Verisign the registry for the .TV registry is apparently taking back any expired new Two letter (LL.TV) .TV domain names as well as any two numbered (NN>TV) domain names.
Recently a domainer that had a back order on a two letter .Tv domain and a two numbered domain received this notice from Verisign:
“Thank you for contacting Verisign Support. I reached out to our Operations team to determine where they were in their investigation. They have a resolution for the issue prepared. However, the business team has concluded that both 13.TV and GM.TV will be placed into Reserved status upon their deletion.
They will not be able to be registered by any registrar once that takes effect.
They are reserving these domains at the registry level for use in specialized promotions aimed at generating significant brand awareness and adoption of the .tv tld.
I do apologize for the inconvenience, I know you wanted to register these names.”"
You can now see that the domain names have in fact been taken back from the whois:
Domain Name: 13.TV
Domain ID: 108626603
Updated Date: 2013-12-25T04:04:39Z
Creation Date: 2013-12-25T04:04:39Z
Expiration Date: 2023-12-25T04:04:39Z
Sponsoring Registrar: .TV RESERVED DOMAINS
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 9998
Domain Status: SERVER-UPDATE-PROHIBITED
Name Server: No nameserver
DNSSEC: Unsigned delegation
Could Verisign do the same thing with a two letter expired or a two numbered .net expired domain name?
What would stop them?…
