1 and 2 letter .de names to be released

[kevmacmeh]

Sedo:

This just in: Sedo is hosting a Pre-Auction for 1, 2, and 3-character .de domains from now until Thursday, Oct. 22nd at 5PM BST. Pre-bidding is available for all letter and number combinations, or approximately 19,000 newly available domains in the market!


To help you acquire the new .de domain of your choice, our Pre-Auction gives you the exclusive advantage to bid before DENIC, the official German .de registrar, opens the registration period to the public on Friday 23rd at 9 AM CET (Central European Time).

When the registration period opens, Sedo’s trusted registrar partners will be able to place bids on your behalf, as long as you have won the domain in our Pre-Auction. If we’re unable to register the domain right away, our brokerage team will use your winning bid to try to buy the domain back from the registrant.

New .de Domains Criteria:


- One, two, and three-character domains (letter and number combinations) can now be registered
- German license plate letter combinations are now available for TLD registration
- A domain may be comprised of the digits 0-9, hyphens, the letters A-Z of the Latin alphabet and the other letters listed in the currently valid annex to the Domain Guidelines
- The domain cannot begin or end with a hyphen, nor have hyphens for its third and fourth characters
Domains must be at least one character in length

Views?

[Doc Com]

Posted previously (last week) on DNF.

[demaxxus]

Some observations and questions...

When bidding at Sedo on the new .de domains, what it comes down to is that you're paying a hefty fee if one of Sedo's registrar partners manages to register the domain. Basically, the auction is to designate one person per domain that Sedo will go to bat for when the registration scramble happens.

- If they get the domain, it's yours, and Sedo and the registrar that managed to register the domain get a HUGE commission (pc.de is at 36k euros at the time of this post, with almost 3 days left to go)

- If you don't get the domain, they'll contact the current registrant and try to buy it for you using your winning bid. And if the current registrant doesn't want to sell it, do you get a full refund? A partial refund?

So I guess the only real benefit is the fact that all of Sedo's registrar partners will be trying to get the domain for you, instead of you trying to do it yourself. Which may be a pretty big benefit I guess, depending on how many partners they have (and on that note, does anyone know how many registrar partners Sedo has?).

This as a fantastic cash grab by Sedo. I'm very curious to see how many of the new domains they're able to secure.

[Focus]

greedy mofos

[loudbeats.com]

Originally Posted by demaxxus

This as a fantastic cash grab by Sedo. I'm very curious to see how many of the new domains they're able to secure.

And they will have the opportunity to use funds secured by winning bidders for un-prescribed period of time for whatever personal investment purposes before refunding bidders!!

nice business strategy

[DomainsInc]

this makes it impossible for someone to just register one of these unfortunately :/

[loudbeats.com]

Originally Posted by DomainsInc

this makes it impossible for someone to just register one of these unfortunately :/

that's why ppl will have to pay heaps to own some of them prime ones in near future

[PRED]

wtf is going on with the pages of nnnnn.de and nnnn.de garbage being offered on auction . hundreds of pages
sedo auctions have 770 pages over 7 days , 95% at least is utter garbage
even most of the CC.de is not worth paying for imho
i hope when people do win a good one (if) sedo and the registrar etc make sure they have a german address for buyers, like what registrars provide for non german buyers as per the rules, or i can see people losing names

and yes, sedo are greedy german mofos
95% of that crap wont sell, and the rest they will win some, others will beat them. maybe be some bargains in the spoils without giving sedo a penny

[kevmacmeh]

names such as tv.de and it.de can easily be developed into sub domains, so I expect these names to fly.

[Coward]

and of course CO.DE!


..does anyone have any further information on the renewal fees for these names? There's rumours floating around that they'll be subject to a "premium" renewal fee (in the $xx,xxx range)..

[dominator]

first they explain it is impossible to register L.de, LL.de (or L.biz, LL.biz), because blah-blah-blah

now it possible
(because blue ray laser was invented?)

earlier it was possible to register LL.org, now (if any expires) it is not
because blah-blah-blah

later they will be auctioned again...

[HomerJ]

I emailed a german registrar to ask if they were accepting pre-registrations for 1 & 2 character .de domains, and sadly,

I am sorry, but have to announce that we are not longer accepting pre-registrations for the large number of requests within the last days. Hence, we alreardy have numerous pre-regs for any possible kind of new .de domains.

it would appear judging from this response that the registrars are already flooded with pre-registrations to the point that not only are all pre-regs preregged, but numerous times over.

Denic reported that registrations will go on a first come, first served basis. This essentially means that a registrar can only really submit a single request per domain (meaning, for a single applicant only)

In regards to Sedo's auctioning of pre-regs I think there are some interesting questions that could be raised here along the lines of:

At what point did Sedo actually submit their pre-registrations across their entire network of affiliate registrars, for all of the .de domains they have listed?

Did they submit pre-registrations for the entire available list, or only those that get bids?

Did they pre-reg all of these names before they opened up the actual bidding?

I suppose what I'm saying is, if there are registrars A - Z, and Sedo has an affiliation with regisrars A - J, would they have had any type of special knowledge that would have allowed them to be the first applicant at registrars A - J for all of the top names (i.e. by knowing of the opening window of pre-registrations before a public press release)

If not, then they probably have little chance of securing any of the names that people are bidding on. At least, as little as Joe Public has, in which case, it would seem what they are really doing is letting people pre-bid for the aftermarket sales that they hope to attain from using the funds of the winning bidder to buy the domain from the winning registrant, effectively squeezing out the other auction houses like Afternic. Essentially they can go to the winning registrant of tv.de the minute after registration and say, "we have an offer for you for $36,000". Really quite ingenious if that is the case.

However if the former was the case , then it also smacks of something. those are my thoughts.

[Doc Com]

Originally Posted by Coward

..does anyone have any further information on the renewal fees for these names? There's rumours floating around that they'll be subject to a "premium" renewal fee (in the $xx,xxx range)..

I also would be interested in knowing this.

[loudbeats.com]

lol that would drop 90% of the names in first year hahah

[netfleet]

Originally Posted by Coward

..does anyone have any further information on the renewal fees for these names? There's rumours floating around that they'll be subject to a "premium" renewal fee (in the $xx,xxx range)..

Originally Posted by Doc Com

I also would be interested in knowing this.

me too. However I guess if there's nothing official stated about exceptional renewal prices, they can't charge more than normal after they are 1st rego'd can they?

[demaxxus]

Originally Posted by netfleet

they can't charge more than normal after they are 1st rego'd can they?

Pretty sure they can charge whatever they want. Like every other registrar they set their own prices, it's just a matter of whether or not you choose to register/renew with them or not.

As long as they tell you upfront what you're in for, they could charge a million dollars for renewals if they wanted to.

Originally Posted by HomerJ

At what point did Sedo actually submit their pre-registrations across their entire network of affiliate registrars, for all of the .de domains they have listed?

From everything I've read, they can't pre-register. Nobody can. I think they're just allowing bidding so that if they do by chance get any of the domains they have listed, whoever the winning bidder was has to pay up. In this instance, Sedo is basically the same as an individual person attempting to register one of these domains when they become available, except that they'll have a better chance because instead of one person trying to register it, they'll be able to have all of their registrar partners try to register it on behalf of that one person (the winning bidder). However, they're still submitting the registration request just like everyone else, they don't have the option to submit pre-registrations.

It's a win-win for both Sedo and their registrar partners. Let's say they manage to register tv.de for the standard registration fee. Sedo and their registrar partner will profit the winning bid (currently 36,000 euros) minus the actual registration fee. If they don't get the domain, the user gets their money back (as far as I know). There's no risk whatsoever on their part, but they could potentially make a HUGE sum of money from people bidding through their site if they're able to secure some of the domains.

In short, you're bidding for a slightly higher chance at getting the domain then you would on your own, since based on the sheer numbers they will have a better chance at registering it.

It's a total cash grab, but it's not like they're doing anything 'wrong'. If someone wants to pay a premium to have a better chance at getting the domain, then they better be willing to buck up.

[dominator]

Originally Posted by demaxxus

Pretty sure they can charge whatever they want. Like every other registrar they set their own prices, it's just a matter of whether or not you choose to register/renew with them or not.

it is not about registrars, but about registries
(similar thing proposed also for .com)

[.tv]

Here's an interesting email I received from DD24:

dd24 Newsflash - Sudden release of new .DE Domains

Dear customer,

In a surprising action, DENIC has amended its Domain Guidelines with effect from October 23, 2009 09:00 (CEST) allowing one- and two-digit domains as well as domain names composed exclusively of numerals. Additionally former restricted three-digit domains will be released.

Key-Systems accepts multiple pre-registrations starting tomorrow,
October 20, 2009. Pre-registrations will be handled on a first-come,
first-served basis.

+++ The details +++:

Please submit your pre-registrations for the new .DE Domains during the
following time slot:

Tuesday, October 20, 2009, 12:00 UTC until Thursday, October 22, 2009,
23:59 UTC.

The technical requirements for the applications can be found below.

The prices for one year pre-registrations for the new .DE Domains are:

- one-digit domains (characters or numbers): 25,000 EUR / 29,750 EUR incl. VAT per domain

- two-digit domains (characters or numbers): 20,000 EUR / 23,800 EUR incl. VAT per domain

- three-digit domains (characters) that were not previously approved (e.g.
motor-vehicle number plates): 15,000 EUR / 17,850 EUR incl. VAT per domain

- three-digit domains (numbers): 1,000 EUR / 1,190 EUR incl. VAT. per domain

- number domains with 4 and more digits: 25.00 EUR / 29.75 EUR incl. VAT. per domain

Per application, we charge a service fee of 1.00 EUR / 1.19 EUR incl. VAT, which is charged immediately upon submission of the application and is non-refundable.

We will donate 50% of the revenues generated from these service fees to a charitable purpose.

In order to protect Key-Systems against bad debts the domains will be registered in the name of Key-Systems first and after payment be allocated to the customer.

The cost for each domain is payable within 2 weeks after the successful allocation otherwise the domain remains with Key-Systems.

Please submit your pre-orders within the specified time slot using the normal registration process:
http://www.domaindiscount24.com/?pag...de&language=en

Summary of the changes under .DE:

- One- and two-digit domains as well as domain names composed exclusively of numbers can now be registered.

- Domains identical with combinations of letters that are used for motor-
vehicle number plates or for TLDs are released for registration.

- A domain may be comprised of the digits 0-9, hyphens, the letters a-z
of the Latin alphabet and the other letters listed in the currently valid annex to the Domain Guidelines.

- A domain must neither begin nor end with a hyphen. Neither must it have hyphens as both its third and fourth characters.

- The minimum length of a domain is one character.

- The maximum length of a domain is 63 characters.


--
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We are looking forward for your feedback! Just write us to:

feedback@domaindiscount24.com


Key-Systems GmbH
Prager Ring 4-12
DE-66482 Zweibruecken
Tel.: +49 (0) 6332 - 79 18 60
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Email: support@domaindiscount24.com

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CEO: Alexander Siffrin
Registration No.: HR B 1861 - Zweibruecken
V.A.T. ID.: DE211006534

[demaxxus]

Originally Posted by dominator

it is not about registrars, but about registries

Based what I've read so far, I was under the impression that it was the registrars themselves that were trying to charge the ridiculous prices, not the actual .de registry. Maybe I missed it, but that's what I've gotten out of what I've read on this.

Then again .im charges more for shorter domains, so this wouldn't really surprise me.

[dominator]

Originally Posted by demaxxus

Based what I've read so far, I was under the impression that it was the registrars themselves that were trying to charge the ridiculous prices, not the actual .de registry. Maybe I missed it, but that's what I've gotten out of what I've read on this.

then think what is worse

what trying?

registrars can charge whatever they want
.com or .de

but you can always transfer your domain

http://www.dnforum.com/f17/new-gtld-...ad-351382.html