Talk:Tucows/Archives/2014

Regarding "Domain name registrar"
Tucows has, as mentioned bought NetIdentity/NamePlanet. As a result the mailsystem has been "migrated", with a horrible result. See http://info.netidentity.com/. Users have been unable to get mail for 3 weeks, mail is lost, mail is available to others - all sorts of problems. Link explaining the case: http://digg.com/tech_news/Tucows_screws_up_NetIdentity_and_NamePlanet_migration

I begin to wonder if this should be mentioned here? The reason is not only that I am one of the customers involved, but also that this seems to be such a scandal, involving lots and lots of users. The privacy issue seems serious. But being involved, I don't think I should write about it. People are talking lawsuit, bringing the company down, and so on - but it might just be an ordinary IT failure that everybody will forget in a month.

--Kaiolav72 17:03, 12 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I can't see the point in just changing the section about the migration back and back again. Couldn't we just discuss it and then leave it. --Kaiolav72 12:43, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Was it Software or Shareware
The page says TUCOWS originally stood for "The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software". I thought it was "The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Shareware". I know that "Winsock" is right (no matter how many thought it was "Windows"), but I specifically remember the word "Shareware". — Randall Bart (talk) 01:39, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Originally it was Winsock (Windows Sockets), internet and network software for Windows. IIRC when the site expanded to include any kind of software, Winsock was replaced by Windows in the name. When the site expanded to non-Windows software it became just Tucows instead of TUCOWS. Bizzybody (talk) 10:41, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Tucows-logo.gif
Image:Tucows-logo.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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Why doesn't Tucows just get out of the email business
Yesterday one of Tucows' email customers at 68.110.227.41 made the following addition in the Tucows article under the subsection"Personalized Email Accounts":
 * On Friday Oct 19th, about 8pm, a portion of Tucows NetIdentity email customers lost email. They had a node failure, which according to management of Tucows requires restoring 400gb of data before the accounts can be restored. The failure only affected 0.5% of all customers according to Tucows. It was told to these affected customers that this will take 37 hours to complete on Saturday. These affected users will be completely without email until a promised uptime of Tuesday morning sometime. With Tucows track records of email failures, and long delays in getting users back online, This is just one more case of mismanagement. For a year now Tucows has promised fixes and upgrades but little has been seen so far in regards to upgrades. This mail system is still very unreliable. Latest word from Tucows is the upgrade to a new mail system will be complete by the end of 2007. Only time will tell to see if they are able to live up to this promise.

I think this addition violates NPOV, had missing citations, and was poorly sourced and in some cases completely unsourced. Wikipedia should not be used as a "gripe post" web site for filing complaints against a company. For these reasons, I have removed this addition. Reservoirhill 16:11, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Is this Section on Tucows Guilty of the "Narrative Fallacy?"
For the past few days I have been updating the Tucows article with recent developments over the past six months and I am wondering if I am reading too much into recent events that have occurred at Tucows. The information I added is all fully documented and cited. But the facts seem to present conclusions that may not be warranted. Here are the paragraphs I have some doubts about:
 * The Wall Street Journal reported on December 7, 2007 that Platinum Management LLC had reported holding a 5% stake in Tucows, according to a Schedule 13D filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Platinum said that Tucows' public market valuation does not reflect its intrinsic value despite a "strong history of positive cash flow generation and expansion prospects in 2008" and that Tucows has "an extremely attractive recurring revenue business model as a top-three domain name registrar along with several hidden assets that are misunderstood, including its ad business, premium names business and newly launched hosted e-mail business." Mark Nordlicht is the manager and controlling person in Platinum Management. Nordlicht was previously the largest shareholder and chair of Optionable Inc., a commodities brokerage firm. The Toronto Star reported on May 23, 2007 that class-action lawsuits had been filed in the United States alleging that Optionable helped David Lee, the star trader at the Bank of Montreal, mismark options, allowing him to hide millions in losses. The Financial Post reported on May 11, 2007 that Nordlicht sold 7 million shares of Optionable to Nymex for $19 million days before the Bank of Montreal received a strongly worded auditor's report into the activities of its options trading desk prompting the bank to announce it had uncovered natural- gas trading losses valued at between $350-million and $450-million. Optionables shares dropped 88% after announcement of the losses from $7.01 a share to 0.85 after the announcement.


 * On December 21, 2007 Tucows disclosed that they had retained Investor Relations firm, The MKR Group, to provide investor relations and corporate communications services in the United States. "Over the past year we have made significant progress in strengthening our overall business by improving our wholesale domain name and email services and adding to a now large domain portfolio, thereby positioning the company for greater growth and profitability," said Elliot Noss, President and CEO of Tucows. "As a result, we believe this is the ideal time to articulate the Tucows message to investors. An expanded Investor Relations effort in the US will enable us to better communicate our story to Wall Street, increase the overall awareness of the company, and unlock hidden shareholder value," Elliot added.

This may be way too much detail about the interest that Platinum Management LLC is showing in Tucows and Tucows' response. It is possible that Tucows response on December 21, 2007 was a co-incidental event? Does the justaposition of the two paragraphs imply cause and effect? When you are writing history as it happens, editors can become blind to the Narrative Fallacy. I'd be inclined to leave the paragraphs alone now for reference material to see if anything further develops. Whether Platinum Management LLC is planning a tender, takeover or exchange offer or just making a strategic investment, Tucows management will soon make major changes in business strategy to turn their commodity areas of business into cash cows and focus investment in high growth areas like their premium domain name portfolio and its valuation basis so stockholders can determine for themselves how much hidden value the company has.

Reservoirhill (talk) 14:11, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Added Citations for the material under discussion
Reservoirhill (talk) 14:13, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Removing Uncited Historical Material about Tucows domain name registration services and the OpenSRS software platform
There is some information on the origins of Tucows' domain name registration services that has been in the article for a long time - over a year. The material is uncited and it refers to the OpenSRS software platform which may have been news when it was originally posted but doesn't seem to have much to do with Tucows' business now in Feburary 2008. Rather than just delete the material because it is uncited and not really relevant to Tucows now I am moving it over to the discussion area. If someone thinks this material is important, then they should add citations to the material and put it back in the main article. Here is the material:

"Tucows was the first to offer domain name registration services through a wholesale API driven platform business model entirely through domain name resellers. The company is well known for this platform, known as the OpenSRS software platform which manages their wholesale services business, including interaction with registries and resellers) to the extent that the names Tucows and OpenSRS are often informally used interchangeably when referring to Tucows' registrar business."

Best regards,

Reservoirhill (talk) 14:00, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Tone of entry
This entry sounds as if it was written by the company, not a typical Wiki user. Lots of organizational information with no critique at all. It doesn't seem very balanced.Nwjerseyliz (talk) 20:22, 14 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the comments. I have added a section called Business Prospects for Domain Registrars critiquing the business models of domain registrars like Tucows to add some balance to the article.


 * Reservoirhill (talk) 15:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Removal of Historical Information regarding the size of Tucows' Domain Name Portfolio
On Febraury 20, 2008 Tucows issued a press release disclosing information on the size of their domain name portfolio. This new information has been added to the main article. The following paragraphs are being deleted from the article because they have been superceded by the information in the press release:
 * On November 6, 2007 Noss disclosed that Tucows had been steadily building its portfolio of premium domain names and that the "cost of sales for the third quarter of this year also included $144,000 of recognized renewal costs for these names," Noss said. "From an accounting standpoint, we deferred the renewal cost at the time of purchase and amortize it ratably over the term of the renewal." Previously on August 7, 2007 Tucows disclosed that their new wholesale domain list pricing for .com names was $6.00 in Registry Fees and 0.20 for ICANN Fees. For domain names owned by Tucows it is not known if the $3.00 in Tucows management fees would be counted as part of the renewal costs and recovered later as fees or not, so the $144,000 paid for renewal costs would equate to over 20,000 premium domain names owned by Tucows paid for in that quarter at a per unit cost of $6.20 and over 15,000 premium domain names renewed in the quarter if they are accounted at a per unit cost of $9.20. This equates to a total domain portfolio of between 60,000 and 80,000 premium domains.


 * On February 7, 2008 Tucows President Elliot Noss was asked by Aram Fuchs of Fertilemind Capital in the Q4 2007 conference call if Tucows could provide visibility into Tucows portfolio of Domain Names. "Yeah, we want to know what properties do you actually, what domains you own?," asked Fuchs. Noss agreed to publicly disclose Tucows portfolio of names. "I agreed and we will. Let me make that real simple," said Noss.  Noss did not indicate how or when he would disclose the information.

Reservoirhill (talk) 16:02, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Suggested removal of factually incorrect material
"Ironically, as of March 2008, Tucows has followed suit and began registering all domain names queried from their sites." found within section 3.1 is factually incorrect and should be removed.

As a rule, we don't like to edit our own wikipedia entry in order to ensure that there is no question about its integrity. It has been marked as Citation Needed, and should be removed unless a citation can be added. It should be said that we do not register names searched for via whois and have publicly stated our position on the practice in the past. - James from Tucows. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.40.38.230 (talk) 17:10, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I have found a citation showing that the uncited statement is false
I have removed that statement "Ironically, as of March 2008, Tucows has followed suit and began registering all domain names queried from their sites." from Section 3.1 because it contained uncited material and because I found a reference disproving the following statement: "Tucows doesn’t use WHOIS query data or search data from our API to front-run domain names" at [http://about.tucows.com/2008/01/08/registrar-reputation-and-trust/ Tucows Blog. "Registrar Reputation and Trust" by James Koole. January 8, 2008.]

Best regards,

Reservoirhill (talk) 21:43, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Further information on Weidner.com
Hi there. I work for Tucows Inc. and just wanted to post some updated information on the situation regarding Weidner.com.

We didn't respond to the original UDRP complaint because we never received it. Once we learned of the UDRP judgment, we defended our legitimate claim to this domain name in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, which dismissed the original claim. The judgment does not appear to be posted online, but for the record it's dated July 2, 2008 and the case number is 07-CV-343954PD1. After successfully defending our claim to this domain name, we agreed to sell the domain name to Weidner Investment Services Inc. Existing users of the weidner.com domain name were given 30 days notice of the suspension of service, and we worked with each user to make the transition as painless as possible given the circumstances.

Overall, we've been very successful in defending our claims in these cases. For reference, here are a few more examples of judgments in our favor:

June 5, 2008: Markel Corporation v. Tucows.com (D2007-1750) http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2007/d2007-1750.html

May 6, 2008: Ancien Restaurant Chartier v. Tucows.com (D2008-0272) http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2008/d2008-0272.html

February 27, 2007: F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG v. Tucows.com (D2006-1488) http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2006/d2006-1488.html

Our email customers have made it very clear they want us to hold onto these domains so that we can continue providing them with this unique service (personalized surname email addresses), which is why we always defend ourselves vigorously when presented with a UDRP.

Jmcnally (talk) 14:41, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I would like to make this correction but there is no citation
We have been pretty careful in the Tucows article to make sure that every statement has a citation. I would like to make the correction that you have suggested but we need to have a citation and, as you note, case 07-CV-343954PD1 at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice does not appear to be posted online. The case is discussed at Broadband Reports but a discussion forum is not generally considered an valid source for Wikipedia. I think the best alternative to get this information into the article would be for Tucows to make a post on your corporate web site addressing the issue of Tucows' legal defense of their domain names and discussing the Weidner case and then we can use the post for the citation. Another alternative would be to get a hard copy of the court's decision to a Wikipedia editor so he/she can validate it.

Best regards,

Reservoirhill (talk) 22:04, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Two cows
Hi. I'm wondering if the company has ever officially denied (or confirmed) any connection between their name and the old You have two cows joke? I had a brief look around the corporate sites, but couldn't find anything except the usual acronym-derivation story (eg here), which didn't help. Surely the original site-creator has been specifically asked about this in an interview at some point? Thanks for any help. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:05, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Mailbank vs. NetIdentity
The "Other Acquisitions" section of the Tucows article mentions "Mailbank.com". Mailbank.com was the first name of the company. Then Mailbank.com became NetIdentity. You'll notice the article states that Tucows bought NetIdentity for $18 million in June of 2006. And then it says in "Other Acquisitions" that Tucows bought Mailbank.com for $18 million in June of 2006. The article should edited to make it clear that Mailbank.com was the former name of NetIdentity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.79.66.200 (talk) 04:24, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Please define OpenSRS
"OpenSRS" is mentioned but never defined. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HaroldHelson (talk • contribs) 13:00, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose that Scott Swedorski be merged into Tucows. Subject's primary notability comes from founding Tucows, the one possibly-notable item on Scott Swedorski is deadlinked (apparently the awarding organization in question still exists, but I can't find significant indication of that organization's repute or standing), and the remainder of that page is unsourced.tlesher (talk) 17:55, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Gateway 2000 v. Tucows
In 1996 Gateway 2000 filed suit against TUCOWS over their use of images of Holstein cows. http://www.faqs.org/faqs/pc-hardware-faq/gateway2000/part1/ search that for Gateway2000 v. TUCOWS for the complete text of the letter sent to TUCOWS. Bizzybody (talk) 10:45, 10 January 2013 (UTC)