I was on the west coast this morning and decided to get up early and take a shot at registering some .tube domains at Uniregistry.
I threw a bunch of domains into the system, include the single letter domain a.tube and out of the bunch of 100 or so, only a.tube and one other domain name, Filthy.tube came back available to be registered at normal registration prices.
Once I got confirmation of a.tube being registered I went to the ICANN whois and saw that the domain was registered with my contact information.
I quickly threw in other 25 letters of Alphabet and the number 0-9 .tube domains
So in all out of 26 potential one letter and 10 one number .tube domains, I wound up getting 17 of them.
The other 19 single letter/single numbers domains were registered by someone else (like i.tube which was registered by someone in China) according to the ICANN whois at the time.
The 17 domain names remained in my account until around 1pm when I was formally notified by Uniregistry that:
“The TUBE Registry Operator (Latin Telecom) had originally requested that all 1 position (one letter/one number) domain names be reserved. Due to processing errors, these domains were inadvertently available for registration. We were advised by the Registry Operator to delete these domains after they were registered.”
So to be crystal clear this was not Uniregistry fault or problem.
The domains were available to be registered and were in fact registered and showed up as registered in ICANN whois.
The reversal of the registrations were ordered by the registry Latin Telecom.
I was pointed to the TOS of the .Tube registry:
“R3.74.1 You acknowledge and agree that .TUBE reserves the right, at its sole discretion and at any time and without limitation, to deny, suspend, cancel, redirect, or transfer any registration or transaction, or place any domain name(s) on registry lock, hold, or similar status as it determines necessary for any of the following reasons: (i) to protect the integrity and stability of one of its registries; (ii) to comply with any applicable laws, government rules or requirements, requests of law enforcement, or any dispute resolution process; (iii) to avoid any liability, civil or criminal, on the part of .TUBE, its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers, directors, contracted parties, agents, or employees; (iv) to comply with the terms of the applicable registration agreement and .TUBE policies; (v) where you fail to keep your Whois information accurate or up-to-date; (vi) if the domain name use is abusive or violates the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), or a third partyʹs rights or acceptable use policies, including but not limited to the infringement of any copyright or trademark; (vii) to correct mistakes made by a registry operator or any registrar in connection with a domain name registration; (viii) as needed during the resolution of a dispute; or, (ix) for the non-payment of fees to the Registry”
So looking at (vii) “to correct mistakes made by a registry operator or any registrar in connection with a domain name registration” the registry has the right to take the domain names back by stating the registrations were allowed in error.
For the record here are the domain names that were registered and were sitting in my Uniregistry account for hours:
1.tube
2.tube
5.tube
8.tube
9.tube
a.tube
e.tube
g.tube
k.tube
m.tube
p.tube
q.tube
s.tube
t.tube
u.tube
x.tube
y.tube
As for the other domain names I attempted to register they appeared to be reserved (as opposed to being available like the one’s I was able to register) or had premium price.
For the premium priced domains I also checked out Name.com for pricing for .Tube premiums
.Tube premium domain names, that I checked on were priced up to $112,500.
Reality.Tube, Real.Tube, Mom.Tube, Home.Tube and Shopping.Tube were all priced at $112,500 (interestingly the shorter domain name shop.tube is only priced at $56,250).
Other Big priced domain names I checked on were:
Big.Tube priced at $56,250.00
Yoga.tube priced at $56,250.00 Mega.Tube priced at $26,562.50 Geek.tube at $26,562.50 Exercise.Tube priced at $10,000.00 Ultra.Tube priced at $10,000.00 Premium priced .Tube domains carry a one time premium price, with a normal renewal price of $34.99 at Name.com.