As we just went to tape this weeks DomainSherpa.com discussion show, a fellow Sherpa, Page Howe, brought it to my attention that new gTLD domain names that have the word Eco on the left of the dot were in the process of being taken back by the Donuts Registry.
Page’s domain names eco.directory and eco.careers are only two of the domains now in the process of being deleted by the registry as the whois records are showing the domains being in pending delete.
Even my company Worldwide Media, Inc. was notified this afternoon that we are losing one of these domain names, Eco.Domains.
The issue is the domains should not have been issued in the first place by Donuts, as Eco is on the ICANN restricted and reserved list of protected organizations and NGO’s which you can find here:
http://www.icann.org/sites/default/files/packages/reserved-names/ReservedNames.xml
This is a different list than the ICANN domain collision list which varies for each new gTLD.
This list “contains the list of reserved names according to the new gTLD base registry agreement for International Olympic Committee,
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and Intergovernmental Organizations categories” for which there cannot be registrations at the second level.
While I’m not thrilled about losing the domain, I get the fact that the domain should never have been issued under ICANN regulations and its not due to Donuts changing their mind on domains they wanted to reserve as premium domains.
Obviously everyone who has one of these domains will be getting a full refund from the registrar they registered the domain names through.
Donuts should be issuing a statement shortly that we will add to our post, once we receive it.
UPDATE
Statement from Donuts
We understand the confusion regarding certain “eco” second level registrations. Donuts inadvertently made this string available for registration due to a registry error and is sorry for the inconvenience.We WISH we could sell the name, and frustrating as it may be, the string is on ICANN’s restricted list (and Donuts is managing more than 600,000 names under restriction for various reasons, not including NXD names, which could total more than 1 million), so we were obligated to take this step in order for Donuts, registrars and registrants to be in compliance with ICANN requirements.
