, automotive and mobile phone companies are also hopping aboard the .mobi bandwagon.

One interesting thing about .mobi is that many of the most marketable domain names remain unavailable. This is because dotMobi, the .mobi registry, currently has them under wraps. DotMobi offered a Sunrise Period to trademark holders followed by a strategic “banking” of 5,700 generic domain names to be distributed via auctions on a quarterly basis through 2008. Through an auction held at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West 2007, 14 .mobi domains fetched a hefty $300,000.

.mobi is young, but it has some very smart and wealthy backers. It has also amassed a rather impressive list of advisors. Will .mobi worm its way into consumers’ consciousness? Only time will tell. One thing is certain, however, it won’t fail for lack of support from big business.

First, there was the small problem that no one really knew what to do with .eu. The European Union is not a country. Instead, it is a fairly loose confederation of sovereign nations.

Have you ever asked an Irishman, Italian or German where they are from? Have the ever responded, “I’m from the European Union”? Of course not. Europeans identify with their nation, and some define themselves further by region or province. This nationalism extends even onto the Internet in the form of ccTLDs.

For example, a recent study from YouGov shows that 72% of United Kingdom residents would visit a .uk web address above any other TLD. 62% of those surveyed believe the .uk address represents a more local company and a company the respondents have more trust in. The real crux of the issue is where these users will go when they do venture out of their “home” ccTLD. If one is willing to trust a company in a country half a continent away, how is that different than a company in the United States or Japan? In short, what, if anything, is special about .eu that makes it more attractive to a European than .com or .biz?

Next, there was the problem of properly registering .eu domain names to companies and individuals. EURid, a non-profit organization, was created to administer the new domain. EURid is a conglomerate of three existing European ccTLD operators: DNS Belgium, IIT-CNR (Italy) and NIC-SE (Sweden). Following creation of EURid, a Sunrise Period was held to allow applicants with rights based on trademarks, geographic names, company names, trade names and personal names. This process was similar to the Sunrise Period held for the launch of .info. In the first hour of the Sunrise Period, over 71,000 domain names had been registered.

So far, so good. On April 7, 2007 the domain was made available to the general public. Many large registrars allowed customers to put their request into a queue, thereby ensuring the best shot at registering desirable domain names. Due to these queues, more than 700,000 domain names were registered in the first four hours. That is not to say that the “landrush” launch was without its critics. Bob Parsons, GoDaddy.com CEO, was especially vocal about the large number of shell companies or phantom registrars created to jump the lines at large registrars. These phantom registrars effectively crowded out the customers of established registrars. As a result, many generic .eu domain names are in the hands of these shell companies’ backers.

In general, EURid was dismissive of Parsons’ comments and heralded the launch as a success. In July 2006, EURid did seem to make some steps to clean up their registry. They suspended over 74,000 domain names, registered through 400 registrars to just three Cyprus-based companies. It looked like EURid was getting serious about policing domain name warehousing. However, the affected registrants and registrars took their case to an EU court and all accounts and registrars were placed back into good standing. With the press given the original suspension, it was now clear to outside observers that EURid had a problem with warehousing and lacked the legal teeth to do anything about it.

Still, more than 2.5 million .eu domains were registered, so someone must have been interested, right? Better still, “Just under 80 percent of registered names are used, rather than bought only to reserve a name” claims the executive arm of the EU. This sounds good, and it would be, if it were true.

Remember that EURid is a conglomerate of DNS Belgium, IIT-CNR and NIC-SE and is using the DNS Belgium renewal system. This processes expirations at month end, not daily. Thus, many domain names registered in the post-launch euphoria of April 2006 expired yesterday. As of today, just over 2.3 million .eu domain names are active. Since the publication of congratulatory articles that read like press releases straight from the front office of EURid, about 200,000 .eu domain names have gone the way of the dodo. That’s a massive drop of more than 8%.

Further disputing EURid’s spin is the fact that their own 2006 Annual Report (pdf file) states that 54% of .eu domain names are registered to companies or individuals with more than 5 domains. 1345 registrants hold 100 or more .eu domain names and 6 registrants hold more than 10,000 .eu domain names each. Given these statistics, the “80% use” claim by the EU seems optimistic at best. Factor in the fact that the EU considers use to be any form of parking or monetizing and the actual development of the .eu domain looks even hazier.

What will become of .eu? It isn’t going anywhere. It is the “official” domain of European Union agencies and organizations. Will it ever be .com? Never. Will it ever become a suitable substitute for Europeans to local ccTLD’s? That depends upon the administration and marketing of EURid. However, given the setback suffered when they attempted a crackdown on warehousing, the outlook is not so bright at this point.

The defendant, even though his response turned out to be irrelevant, asserted that Google didn't have any rights to Googles.EU, primarily because "Google" doesn't equal "Googles" and because the GOOGLES trademark is registered to other unrelated companies.

It is likely that Google will simply refile the case with the required documentation. The fact that the defendant uses Googles.EU for a search-related website that interfaces with the actual Google search engine will likely be his downfall. He has even decorated the website with a logo that uncannily resembles the well-known Google logo, which could be a clear sign of "bad faith", one of the factors considered by the arbitration center when evaluating a case.

Thanks to DomainNews and DomainTools.

Afilias Ltd., which runs the .info registry, disclosed its plans last week in a letter to ICANN. And yesterday (April 18), it was the Public Interest Registry's turn to inform ICANN about the coming price increase.

An increase of up to 10 percent a year was authorized under ICANN's latest contracts with PIR and Afilias, both dated Dec. 8. Both PIR and Afilias chose to increase fees by 15 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $6.15.

While VeriSign, the registry responsible for .com and .net domain names, justified their price increase this coming Oct. 15 with intensifying DNS loads and security threats, PIR and Afilias did not cite a reason in their letters to ICANN.

A few days ago, the US government agency responsible for tax collection and tax law enforcement reminded the public that its official website address is www.irs.gov – and not .com, .net or .org.

And the U.S. House of Representatives just passed a bill ("Taxpayer Protection Act") clarifying that existing law, which prohibits the commercial use of Treasury Department names and symbols in a misleading way, also applies to the Internet, including domain names!

Here's a quote from the bill:

(a) In General- Subsection (a) of section 333 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by inserting `internet domain address,' after `solicitation,' both places it appears.

The amended Section 333 of Title 31 now reads as follows:

(a) General Rule.— No person may use, in connection with, or as a part of, any advertisement, solicitation, internet domain address, business activity, or product, whether alone or with other words, letters, symbols, or emblems—

(1) the words “Department of the Treasury”, or the name of any service, bureau, office, or other subdivision of the Department of the Treasury, [...]

There are two main targets of this coordinated action:

1. Phishing and identity theft sites which mimick the IRS site to gain access to private taxpayer information such as social security numbers and bank account details.
2. Websites that intentionally resemble the IRS's website and offer commercial tax filing services, such as IRS.com

IRS.com is owned by publicly listed Intersearch Group, Inc. (IGO), which issued a press release to "denounce false news reports":

InterSearch Group, Inc., a leading operator of industry specific destination portals such as www.IRS.com, www.Banks.com, and www.Camps.com and provider of Internet search services, today denounced erroneous news reports falsely attempting to link its independent tax-resource website – IRS.Com – to tax "scams" or other illegal activities and demanded that news outlets who disseminate such information correct their false statements.

However, the "Taxpayer Protection Act" is not limited to scam sites and could also be applied to commercial sites such as IRS.com, which repeatedly came up during yesterday's floor debate. In fact, the domain name IRS.com might be incriminating all by itself because in the minds of some Internet users, IRS.com could create the impression that it is owned by the IRS.

It remains to be seen whether these developments are more than the usual tax-season propaganda ("we're doing something to protect you online so you can feel more comfortable handing over a large part of your income").

What do you think… will the US government use this bill to try to cancel or even confiscate domains such as IRS.com to protect its interests?

Daniel Giersch, who named G-Mail after himself and applied for a German trademark as early as 2000, won a permanent injunction against Google earlier this year, preventing the company from offering Gmail.com email addresses to users with a German IP address.

In Germany, Gmail.com is now known as GoogleMail.com, at least for the time being. A Google representative said:

Google will take the action it deems necessary to protect our interests in Europe.

Giersch is not giving in:

I want this to stop, but not by giving up. I want this to stop only by shutting down Gmail.

Even a $250,000 offer could not convince Giersch to hand over his trademark. His lawyer, Sebastian Eble, said in a recent interview (mp3 file, interview starts at 07:49) with Out-Law.com:

Daniel is a millionaire so you know, €250,000 [sic] is for Daniel not a big amount of money and on your other hand his aim or his goal is to do big business with this G-mail trademark. G-mail is a little bit like Daniel's baby so it was never a question for him to sell his trademark. [...] Even if they would, I don't know, offer him millions I do not think that Daniel would sell it because it is like his little baby, Giersch-mail, so it is named G-mail.

Google had to discover the hard way that this conflict is no longer just about money – it is also about human relations. When Giersch originally heard about Google's beta testing its own Gmail in 2004, he decided to contact them to discuss potential cooperation, but was rebuked.

What does the Archive.org record of Gmail.de have to say about the dispute?

Google first announced Gmail on April 1, 2004. Shortly thereafter, on May 20, 2004, Gmail.de was still being redirected to the Crystal Palace BBS (CPP.de), which apparently no longer exists.

On Oct. 9, 2005, the site went offline and started displaying the following message:

Welcome to Crystal Palace BBS (www.cpp.de)

We make some software-updates… will be back soon..

Thanks for visiting..

At some time between May 29, 2005 and Nov 04, 2005 Gmail.de became a site of its own, announcing the development of a hybrid email and postal mail service. Just in time! Under German trademark law, an applicant has five years to actually start using a mark commercially.

Emboldened by his victory in Germany, Giersch is now also pursuing his plans to protect his G-mail trademark and challenge Google in Norway, Switzerland and Monaco where he hopes to expand his electronic postal delivery business.

Daily Domainer comments:

Looks like Giersch has the upper hand under German law, even though he didn't start using Gmail.de for email related services until 2005. From a domainer's point of view, the market value of Gmail.de (including trademark) is easily in the eight figures ($XX,XXX,XXX) and its value will only appreciate over the years. While Google's measly $250,000 offer looks like a joke, it's very likely that they did not want to set a precedent by making a higher offer for a domain. After all, Gmail.co.uk, Gmail.pl, Gmail.ru, Gmail.in, Gmail.es, Gmail.com.mx and Gmail.com.ar are just a few of the Gmail domains that are not under Google's control… yet.

Microsoft intends to boost its share in Russia and acquiring the .ru domain is part of the plan. "MSN is getting more and more popular in Russia, and this is very important for Microsoft Russia", said Petr Suzdalev, Microsoft Russia spokesman. "We will undoubtedly continue developing MSN.ru".

Roman Elkhadjiev was the former owner of MSN.ru. He had registered about 8 years ago for a company specializing in software development. MSN, according to Elkhadjiev, was an acronym for Merchant Support Network. The company eventually closed and the domain came up for sale in June last year. An offer for the domain reached $350,000 but no sale took place at that figure. Different redirect links appeared on the site, most of them related to Elkhadjiev's projects.

One of Russia's most expensive domains was Vodka.ru, sold at $1M. Vodka.com was more expensive at $3M. In 2005, Google bought Google.cn and Google.com.cn for $1M. So did Microsoft really pay $1 million for MSN.ru? It is certainly a possibility, and the domain is definitely worth that amount. It's also interesting to note that in Russia and China, foreign companies seem to prefer to pay the actual market value for domains they failed to register when they had the opportunity to do so, rather than entangle themselves in lengthy lawsuits with an uncertain outcome.