Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technology, which is a .TOP gTLD’s registry, expressed regret over the incident that took place last week. As it was reported earlier, social network Facebook that was willing to register a trademarked name in the domain .TOP received an email stating that the registration fee is 180 thousand yuan, which is almost $35 thousand. The high amount was explained by the company’s costs, since the name (presumably it’s FACEBOOK.TOP) is on the ICANN blocking list due to the potential string collisions. Facebook domain manager Susan Kawaguchi complained about registry’s actions during the ICANN GNSO Council.
The answer came quickly. Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technology manager of the overseas channel division Mason Zhang said that it was an unfortunate misunderstanding. «We were shocked when seeing that our register price for TMCH protected names like Facebook during Exclusive Registration Period is changed from “eighteen thousand” into what is written, the “one hundred and eighty thousand”, he said. «I think that might be a type mistake from our side, and we checked and we are certain that the price is CNY EIGHTEEN THOUSAND» (a little more than three thousand dollars).
