Minds + Machines Group Limited

Type:	Public
Industry:	Internet, TLD Consulting
Founded:	2007
Founder(s):	Frederick Krueger Clark Landry
Headquarters:	Craigmuir Chambers, Road Town, Tortola
Country:	British Virgin Islands
Businesses:	Minds + Machines DotEco LLC dotNYC LLC
Website:	www.tldh.org
Key People
Antony Van Couvering, CEO, Director Fred Krueger, CSO/Deputy Chairman Michael Salazar, CFO Peter Dengate Thush, Chairman (outgoing)

Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd. (TLDH) is the parent company of Minds + Machines. The company is dedicated to acquiring and operating new gTLDs, as well as providing consultancy services and back-end registry solutions for entities interested in operating new gTLDs. The company is publicly traded on the AIM under the ticker symbol TLDH.L. Its market cap is valued at over $60 million USD.

TLDH, originally known as Hecta Media Inc. was established by Frederick Krueger and Clark Landry in 2007. The company went public on November 12, 2007. In 2009, the company changed its name from Hecta Media Inc. to Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd. after acquiring Minds + Machines, dotNYC LLC, and DotEco LLC in 2009. Following the acquisition, Antony Van Couvering was appointed CEO of the company. On July 2011, former ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush joined the company as Executive Chairman. The move was a controversial moment and sparked debate about the lack of a clear conflict of interest policy at ICANN with regards to its Board and Staff, and was discussed within the U.S. Congress among other places. Mr. Thrush announced his resignation for January, 2013, only 4 months at TLDH Ltd.<refname="Salazar">TLDH Hires Former ICANN New gTLDs Head, DomainIncite.comPublished & Retrieved 3 Dec 2012</ref>

During the opening day of the application for ICANN's New gTLD Program on January 12, 2012, TLDH purchased 20 application slots and announced that it was chosen by Dot Kiwi Limited, a New Zealand based company, to provide registry solutions for the proposed .kiwi string. On February 21, 2012, the company announced that it will purchase 20 additional application slots for gTLDs.

TLDH partnered with LHL TLD Investment Partners of Beverly Hills California (LHL) to apply for the .music TLD. Minds + Machines will provide the back-end registry services for .music. LHL is composed of leading music industry personalities including artists, managers, music producers and lawyers.

TLDH, through Minds + Machines, will also apply for GeoTLDs .miami for the city of Miami and .nrw (North Rhine-Westphalia) on behalf of the German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen.

The company reported that its total number of new gTLD applications submitted to ICANN is 92. Six of the applications were submitted through joint ventures, 18 were submitted for the clients of Minds + Machines and the remaining 68 gTLDs were submitted by the company for its own registry operations. A significant number of the gTLDs the company is applying for will be placed in contention sets, including .blog, .eco, .green .site, .immo, .hotel, .home, .casa, .love, .law, .cloud, .baby, .art, .gay, .style and .store.

In-house gTLD applications

The 68 applications applied for by the company for its own operations are:

.abogado (Spanish for .lawyer), .app, .art, .baby, .beauty, .beer, .blog, .book, .casa (Spanish for .home), .cloud, .cooking, .country, .coupon, .cpa, .cricket, .data, .dds, .deals, .design, .dog, .eco, .fashion, .fishing, .fit, .flowers, .free, .garden, .gay, .green, .guide, .home, .horse, .hotel, .immo, .inc, .latino, .law, .lawyer, .llc, .love, .luxe, .pizza, .property, .realestate, .restaurant, .review, .rodeo, .roma, .sale, .school, .science, .site, .soccer, .spa, .store, .style, .surf, .tech, .video, .vip, .vodka, .website, .wedding, .work, .yoga, .zulu, .网址 (.site in Chinese), .购物 (.shopping in Chinese).

A certain commentator, Alexander Drummond-Willoughby, has submitted negative comments to ICANN regarding all applications submitted by TLDH, and all applications that have designated TLDH's Minds + Machines as their registry services provider. The comments are largely identical and focus on what the individual deems poor financial decisions by the company.

GAC Early Warnings

Minds + Machines received a total fo 6 GAC Early Warnings, 5 of which were for its own TLDs. This accounts for about 7% of their 72 applications, which they noted in a press release, further stating that many of their competitors and other large portfolio applicants had received much greater percentages of warned applications to total portfolio size. The in-house warned applications are: .zulu, .hotel, .green, .roma, .website. Their client, The American Bible Society, was warned for .bible.

Partnerships

On October 11, 2012, TLDH announced they had partnered with Architelos to use their anti-registration abuse software-as-a-service, NameSentry, in their future registry operations. The software protects the end-user against phishing, malware, spam, botnets and other types of abuse. NameSentry provides both aggregate and drill-down views of abusive domain names, and automates abuse polices and procedures. This announcement came a day after the largest gTLD applicant, Donuts, announced that they were set to use the same NameSentry service.

Staff

TLDH top executives particularly, Thrush and Couvering, have been involved with ICANN since its very beginnings.

Peter Dengate Thrush

Mr. Thrush is a former ICANN Chairman, and he was responsible for leading the Board of Directors that approved the implementation of the New gTLD Program. His immediate decision to join TLDH as Executive Chairman after his term as ICANN Chairman expired in June, 2011, raised criticism from the global Internet community; many questioned ICANN's lack of Conflict of Interest Policy, and its general Ethics Policy. The move was even cited by Sen. Ron Wyden of the U.S. Senate in a letter asking for further oversight of ICANN, and the need for a clear conflict of interest policy to be written into the next IANA contract with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which oversees ICANN's fulfillment of the IANA contract. Peter Dengate Thrush left TLDH in October, 2012.

During the Senate hearings regarding the implementation of the New gTLD Program, Mr. Couvering was one of the representatives of the domain industry who signed the letter sent to Senators John Rockefeller and Kay Bailey Hutchison supporting the program. He and his colleagues reiterated ICANN's position that it is beneficial for the global internet community and it promotes innovation.

Michael Salazar

Michael Salazar led ICANN's New gTLD Program, and was there for three years, before being let go as a result of prominent digital glitches, and subsequent mishandling, of the TAS (The new gTLD Application System), and also the technical failure of the Digital Archery Batching process.<refname="Salazar"></ref>

Top-Level Domain

Governmental Advisory Committee. Considers and provides advice on the activities of ICANN as they relate to concerns of governments, particularly matters where there may be an interaction between ICANN's policies and various laws and international agreements or where they may affect public policy issues (ICANN Bylaws).

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority