Topping all other domain sales this week is credit.fr, which has sold for €587,500 ($851,875 USD). It is the highest sale ever recorded on the .fr ccTLD. The previous domain to hold this spot, mutelle.com, sold for $116,221 in October of 2009.

Other recent ccTLD sales include Südtirol.eu for $14,355 and Möbel.eu for $13,195. The names mean “Tyrol” and “furniture” in German respectively. Tyrol is a state in Austria.

Introducing IDNs was a great move for the .eu registry. A lot of the top sales on that extension as of late have been IDNs. Expect to see many more domain sales as other extensions adopt the new system.

Continue reading: Credit.fr sells for $851,875

Bertrand Delanoë, mayor of Paris, has shown he is serious about .paris with the launch of a new campaign and website advocating for a .paris gTLD. Last year, the city officially declared its intention to apply for the extension.

The city has an urban area of 11.6 million people, more than many countries with their own ccTLDs. According to the campaign:

The Paris metropolitan area could substantially benefit from the availability of domain names under a dedicated .paris TLD. For instance, .paris domain names could demonstrate a sense of belonging to the metropolis. They could also contribute to the localization of services. And they may additionaly increase the profile of companies or brands associating their name to that of Paris.

Paris will likely be able to submit its application for the extension late next year.

Source | Domain News
Photo | leilahh

Continue reading: Paris mayor launches campaign in support of .paris

The .info domain extension usually doesn’t fair well at auction, but today is an exception with the sale of BodyBuilding.info for £8,228 ($14,500 USD). Compare that to BodyBuilding.net, which only fetched £2,785 ($4,750 USD) in 2005. Clearly this is a sign that domains have become much more valuable over the last four years.

A pair of French insurance domains, Assurancevie.com and Assurance-vie.com, also sold together for £53,024 ($87,000 USD). “Assurancevie” means “life insurance,” which makes sense considering they sold for an amount that could be a life savings for some.

Engagement-rings.co.uk sold for £7,000 ($11,486 USD). No doubt this was in part influenced by the recent sale of DiamondRings.com for £141,589.

Source: Domain Name Wire

Continue reading: BodyBuilding.info sells for £8,228

In an unexpected move, the French military took action against SnowTigers, a private BitTorrent site catering mainly to downloaders in France.

The action came as a shock because private websites are not usually targeted by authorities. SnowTigers had more than 250,000 members, many of whom supported the site financially. The BitTorrent portal mostly offered music and movies.

BitTorrent is a popular method of content distribution. Sites like SnowTigers don’t actually host pirated material, but host what’s called a torrent file. Just a few kilobytes in the size, the file connects the downloader to other BitTorrent users with the same piece of content. Opening up the file in a BitTorrent client links them to these file sharers.

Continue reading: French Military Shuts Down BitTorrent Site