dotBERLIN – First freebies and now the deletions

In what must rank as the most effective action by a new gTLD registry yet, the .BERLIN zonefile was down by 3105 domains this morning. It wasn’t just housekeeping. Some hosters that had particular domain names in yesterday’s zonefile do not have the same domains in this morning’s zonefile (the domains having been deleted). The interesting thing is that all of the 3900 VARIOMEDIA.DE deleted domains where short numerical domain names.


| VARIOMEDIA.DE | 3900 |
| 101DOMAIN.COM | 16 |
| CLOUDFLARE.COM | 6 |
| UNMANAGEDHOSTING.COM | 2 |
| SEDOPARKING.COM | 2 |
| NET97.NET | 1 |
| RIEN.RO | 1 |
| UDAGDNS.NET | 1 |
| SECOND-NS.COM | 1 |
| CLIENTNSHOSTING.NET | 1 |
| NS14.NET | 1 |
| PARKINGCREW.NET | 1 |
| UDAGDNS.DE | 1 |
| YOUR-SERVER.DE | 1 |


The .BERLIN registration registration agreement has a very powerful clause – Section 5.2. This states

“As the gTLD .BERLIN is a so-called “community based” gTLD, where the registration of domain names is subject to restrictions, a domain name must be put into use within 12 months of registration.

If the registrant sets up a web site which can be reached via the registered domain name, the content of this site must have be directly related to the authorisation to register. “

The .BERLIN gTLD was meant to be a TLD for Berlin rather than a wasteland of parked domains and coming soon websites that will never arrive. This bulk deletion of short number codes seems to be an interesting one. It is not clear if these were registry deletions. However a few of those sampled and checked are no longer in the .BERLIN WHOIS. The registry had run a free domains promotion that was meant to last five days. However it stopped the promotion after it exceeded the number of registrations that the .BERLIN registry had expected. Domainincite covered this story.

Perhaps the .BERLIN registry will be paying more attention to the domains registered in its gTLD and Section 5.2 could end up being a very powerful deterrent to overspeculation and landgrabs. It does put the onus on the registant to develop websites or use the domain name.