.tv

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Status:	Active
country:	Tuvalu
Manager:	.tv Corporation International
Registry Provider:	Verisign
Date Implemented:	1996
Type:	open ccTLD
Community:	No
Key People
Mark McLaughlin, EVP-VeriSign.

.tv is the country code top level domain name (ccTLD) assigned to the government of Tuvalu under the ISO-3166 list. The ccTLD is currently operated by .tv Corporation International, a subsidiary of Verisign. It is marketed as an open ccTLD since it can be used as abbreviation for television. Entities involved in animation, film and television, film industries including bloggers and website that providing video contents are the primary users of .tv ccTLD.

History

In 1998, the government of Tuvalu received proposals from Jason Chapnic, a Canadian entrepreneur and president of Information.ca and Antony Van Couvering, former president of NetNames and current CEO of Minds + Machines to make .tv ccTLD profitable. The Tuvalu government selected Chapnic's proposal because he offered many promises. At first, the price for .tv domain names was set at $1000 per year and $500 for renewals. Chapnic failed to deliver the $50 million upfront payment he promised to the Tuvalu government. In 1999, the Tuvalu government agreed to license .tv ccTLD to Idealab, a capital investment firm based in California that was brought in by Chapnic. Under the license agreement, Idealab (.tv Corporation International) agreed to pay $1 million per quarter adjustable for inflation to the Tuvalu government with a $50 million cap within 12 and a half years and 20 percent equity in the company.

On December 31, 2001, Verisign acquired .tv Corporation International. Under the purchase transaction, Verisign paid $45 million in cash plus $1 million contribution on the first quarter of 2001. Verisign will also pay around $7-10 million in deferred revenue..tv Corporation International will continue to serve as the country manager/delegee of the government of Tuvalu for .tv strings. Tuvalu gained $10 million on the transaction. Verisign entered a new license contract with Tuvalu for 15 years and agreed to pay the government $2.2 million per year plus 5 percent on all revenue on top of $20 million sales per year until the expiration of the contract on December 31, 2016. Verisign offered registrations for .tv domain names for $50 for a minimum of two years contract.

In 2006, Verisign partnered with Demand Media to market the .tv domain space as the best choice for rich media content websites.

On July 2010, Tuvalu Finance Minister Lotoala Metia expressed that his government is dissatisfied with its contract with Verisign. In an interview with Radio New Zealand International the Finance Minister said, "We are negotiating but we are tied because of the agreement that was signed before us. We cannot negotiate for an increase until 2016. Counter offers have been made but they are not acceptable to the government of the day. So we have to stick to our guns now. They’re giving us peanuts." Verisign offered to pay additional $1 million per year to Tuvalu with a condition that it will continue to serve as the registry operator of the domain name. Tuvalu turn down the offer.

On February 2012, Verisign renewed it's contract to manage the .tv registry with Tuvalu until December 31, 2021. Both parties did not provide any details about the terms of the agreement.

Most Expensive .tv Domain Names

Kuwaiti businessman Thunayan K AL-Ghanim paid $65,000 for Travel.tv and $35,000 for mail.tv. The three .tv domain names that was sold for $100,000 each by Idealabs in 2000 which include:

• Free.tv
• China.tv
• Net.tv

In 2010, premiun .tv domain names were also sold for high prices by Sedo in an auction. The domain names include:

• business.tv ($100,999)
• learn.tv ($41,000)
• christmas.tv ($32,000)
• home.tv ($31,000)
• guide.tv ($29,500)
• job.tv ($25,500)
• jobs.tv ($25,000)
• sports.tv ($54,000)

The domain name emmy.tv was registered to the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for free. In exchange, .tv ccTLD was promoted during the live telecast of the 2000 Emmy Awards.

Malicious .tv domain names

Prior to the airing of the 2012 2012 Super Bowl, the United States authorities led by the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security launched the “Super Bowl Crackdown" against websites providing links to unauthorized sports streams. The authorities seized Firstrowsports.tv, Firstrowsports.com, Firstrowsports.net and Soccertvlive.net in violation of the Criminal Infringement of a Copyright Law.

According to a report published by Softopedia, researchers from Zscaler, a cloud security provider found out the numerous .co.tv domain names used a black hat SEO optimized news article about the departure of Laurence Fishburne from the CSI tv series to redirect users to malware distribution sites that target java vulnerabilities.According to Zscaler senior researcher Umesh Wanve, "The exploit code downloads multiple malicious JAR files on the system after exploitation. The VirusTotal results remains very poor for one of the malicious JAR files, with only 2 out of 43 Antivirus triggering on it."

References

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