Why .ie can't be Sold

topdost

Why .ie domains can't be Sold

If this idea was so good why all other allow , like .com , .org , .co.uk

Ireland is the only place where you have to sale the business with domain .

shangri la

The irish government want the .ie brand to be respected.

MiskyBoyy

shangri la wrote: »

The irish government want the .ie brand to be respected.

...and rightly so!

mneylon

shangri la wrote: »

The irish government want the .ie brand to be respected.

Huh?
The Irish government has nothing to do with the policy of the IEDR

Cianos

DaLad wrote: »

...and rightly so!

Indeed. A good .com is very hard to find these days, and most of those taken are empty link farms, the mass-buying owner obviously just waiting to sell on the domain to someone. I've been quoted thousands of dollars for a .com several times.

mneylon

Cianos wrote: »

I've been quoted thousands of dollars for a .com several times.

And if the domain was "good" for your business then it would be worth it.

Cianos

Blacknight wrote: »

And if the domain was "good" for your business then it would be worth it.

Worth it only if the price is right, there's a point at which it isn't worth it. I have bought expensive domains before fwiw.

What is most annoying is if you think of a cool idea for a website and the perfect domain to go with it, and the domain is just being parked for profit. It's doing its bit to hold back innovation.

mneylon

Cianos wrote: »

Worth it only if the price is right, there's a point at which it isn't worth it. I have bought expensive domains before fwiw.

What is most annoying is if you think of a cool idea for a website and the perfect domain to go with it, and the domain is just being parked for profit. It's doing its bit to hold back innovation.

I'd have to disagree with you.

Domain names are offered on a first come first served basis

If someone else registers a domain name before you then that is life.

I don't see how it "holds back" anything.

If you really want it you should try acquiring it

tricky D

Blacknight wrote: »

Huh?
The Irish government has nothing to do with the policy of the IEDR

Fyi It almost did. Back in 1999/2000 there was an additional section in a draft version of the E-Commerce Bill to give provision for regulating the IEDR which didn't make it into the Act.

The regulation of the .ie has been a good thing as it is viewed as the 2nd most trustworthy ccTLD after .jp which is a postive for our business.

mneylon

tricky D wrote: »

Fyi It almost did. Back in 1999/2000 there was an additional section in a draft version of the E-Commerce Bill to give provision for regulating the IEDR which didn't make it into the Act.

The regulation of the .ie has been a good thing as it is viewed as the 2nd most trustworthy ccTLD after .jp which is a postive for our business.

I'd strongly disagree.
The current rules do not benefit anyone, as they make it much harder to register domain names than it should be
The only people who care about the McAfee reports are people working in IT. "Normal people" don't really care

YouBuyLocal

Blacknight wrote: »

I'd strongly disagree.
The current rules do not benefit anyone, as they make it much harder to register domain names than it should be
The only people who care about the McAfee reports are people working in IT. "Normal people" don't really care

Searching for domains in .com is a pain in the ass, .ie is much better and more trustworthy. The only people who benefit from parking domains are agents for domain buying (I wonder if anyone here will declare an interest), the regulators in the US, etc... The people actually parking domains are probably making a loss unless they have spread their risk over thousands of domains. Its a stupid waste of resources. Domain names are not like land, the analogy doesn't work to treat them the same, they are referents for specific types of business, part of the communicative and organisational process of the web. Domain name parking cause obfuscation and only destroys value, unlike private property in the real world.

Disagree all you want but you are the one benefiting from domain name parking so it is a bit ridiculous.

And if all of this was not true then why exactly do they make you renew the payment for a domain? If it were the same as property then surely you should just be able to buy it rather than rent? Truth is they are owned, but not by those who use them, and thus rental markets must be regulated. .Ie regulation is by far the best and creates the most value, which is why we pay more for them.

Zascar

I think it should be opened up. Remember how much Tuvalu made when when let anyone buy a .tv domain? We could do something similar. With so many web 2.0 type names a .ie ending would be popular. Make them expensive at the start, we'd sell hundreds of thousands - and make much needed money, that (if only) could be spent on further development of the IT industry.

topdost

IEDR regulations are simply not upto date .

The offline world and online world should not be mixed . People in other countries making $$$ in internet marketing , where as mostly in ie are thinking to leave . or migrate to other tlds.

There is war to buy good .com names and infact its generating revenue for everyone in the field , but with .ie mostly going dead .

.ie can never be better than .com/.org/.net as you can set the countries for these whenever and whereever you like .

Think about it like this if I am a blogger and I make my site do the hard work , spend money on seo and due to any reason I decide to retire or simply want to change my niche , I have no way to sell it , unless I go and sell my whole business .

I can agree with the registration part but the NO SALE part is pointless.

UDP

Blacknight wrote: »

I'd strongly disagree.
The current rules do not benefit anyone, as they make it much harder to register domain names than it should be
The only people who care about the McAfee reports are people working in IT. "Normal people" don't really care

Its not that hard to purchase a .ie name. It does make it harder to squat a domain name at least compared to .com etc. and that can only be a good thing. Of course registrars would make more money if it was easier to sell them but that doesn't mean that is good for the .ie tld or Ireland/Irish Business etc.

YouBuyLocal

topdost wrote: »

IEDR regulations are simply not upto date .

The offline world and online world should not be mixed . People in other countries making $$$ in internet marketing , where as mostly in ie are thinking to leave . or migrate to other tlds.

There is war to buy good .com names and infact its generating revenue for everyone in the field , but with .ie mostly going dead .

.ie can never be better than .com/.org/.net as you can set the countries for these whenever and whereever you like .

Think about it like this if I am a blogger and I make my site do the hard work , spend money on seo and due to any reason I decide to retire or simply want to change my niche , I have no way to sell it , unless I go and sell my whole business .

I can agree with the registration part but the NO SALE part is pointless.

Rubbish, no need to sell the business, only the business name, which is not copyrighted. The buyer just needs to register the business name. And how many blogs are businesses in their own right?

jmcc

Zascar wrote: »

I think it should be opened up.

Perhaps some regulations should be relaxed but I don't think it should be completely opened up.

Remember how much Tuvalu made when when let anyone buy a .tv domain?

It is not really a mainstream TLD and it has a very small local market.

We could do something similar. With so many web 2.0 type names a .ie ending would be popular.

I don't think it would be. There's a significant difference between credible ccTLDs and junk ccTLDs. The more low quality registrations (most of which will never make it into a working website) in a TLD, the lower the overall development quality of the TLD. Pretty soon a TLD gets a bad name and as a result it becomes a non-core TLD that people stop using.

Make them expensive at the start, we'd sell hundreds of thousands - and make much needed money, that (if only) could be spent on further development of the IT industry.

As much as that aim is laudable, the reality is that things in the domain business don't work that way.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

topdost wrote: »

IEDR regulations are simply not upto date .

The IEDR regulations are the IEDR regulations. It is that simple.

The offline world and online world should not be mixed .

There's hardly any difference.

People in other countries making $$$ in internet marketing , where as mostly in ie are thinking to leave . or migrate to other tlds.

Seems to me like you haven't a clue about .ie domains. The .ie domain is the Irish ccTLD. Any business targeting the Irish market is almost expected to have a .ie domain name.

There is war to buy good .com names and infact its generating revenue for everyone in the field , but with .ie mostly going dead .

The .ie domains are Irish domains for the Irish market. The .com is a global TLD aimed at a Global market.

.ie can never be better than .com/.org/.net as you can set the countries for these whenever and whereever you like .

Actually, in the Irish market, it is better than com/net/org/biz/info/etc. In the Irish market even .uk is better than .net and .org. The .ie and .com have approximately an 85% share of the Irish market.

I can agree with the registration part but the NO SALE part is pointless.

It is a legacy of government control by people who did not understand what was happening at the time. But then you, and probably a lot of people reading this thread were not around in those days. There was one rather strange idea at the time that .ie registrations would only be allowed for registered companies.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

Cianos wrote: »

What is most annoying is if you think of a cool idea for a website and the perfect domain to go with it, and the domain is just being parked for profit. It's doing its bit to hold back innovation.

So just because someone beat you to registering a domain, they are effectively stopping you from innovating? It would seem that there's an awful lot of innovative people who complain about not being able to find domain names when you'd think that they would be innovative enough to come up with a domain name that hasn't been registered. (Then again there are hundreds of millions of domains that have been registered and dropped. The last time I checked, about 140 million were not reregistered.)

Regards...jmcc

Chet Zar

I quite like the system we have - takes a lot more work to register a .ie, and more expensive - but ensures we have a reputable tld and keeps .ie nice and clean.

Don't really see a need to open it up, especially in such a small market (relatively speaking). Also means you are far more likely to be able to snag the .ie for your business/venture, unlike .com...imagination is definitely also a must when it comes to coming up with a great name that suits what you are doing!

dahamsta

I agree. The barrier to entry really isn't that high, but the fact that it exists does keep out the worst of the squatters and domainers. And good riddance to both.

mneylon

YouBuyLocal wrote: »

Searching for domains in .com is a pain in the ass, .ie is much better and more trustworthy.

According to who?

Most users do not care.

Bandying about misguided PR about how one domain extension is "safer" than another is rubbish. A website's safety and trustworthiness is down to a lot of factors - the domain extension chosen isn't one of them (when DNSSEC becomes common place etc., that might change)

YouBuyLocal wrote: »

The only people who benefit from parking domains are agents for domain buying

Misinformed

A lot of people register domain names and don't use them immediately
A lot of people monetise them in the interim

The key thing for any ccTLD is that it should work for any and all businesses that want to use it however they choose.
.ie does not.

It puts too may obstacles in the path of businesses who want to register domain names quickly and easily.

The supposed "benefits" of the regulations cause more damage than anything else.

I could go on, but the last time I made a public statement about .ie I got hit with a defamation case

UDP

Blacknight wrote: »

The key thing for any ccTLD is that it should work for any and all businesses that want to use it however they choose.
.ie does not.

How does it not?

Blacknight wrote: »

It puts too may obstacles in the path of businesses who want to register domain names quickly and easily.

How long does it take to register a .ie domain name at the moment?

Blacknight wrote: »

The supposed "benefits" of the regulations cause more damage than anything else.

Do you think that de-regulation would not cause a large influx of cyber squatters into the ccTLD and who would that benefit? The only entities I can imagine that would benefit would be registrars and cyber squatters.

jmcc

Blacknight wrote: »

A lot of people register domain names and don't use them immediately
A lot of people monetise them in the interim

This is a very important point that most people miss. The reality is that many domains will drop without ever being used. Development is difficult and expensive and many people will stick with one primary brand website and they may point their other domains to this website. However many new domains in the Irish market will, initially go to a holding or parking page while they are being developed. There is often a delay of months between a domain being registered and the domain having a fully functional website. The .com TLD will go over 100 million active domains in the next few weeks but of that 100 million only between 20 million and 40 million would have an active and unique website.

Regards...jmcc

Chet Zar

Blacknight wrote: »

According to who?

Most users do not care.

Bandying about misguided PR about how one domain extension is "safer" than another is rubbish. A website's safety and trustworthiness is down to a lot of factors - the domain extension chosen isn't one of them (when DNSSEC becomes common place etc., that might change)

Not completely true - all else being equal, most people would choose to do business with a .com or a .ie over a .biz or .net for example.

Also, it's only natural for people in Ireland to seek out .ie domains in preference to .co.uk, again all else being equal. So not exactly true for someone who wants the reassurance of knowing that the company they are dealing with is Irish based.

jmcc

dahamsta wrote: »

I agree. The barrier to entry really isn't that high, but the fact that it exists does keep out the worst of the squatters and domainers. And good riddance to both.

Cybersquatters are a problem in many TLDs and so far, .ie has not been as badly hit by cybersquatting as some TLDs. Domainers are part of the ecology of a successful TLD. Most of their activity is confined to keyword domains (generic terms). However much of the value of generic keyword domains depends on type-in traffic where a user will type an url thinking their is such a website. With a large TLD such as .com, that traffic can be high but it is very much a function of the size of the TLD and the userbase of the TLD. Mass cybersquatting and cyberwarehousing such as that which occurred with .eu ccTLD could be a major problem and this may be why completely deregulating .ie would not be a good thing. It would be wrong to group domainers with cybersquatters.

Regards...jmcc

mneylon

jmcc wrote: »

This is a very important point that most people miss. The reality is that many domains will drop without ever being used. Development is difficult and expensive and many people will stick with one primary brand website and they may point their other domains to this website. However many new domains in the Irish market will, initially go to a holding or parking page while they are being developed. There is often a delay of months between a domain being registered and the domain having a fully functional website. The .com TLD will go over 100 million active domains in the next few weeks but of that 100 million only between 20 million and 40 million would have an active and unique website.

Regards...jmcc

The other thing is that a LOT of people make silly assumptions
A domain name != www.domain.tld

list.ie has several active mailing lists but no website
log.ie goes to a parking page (or should do .. )
I've an active site on http://b.log.ie

jmcc

Chet Zar wrote: »

Not completely true - all else being equal, most people would choose to do business with a .com or a .ie over a .biz or .net for example.

These are the 01/January/2012 figures for the Irish domain/hosting business:
IE: 173,145 (full count)
Irish Hosted:
COM: 148,840
NET: 15,089
ORG: 8,979
BIZ: 2,725
INFO: 3,279
MOBI: 1,115
ASIA: 83
US: 339
DE: 175 (tracked)
ES: 424 (tracked)
FR: 91 (tracked)
EU: 8,861 (tracked)
CO.UK: 16,349 (tracked)

The main market in Ireland is IE/COM with the third choice TLD being .uk. The .biz and .info gTLDs are growing slowly but they don't have quite the same development figures. Much of .net's activity is historical because people considered that the standard registration package was IE/COM/NET/ORG. In some respects it is not a question of doing business with a .net or .biz as opposed to .ie or .com, it is an issue of .net and .biz being comparatively rare in the Irish market.

There's another aspect that only those in the Search business see: how domains are interlinked. Some registrants will own sets of identical names throughout a set of TLDs (the IE/COM would be the most common tuple). There may only be one active website between those owned domains. Of those .com domains, 4558 of the websites are redirecting (301/302) to another website (not the same domain stub) in an different TLD and 2148 are pointed to exact match domains in other TLDs.

Regards...jmcc

meglome

jmcc wrote: »

It would be wrong to group domainers with cybersquatters.

I have had unused domains valued and made offers to buy. The offers could be two or three times the value and I've yet to purchase any of these domains. In pretty much every instance the people with the domain wanted thousands. I have in the past waited years for a domains to be dropped by the squatters and got it that way but I should have been able to purchase them for what they were worth, or close to. I cannot see how anyone thinks the current .com system is good or how is doesn't block innovation. I appreciate that some people will sit on a domain as they have a business idea they are planing but the majority of domains I have tried to buy were simply being squatted on.

jmcc

Blacknight wrote: »

The other thing is that a LOT of people make silly assumptions
A domain name != www.domain.tld

It is not unusual to see domains being registered purely for e-mail purposes. Some businesses will use a different TLD for their e-mail traffic to that of their main brand website. With the larger companies, this is more common, especially if the company operates in a number of markets. Brand protection also means that domains will be registered in a TLD but they may not even be used or set up properly in DNS.

list.ie has several active mailing lists but no website
log.ie goes to a parking page (or should do .. )
I've an active site on http://b.log.ie

If only people would set up proper 301s and 302s. It would make life somewhat simpler. Many smaller web developer operations do not set up proper redirects with the effect that duplicate content is an issue for many of their sites. One common problem is that they point unused domains to their main website without a proper redirect. This can mean that a search engine can see ten or twenty duplicate content websites.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

meglome wrote: »

I appreciate that some people will sit on a domain as they have a business idea they are planing but the majority of domains I have tried to buy were simply being squatted on.

This perception that one person's right (or need) for a domain is greater than that of the registrant is at the heart of a lot of allegations of cybersquatting. The problem with this is that the registrant has just beaten the person who wants the domain to the registration. The most important issue in dealing with cybersquatting issues is what rights each party has to the domain. If you've a trademark and someone goes and registers a domain using that TM then you've got to take action. However if you have no intellectual property rights to the domain someone else has registered then it is not necessarily cybersquatting.

Regards...jmcc

TsuDhoNimh

jmcc wrote: »

... 4558 of the websites are redirecting (301/302) to another website (not the same domain stub) in an different TLD and 2148 are pointed to exact match domains in other TLDs.

Out of 173k only 6.6k redirecting (or at least doing so with a 3xx status) seems surprisingly low. [Sorry, that's 6.6k of the 149k .com's on the list. My mistake. Still much lower than I'd have expected though.]

Personal curiosity here, but do you have a breakdown on the 301/302 usage? Even a rough % would be interesting.