.jobs plans to raise millions from premium names after dumping its sponsor

Third time lucky for .jobs?

Having had its first two business models fail, Employ Media has appealed to ICANN to scrap the cumbersome restrictions that have dogged .jobs for 15 years and allow it to raise potentially millions by auctioning off premium domains.

.jobs is one of a handful of “sponsored” gTLDs applied for in the 2003 round, but now it wants to dump its sponsor and substantially liberalize its eligibility policies.

.jobs has been sponsored by the Society for Human Resource Management since its approval by ICANN back in 2005, but Employ Media wants a divorce.

It’s also asking ICANN to promise not to fire barrages of lawyers at it if (or, more likely, when) it attempts to auction off tens of thousands of premium .jobs domains, some of which are currently carrying six-figure asking prices.

The gTLD was one of a handful approved in the 2003 “Sponsored TLD” round, an experimental early effort to introduce top-level competition, which also produced TLDs including .xxx, .asia, .cat and .mobi.

.jobs was originally restricted in two primary ways: only card-carrying HR professionals could register names, and they could only register the name of the company they worked for.

As you might imagine, the domains didn’t exactly fly off the shelves. By January 2010 fewer than 8,000 names had been registered, while the likes of .mobi — also “sponsored”, but far less restricted — were approaching one million.

So Employ Media took a gamble, creating what it called Universe.jobs. It registered about 40,000 domains representing professions like nursing.jobs and geographic terms like newyork.jobs, and populated the sites with job listings provided in partnership with the non-profit DirectEmployers Association.

As I reported extensively in DI’s early days, ICANN saw this as a breach of its Registry Agreement and threatened to terminate the contract. But Employ Media fought back, and ICANN eventually retreated, allowing Universe.jobs to go ahead.

I’ve thought so little about .jobs in the last eight years that I didn’t notice that Universe.jobs had also crumbled until today.

It seems DirectEmployees terminated the deal in 2018 after the registry refused to give it a bigger slice of revenue, then launched a competing for-profit service called Recruit Rooster, stranding Employ Media without a key revenue stream.

The registry sued (pdf) last year, accusing DirectEmployers of stealing its clients in violation of their agreement. While DirectEmployers denied the claims (pdf), the lawsuit was nevertheless settled last November, according to court documents.

That didn’t solve the problem of Employ Media not having a strong business model any more, of course.

So the company wrote to ICANN back in April to ask for changes to its Registry Agreement, enabling it to split from SHRM after 15 years of nominal oversight and create its own “independent” HR Council to oversee .jobs policy.

The Council would be made up of HR professionals not employed by Employ Media and would make seemingly non-binding “recommendations” about registry policy.

The proposed changes also reduce registrant eligibility to what looks like a box-checking exercise, as well as permitting Employ Media to sell off “noncompanyname” domains at auction or for premium fees.

Under the current contract, you can only register a .jobs domain if you’re a salaried HR professional and are certified by the Human Resource Certification Institute.

If the proposed changes are approved by ICANN, which seems very likely given ICANN’s history of pushing through contract amendments, the new rule will be:

Persons engaged in human resource management practices that are supportive of a code of ethics that fosters an environment of trust, ethical behavior, integrity, and excellence (as exemplified in the current Society for Human Resource Management (“SHRM”) Code of Ethical and Professional Standards in Human Resource Management or other similar codes) each, a “Qualified Applicant” may request registration of second-level domains within the TLD.

Sounds rather like something that could easily be buried in the Ts&Cs or dealt with with a simple check-box at the checkout.

The proposed new contract further guts the restricted nature of the TLD and removes the ability of the new sponsor (essentially the registry itself) to increase eligibility requirements in future.

Another amendment not flagged up prominently by ICANN on its public comment page specifically permits the registry to launch a “Phased Allocation Program” for generic second-level names, what it calls “noncompanyname” domains:

Registry Operator may elect to allocate the domain names via the following processes: 1) Request for Proposals (RFP) to invite interested parties to propose specific plans for registration, use and promotion of domains that are not their company name; 2) By auction that offers domains not allocated through the RFP process; and 3) A first-come, first-served real-time release of any domains not registered through the RFP or auction processes. Registry Operator reserves the right to not allocate any of such names. The domain names included within the scope of the Phased Allocation Program shall be limited to noncompanyname.TLD domain names, not including all reserved names as identified in Specification 5 of this Agreement.

Basically, Employ Media plans to sell off the tens of thousands of Universe.jobs domains it still has registered to itself, potentially raising millions in the process. One and two-character domains will also be released, subject to ICANN rules.

Many of these domains, even universe.jobs itself, seem to have make-an-offer landing pages already, with suggested prices such as $500,000 for hotel.jobs and $750,000 for us.jobs.

Bizarrely, these landers have a logo branding .jobs as “a legacy TLD”, a slogan I imagine is meaningless to almost anyone outside the domain industry and not particularly evocative or sexy.

The sum of all this is that .jobs is arguably on the verge of becoming a sponsored TLD in name only, with the potential for a big windfall for the registry.

Oh, and it’s all up for public comment before ICANN gives final approval to the contract changes. Comments close November 16.

Will anyone begrudge the company a chance at success, after 15 years of being handcuffed by its own policies?

I can imagine Donuts may have a view, operating as it does the competing .careers, which currently has fewer than 8,000 regs and is almost certainly the weaker string.

ICANN drops .jobs shut-down threat

ICANN has withdrawn its breach notice against .jobs registry Employ Media, opening the floodgates for third-party job listings services in the gTLD.
In a letter sent to the company earlier this week, ICANN seems to imply that it was wrong when it threatened in February 2011 to shut down .jobs for breaking the terms of its registry agreement:

ICANN has concluded that Employ Media is not currently in breach, but is instead in good standing under the Registry Agreement, with respect to the issues raised in the 27 February 2011 Notice of Breach letter.
…
ICANN will not seek to impose restrictions on new or existing policy initiatives within .JOBS as long as such conduct is consistent with the .JOBS Charter and the terms of the Registry Agreement.

The surprising move presumably means that Employ Media will be dropping its Independent Review Panel proceeding against ICANN, which was due to start in-person hearings next month.
The original breach notice alleged that the registry had gone too far when it sold thousands of generic domain names to the DirectEmployers Association to use for jobs listings sites.
This .Jobs Universe project saw DirectEmployers launch sites such as newyork.jobs and nursing.jobs.
The project was criticized harshly by the .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition, an ad hoc group of jobs sites including Monster.com, which lobbied ICANN to enforce the .jobs contract.
The .jobs gTLD was originally supposed to be for companies to advertise only their own job openings.
The reasoning behind ICANN’s change of heart now is a little fuzzy.
Ostensibly, it’s because it received a letter December 3 from the Society for Human Resources Management, Employ Media’s policy-setting “sponsoring organization”.
The letter states that all of DirectEmployers’ domain names are perfectly okay registrations — “being used consistently with the terms of the .JOBS Charter” — and have been since the .Jobs Universe project started.
The domain names were all registered by DirectEmployers executive William Warren, who is a SHRM member as required by .jobs policy, the letter states.
Nothing seems to have changed here — it’s been Employ Media and SHRM’s position all along that the registrations were legit.
So did ICANN merely sense defeat in the IRP case and get cold feet?
Read the letters here.

ICANN demands the right to terminate .jobs

ICANN has asked the International Chamber of Commerce to rule that it has the right to terminate Employ Media’s .jobs contract.
It’s filed its response to Employ Media’s demand for arbitration over the disputed Universe.jobs service, which saw the registry vastly expand the .jobs space.
Employ Media “transcended the very intent behind creation of the TLD” with Universe.jobs, which allocated tens of thousands of .jobs domains to the DirectEmployers Association, ICANN said.
The organization wants the ICC to rule that it “may, but is not required to, terminate the Registry Agreement with Employ Media”, as it has already threatened.
Employ Media took ICANN to arbitration in May, after ICANN notified it that it was in breach of its registry agreement and they were not able to settle their differences in private talks.
The registry wants a declaration that it is not in breach.
But according to ICANN, Employ Media is still and has always been restricted to selling domains just to human resources professionals to promote jobs “within their own organizations”.
That’s despite ICANN’s approval of a contract amendment last year that allowed the registry to sell non-companyname .jobs domains.
This liberalization, ICANN says, did not allow the company to launch Universe.jobs, which monetizes at least 40,000 geographical and vocational .jobs through a massive third-party jobs board.
ICANN is now trying to frame the arbitration proceeding around a single question – was its breach notice “appropriate” or not?
The whole debacle is based around two interpretations of the .jobs Charter, which spells out who can register .jobs domains. This is what it says:

The following persons may request registration of a second-level domain within the .JOBS TLD:
– members of SHRM [the Society For Human Resources Management]; or
– persons engaged in human resource management practices that meet any of the following criteria: (i) possess salaried-level human resource management experience; (ii) are certified by the Human Resource Certification Institute; (iii) are supportive of the SHRM Code of Ethical and Professional Standards in Human Resource Management, as amended from time to time, a copy of which is attached hereto.

Employ Media’s interpretation is fairly literal and liberal – any signed-up SHRM member can register a .jobs domain and somebody at DirectEmployers is a member and therefore eligible.
Becoming a SHRM member is pretty straightforward and cheap. It’s not much of a barrier to entry.
ICANN argues that this interpretation is bogus:

Employ Media has espoused policies that allow a .JOBS domain name (or thousands of them) to be used for virtually any purpose as long as a human resource manager is propped up to “request” the domain. In doing so, Employ Media has failed to enforce meaningful restrictions on .JOBS registrations, as required by the Registry Agreement.

It further argues that Employ Media should have allocated premium .jobs domains through an “open, fair and transparent” process, rather than the “self-serving… backroom deal” with DirectEmployers.
Evidence now filed by ICANN shows that the two organizations have been arguing about this since at least November 2009, when Employ Media launched a Universe.jobs “beta”.
ICANN also now says that it has no problem with Universe.jobs, provided that Employ Media and SHRM amend their Charter policies to make the service retroactively compliant.
The more this dispute progresses and the more convoluted and expensive it becomes, the more it leaves me scratching my head.
You can download the latest arbitration documents from ICANN.

Sponsor stonewalls .jobs critics

The sponsor of the .jobs top-level domain appears to be giving opponents including Monster.com a hard time as they continue to challenge the liberalization of the domain.
In its most recent ICANN filing (pdf), the Society for Human Resource Management said it does not want to meet with the .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition and ICANN to help resolve their differences.
Last week, SHRM declined to given ICANN a straight answer when it asked whether jobs sites like Monster.com will be able to register domains under the new .jobs rules.
The Coalition of jobs sites was assembled to oppose the “Phased Allocation Program”, which allows .jobs registry Employ Media to allocate thousands of premium geographic and vocational domains to its partners.
While the program has already been approved by ICANN’s board, the Coalition has filed a Reconsideration Request appeal in an attempt to get the ruling overturned.
This week, Coalition lawyer Becky Burr sent a letter (pdf) to ICANN asking for a face-to-face meeting with representatives of ICANN, the Coalition, Employ Media and SHRM.
In response, SHRM general counsel Henry Hart said the organization “does not believe that it should participate in such a meeting.”
Last week, SHRM threw its full support behind Employ Media, tersely responding (pdf) to a list of ICANN’s questions relating to the registry’s plans for the domain.
ICANN’s reconsideration committee wanted to know whether the allocation program violated the .jobs charter by allowing registrants from outside the human resources community.
SHRM said it did not, but it did confirm that it does expect .jobs – which has so far been reserved for companies to list their own job vacancies – to be used in future for aggregated jobs sites operated by Employ Media.

Did the SHRM PD Council intend to enable the Registry (Employ Media) to register domain names in the .JOBS sTLD for the purpose of allowing third-party job postings on those sites? If so, please explain how this consistent with the .JOBS Charter.
Yes. The PD Council concluded, based on input from the Community, that this would serve the needs of the international human resource management community.

But when ICANN asked whether this means Monster.com, for example, would qualify, SHRM response was more vague.

Are independent job site operators (such as Monster.com) engaged in “human resources management” for the purpose of the definition set forth in the .JOBS Charter if the job site operator is advertising for jobs outside its own organization?
Independent job site operators provide a highly valued service to the international human resource management community.

The Coalition, in Burr’s letter, said the answers “simply ignore the responses sought by the direct questions of the [Board Governance Committee”.
Hart disputed this characterization of the answers.
Employ Media plans to allocate premium domains at first via an RFP process. It’s believed that the DirectEmployers Association is set to receive the lion’s share of the good domains for its universe.jobs plan.

.jobs opponents get to the point

The .JOBS Charter Compliance Coalition has sent off another ream of text to ICANN, spelling out more clearly its objections to Employ Media’s plan to open up the .jobs namespace.
The Coalition wants ICANN to reject the registry’s plan to allocate thousands of premium .jobs domain names to partners including the DirectEmployers Association.
While previous filings danced around the issue, the latest Coalition missive makes it a little clearer what its beef is: it thinks DirectEmployers’ universe.jobs plan is bogus and should be blocked.
The documents were filed as part of an ongoing Reconsideration Request. The Coalition wants ICANN to reverse its decision to approve the .jobs “Phased Allocation Program”.
The program allows Employ Media to allocate “non-companyname” .jobs domains via an RFP process and, later, auctions and regular sales.
But the Coalition thinks it is a smokescreen designed to enable universe.jobs, a planned free jobs board that would be fed traffic from possibly thousands of premium generic domains.
Its objection boils down to the fact that Employ Media seems to be planning to register these premium domains to itself and allow DirectEmployers, which probably would not be a qualified HR registrant under the .Jobs Charter, to “use” them.
As the Coalition puts it:

Employ Media states that it intends to solicit plans under the Program “which may create a self managed class of domains registered in Employ Media’s name.” Presumably, in this “self-managed” scenario, Employ Media would register the domain names itself, and permit third parties to “use” the domains even if those third parties could not register them consistent with the Charter.

What we seem to have here is a case of a registry planning to monetize its premium domains by running them itself, in order to compete with companies that are barred from becoming registrants themselves.
This bothers the Coalition’s members, which all run jobs sites but would not qualify to register premium domains under the .Jobs Charter.
For Reconsideration Requests to be successful, the requester has to show that ICANN’s board did not have all the facts at its disposal, or failed to consider them, when it made its decision.
Having read through the recently published minutes and board briefing materials from the meeting at which the program was approved, the Coalition thinks it now has a stronger case.
Its latest filing accuses ICANN of failing to adequately investigate Employ Media’s claims about its program and of brushing off critics as “a bunch of sore losers that were afraid of a little competition”.
Referring to the universe.jobs plan and the “self-managed” domains, the Coalition wrote:

There is no indication that the ICANN Staff provided the Board with any analysis of this critical issue, or that the Board considered this material issue

It also wonders aloud whether the Board was even aware of the universe.jobs plan when the allocation program was approved back in August.
I may be reading it incorrectly, but it appears that ICANN’s board governance committee, which handles Reconsideration Requests, may be coming around to the Coalition’s way of thinking.
The BGC recently sent Employ Media’s sponsor, the Society For Human Resource Management, a list of questions about the program, including this one:

Did the SHRM PD Council intend to enable the Registry (Employ Media) to register domain names in the .JOBS sTLD for the purpose of allowing third-party job postings on those sites? If so, please explain how this consistent with the .JOBS Charter.

I’ll be interested in reading its response.

DirectEmployers calls shenanigans on .jobs outcry

The DirectEmployers Association has gone on the offensive in the continuing battle over the .jobs liberalization, accusing its detractors of conducting an “astroturf” campaign.
Bill Warren, founder and executive director of the DEA, has filed comments to ICANN here.
He accuses the International Association of Employment Web Sites of conducting “nothing less than a smear campaign using modern day technology such as e-mail, blogs, and twitter”.
He’s referring to the scores of letters and emails that have arrived at ICANN over the last week, criticizing .jobs registry Employ Media’s proposal to drop the rule that only company names are allowed in the .jobs namespace.
Jobs sites, in particular, are pissed that Employ Media plans to hand over tens of thousands of premium generic .jobs domains to the DEA to use as gateways to a massive new jobs board, rather than open them up for general registration.
If you currently run a jobs site at NewYorkJobs.com or NursingJobs.com, for example, you would be unable to register NewYork.jobs or Nursing.jobs.
The DEA would likely own both of these domains, along with thousands of others, a situation described by one commenter as a “big giant SEO scam“.
Warren’s letter generally avoids discussing the merits of this plan, instead focusing on attacking its critics’ tactics.

the overwhelming majority of opposing comments – and we’ve reviewed each – clearly indicate no review of the substantial body of work that comprises the RSEP [Registry Services Evaluation Process] submission by Employ Media

It’s true that the majority of the letters include at least some form text created by Steven Rothberg of CollegeRecruiter.com, one of the key individuals behind the IAEWS campaign.
The letters are generally less spammy than similar letter-writing campaigns conducted during the recent .xxx controversy, however, with many writers attempting to add their own two cents.
(Speaking of .xxx, Warren claims that IAEWS has hired the same lawyer who represented .xxx registry ICM. I’m guessing he means Becky Burr of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, but I’m waiting for confirmation of that)
Warren believes that the Society of Human Resource Management, the sponsor and policy-maker for the .jobs domain, “managed a policy development process to arrive at a bottom up, consensus recommendation in the interests of the specific community .jobs exists to serve”.
According to ERE.net, the HR news site that has been doing a far better job of reporting this story than me, this SHRM policy council has been pretty much asleep at the wheel, and may even have been captured. Warren himself apparently used to chair it.
Personally, as somebody with no horse in this race, I merely find it distasteful that Warren is complaining so vehemently about jobs boards having their say in the ICANN process, when the SHRM process deliberately excluded their opinions from its outreach.
The SHRM survey (pdf) filed in support of the .jobs proposal specifically says: “Consultants were also not included in this universe, so that companies specializing in providing job search engines/job boards could not distort the responses from practicing HR professionals.”
The Employ Media proposal to change its contract has already passed an ICANN competition review, so I’m not sure there are any documented ways it can be killed off under the RSEP, although the board will still have to vote on it.

.jobs seeks comment on dictionary domains

The sponsor organization behind the restricted .jobs domain is soliciting comment on a plan to substantially liberalize the TLD, allowing generic and two-letter registrations.
The Society For Human Resource Management has published a very brief survey, asking HR folk what they think the pros and cons to the plan might be.
The .jobs domain is run by Employ Media. It’s currently restricted to companyname.jobs registrations, and as such has been predictably unsuccessful.
Now Employ Media wants to branch out into geographical and generic domains. As I reported last month, it looks like it’s trying to remove essentially all of its significant registration restrictions.
The attempt at a policy shift follows a deal made with DirectEmployers Association to monetize geographic domains that raised eyebrows at ICANN late last year.
ERE.net has more here.