The pending death of a registry
For those of you following the ongoing demise of .travel, here is its parent corporation's most recent filing: "Based upon the Company's current financial condition, as discussed above, and without the infusion of additional capital, management does not believe that the Company will be able to fund its operations beyond the end of May 2008." Form 10-Q for THEGLOBE COM INC: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/080509/tglo.ob10-q.html
At 20:10 29/05/2008, Danny Younger wrote:
For those of you following the ongoing demise of .travel, here is its parent corporation's most recent filing:
"Based upon the Company's current financial condition, as discussed above, and without the infusion of additional capital, management does not believe that the Company will be able to fund its operations beyond the end of May 2008."
Form 10-Q for THEGLOBE COM INC: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/080509/tglo.ob10-q.html
This demonstrates what @large people engaged in this business and in DNS community testing know for years: Registries should be non profit organisations and the Registrants should be their members. Low management costs and new services. Operating ".travel" calls for a part time person for a quality service. I would suggest that ALAC does as ISOC did for .org, but negociates a delegation agreement equivalent to a serious light ccTLD, i.e. nothing else than to be in the root. It could permit : - ALAC as such to gain some experience about DNS - to get an ALAC small independent budget and probably to negociate raduced travel rates for ALAC members jfc PS. By the way how many people on this ALAC list has ever technical managed DNS zone files and operated a nameserver ? I would be curiouis to know also how many people among the GNSO and BoD?
Gee. that's just what they said a year ago. The guy who owns it is very rich and seems willing to shovel in unlimited amounts of cash. They changed their registration policies last year to encourage squatting. Doesn't seem to have helped. But in the meantime, don't miss my site at http://airinfo.travel. (This may be a limited time offer.)
For those of you following the ongoing demise of .travel, here is its parent corporation's most recent filing:
"Based upon the Company's current financial condition, as discussed above, and without the infusion of additional capital, management does not believe that the Company will be able to fund its operations beyond the end of May 2008."
Form 10-Q for THEGLOBE COM INC: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/080509/tglo.ob10-q.html
"Based upon the Company's current financial condition, as discussed above, and without the infusion of additional capital, management does not believe that the Company will be able to fund its operations beyond the end of May 2008."
I read the rest of the 10-Q, which reveals that .TRAVEL is in no immediate danger of going away. The registry is owned by an entity called Tralliance which is in turn owned by a company called theglobe.com, which was the fluffiest of dot.com startups and has in the past decade burned through $300 million in a variety of unsuccessful lines of business. For the past several years the controlling shareholder has been Michael Egan, who made a large fortune in the car rental business. It appears that .TRAVEL generates about $1.5 million per year in revenue, which should be enough to keep it going just fine if they cut down on whatever is costing $200K/mo in administrative overhead, which shouldn't be hard. So the plan is to sell Tralliance to a private company held by Egan in return for cancelling all the debt from Egan's prior cash infusions, and a 10% claim on future revenue. Why, you might ask, would they do this? Because theglobe still has over a million dollars in unpaid bills from former lines of business, notably their Voiceglo voip phone service. This unhooks Tralliance from all of the debt, and the 10% of revenue will trickle money out to theglobe's creditors who will presumably decide that getting something from the trickle is better than forcing them into bankruptcy and getting nothing, since Egan's debt is probably senior to theirs. So it's not a particularly noble situation, but it looks like .TRAVEL will survive to fail another day. I agree with Danny that ICANN should still be working on registry failover plans, because if Egan ever loses interest, Tralliance could collapse in a matter of weeks. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.
John, I spotted two remarks in the slightly earlier 10K filing at http://sec.edgar-online.com/2008/03/27/0001144204-08-017833/Section12.asp "However, management does not believe that the consummation of the Proposed Tralliance Transaction will, in itself, allow the Company to become profitable and generate operating cash flows sufficient to fund its operations and pay its existing current liabilities (including those liabilities related to its discontinued operations) in the foreseeable future." Also, this phrase (which was repeated in the subsequent 10Q): "It is our preference to avoid filing for protection under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code." ...which leads us to the gTLD Registry Failover Exercise After Action Report that stated: "The exercise highlighted the difficulty in implementing portions of the plan when a company has declared bankruptcy or is in receivership. Discussion: Bankruptcy of a Registry/Backend Provider Declaration of bankruptcy by a registry or backend provider could place the company under control of the courts, and potentially negatively impact registrants and affect the level/quality of DNS service within the affected TLD. The exercise highlighted difficulty in the implementation of portions of the plan when a company has declared bankruptcy or is in receivership. Recommendation: ICANN to undertake a more-thorough examination of the affect of bankruptcy on the draft ICANN gTLD Registry Failover Plan. Recommend the development of detailed internal procedures and courses of action to provide guidance during a registry bankruptcy on registrants of the affected gTLD." Perhaps in view of current circumstances ICANN should accelerate its proposed more-thorough examination of the affect of bankruptcy.
"However, management does not believe that the consummation of the Proposed Tralliance Transaction will, in itself, allow the Company to become profitable and generate operating cash flows sufficient to fund its operations and pay its existing current liabilities (including those liabilities related to its discontinued operations) in the foreseeable future."
Right. It's saying the shell of theglobe.com may die, but by then, Tralliance and the registry will belong to a different owner so who (other than the old voip creditors they're stiffing) cares? R's, John PS:
Perhaps in view of current circumstances ICANN should accelerate its proposed more-thorough examination of the affect of bankruptcy.
Still a reasonable idea, although I still don't think there's any short term liklihood of .TRAVEL being in bankruptcy.
On 30 May 2008, at 01:58, John Levine wrote:
It appears that .TRAVEL generates about $1.5 million per year in revenue, which should be enough to keep it going just fine if they cut down on whatever is costing $200K/mo in administrative overhead, which shouldn't be hard.
What on earth are they spending that money on? When I wrote about them last year they only had 25 thousand names registered: http://www.isquattedyour.eu/2007/05/20/tralliance-in-trouble-travel-could-di...
So it's not a particularly noble situation, but it looks like .TRAVEL will survive to fail another day.
Considering its size and "popularity" why aren't they courting one of the other registry operators? Is there any sane reason for them to continue a loss making exercise when a larger and leaner organisation might be in a better position to do it?
I agree with Danny that ICANN should still be working on registry failover plans, because if Egan ever loses interest, Tralliance could collapse in a matter of weeks.
Agreed Mr Michele Neylon Blacknight Solutions Hosting & Colocation, Brand Protection http://www.blacknight.com/ http://blog.blacknight.com/ Intl. +353 (0) 59 9183072 Locall: 1850 929 929 Direct Dial: +353 (0)59 9183090 Fax. +353 (0) 1 4811 763 ------------------------------- Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd, Unit 12A,Barrowside Business Park,Sleaty Road,Graiguecullen,Carlow,Ireland Company No.: 370845
Considering its size and "popularity" why aren't they courting one of the other registry operators? Is there any sane reason for them to continue a loss making exercise when a larger and leaner organisation might be in a better position to do it?
At this point, it looks liks it's pretty much Michael Egan's hobby. If financial stability or community benefit were the main considerations, he'd have unloaded it ages ago. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.
On 30 May 2008, at 13:45, John Levine wrote:
At this point, it looks liks it's pretty much Michael Egan's hobby.
Expensive hobby :) I wonder does he want to adopt any others :)
If financial stability or community benefit were the main considerations, he'd have unloaded it ages ago.
True
Mr Michele Neylon Blacknight Solutions Hosting & Colocation, Brand Protection http://www.blacknight.com/ http://blog.blacknight.com/ Intl. +353 (0) 59 9183072 Locall: 1850 929 929 Direct Dial: +353 (0)59 9183090 Fax. +353 (0) 1 4811 763 ------------------------------- Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd, Unit 12A,Barrowside Business Park,Sleaty Road,Graiguecullen,Carlow,Ireland Company No.: 370845
participants (4)
-
Danny Younger -
JFC Morfin -
John Levine -
Michele Neylon