Posted: 25 Nov 2010 01:04 PM PST

As reported earlier the Cyrillic .РФ IDN ccTLD launch had reached a stunning number of 500,000 registrations in the first week. Considering the numbers, it was obvious that speculators were playing the TLD, but apparently six registrars are involved in registering many of the names for resale & auction and are now involved in a legal dispute as reported by TheMoscowNews. Many of the registered names have been frozen by the registry.

The accused registrar, RU-Center said there are no plans to stop sales, with spokesman Andrei Vorobyov saying: "We do not believe we have violated the law or the rules of the co-ordinating centre."At the end of last week the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) launched legal action against six registrars claiming they had broken competition laws.

Apparently the RU-Center itself bought 38% of the names registered and acquired another 48% of the registered domains through partner companies – a total of 86%.

[via TheMoscowNews & DomainIncite]

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Top Level Domain Holdings Wants to Raise more Money for new TLDs

Posted: 25 Nov 2010 12:42 PM PST

Top Level Domain Holdings, parent company of Minds+Machines and trademark holder for a number of potential new TLDs has proposed a new placing allowing them to raise an additional £3m. In their corresponding filing, Antony van Couvering is quoted as saying:

“Having reviewed ICANN's Final Proposed Applicant Guidebook, and in view of the ICANN Board's historic decision to do away with cross-ownership restrictions between registries and registrars, we believe that the timing is right for additional investment by TLDH. ICANN's registry-registrar decision means that additional gTLD business models are now viable, and we have already seen a marked increase in interest from prospective new clients. We intend to make sure we have the resources to take advantage of this opportunity.”

The company has been pretty much in a holding pattern waiting for ICANN to finalize their plans for new TLD releases. TLDH had posted a loss for their previous year.

[via StockMarketWire]

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Media Corp Wants to Sell Gambling.com to Fund Acquisitions

Posted: 25 Nov 2010 12:14 PM PST

Known for selling (and buying) Domain Names such as Casino.co.uk for £3.62 MM ($5,7MM USD) million and Casino.de for €400,000 ($532,840 USD), public company Media Corp (LSE:MDC) is now looking to sell Gambling.com as reported by PaidContent.org. In 2008, the company bought Sport.co.uk for £135,000 ($212,460 USD).

CEO Justin Drummond, in his announcement, says: "Whilst the group has significant cash reserves, we have recently seen a number of exciting acquisition opportunities in the online gambling and online advertising space. The successful sale of http://www.gambling.com will give the group significant financial resources to pursue these acquisition opportunities."

Drummond says Media Corp had already received approaches for Gambling.com. It's now appointed domain warehouse Sedo to broker a sale.

The company has £2.2 ($3.46) million in cash and reported an annual gross profit of £6.3 ($9.91) million on £25.6 ($40.28) million income.

[via Paid Content]