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New Names, new domains

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

Planning to launch a website? Go to one of the site registration service providers like www.register.com, fill in a registration form, click on submit, and you get a message saying that the name has already been registered! Think hard for another name that no one would have thought of. Enter it, and there–that name exists, too.

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With over 21 million .com, 4 million .net and approximately 3 million .org sites already registered, it is not surprising that you don’t get the name you want. So, more often than not, you end up registering a domain name that’s not related to your purpose behind the site.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names) hopes to provide an answer to this predicament by introducing seven new top-level domains (TLDs) that will soon be operational.

Seven new names to come up

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The seven new TLDs
.biz for businesses



.name for personal use


.pro for professionals like doctors, lawyers


.aero for the aerospace industry


.coop for cooperatives


.museum for museums


.info for unrestricted use


For more information check www.icann.org/tlds/





ICANN–formed in June 1998–is a non-profit, California-based private-sector corporation that administers the policies for the Internet name and addressing system. Out of a proposed list of 47 TLDs, ICANN has short-listed seven for the first phase of new TLD launches. The new TLDs are: .biz, .name, .pro, .aero, .coop, .museum and .info. Various companies can use .biz domain for their businesses so

www.fabmart.com could become www.fabmart.biz.

Individuals and professionals can use .name and .pro to make their virtual presence. Companies into the aviation industry like HAL (Hindustan Aeronotics Limited) can use .aero

(www.hal.aero), co-operative societies like the Co-operative Society of India can choose the .coop TLD. Museums can use .museum and .info can be used for general information dissemination. New domain names that are more specific will make it easier for us to search for specific information on the Net. For instance, we would be able to relate the Madame Tussaud’s museum site more easily with www.tussauds.museum than

www.tussaudsmuseum.com.

Others among the 47 considered were .health, .sex, .kids, .firm, .law, .store, .tel, .web, and .shop.

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Introduction of new TLDs had been in consideration since the mid-1990s, and finally took some shape in November, 2000 when ICANN announced the launch of the new

TLDs.

Once the launch of these new TLDs goes smoothly, ICANN plans to introduce more. The new ones need to be clear-cut, and distinctly associative, so that we can easily choose the right category to access the right content. 

But do we really need new TLDs?

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Already available
The TLDs .biz, .info, and .name are already operational. You can register them at

www.neulevel.biz, www.afilias.info, and

www.gnr.com.

We could actually do without them if we come up with more creative names for the existing TLDs. But there’s a shortage of good ones. And every one has been running like crazy for a .com name. So, right now it’s very difficult to judge the nature and purpose of a site by just looking at its domain name. With the new names coming in, it would be easier to categorize sites. Also, there is no way of differentiating a, say, serious business presence from a casual personal presence on the Web. Of course, this separation can also be achieved by hiking the annual registration fees. The registrations on .orgs and .nets can also be made more liberal, such that more people can register on them. Right now these are about 70 percent less populated than the dot coms. ICANN and the registering agencies aren’t giving out what the registration charges are going to be like for the new domain names. 

And the pitfalls

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Protect your Domain Name
www.SnapNames.com

is for those who want a domain name already owned by some one else. SnapNames monitors the DNS (Domain Name System) traffic to identify expirations and then it acquires those names for their customers. Alternately, you could use SnapNames to protect your own domain name.

Imagine this: You’re looking for Wipro’s site. Wipro.com is the most obvious choice. But you could also look for wipro.biz or wipro.name. But say Wipro doesn’t own wipro.info, then this site is open for squatting, and somebody could well use the name for promoting issues and causes that could be detrimental to Wipro’s interests. So the opening up of more TLD’s could mean that Wipro would now have to spend a lot more to keep its identity on the Web protected. A Gartner report estimates this amount to be an astounding $70,000.

So the question is once you register for .biz, is your trademark and IP addresses protected for all the new names coming up? Do you have to keep your antennas up to see which new TLD is up for grabs and register well in time to keep your trademark safe? Do you pay in one shot and be rid of all headaches from squatters? No answers yet for this

one.

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Once the new TLDs get operational, most of us who are so used to keying in the .com with a URL, will take some time to get used to the new names. And we have to be careful too. For instance, if you want to visit a site on Hrithik Roshan, you will have to know if you should go to www.hrithik. name or www.hrithik.pro or the good old www.hrithik.com. Not all of them necessarily may be hosting the same content as different contenders may have different TLDs but the same name. So, more domain names may also lead to more confusion.

Lingo explained

  • TLD: Top level domains are the suffixes at the end of a URL. For instance, in

    www.pcquest.com, the TLD is .com. Currently, other

    than.com, the other TLDs available are .net, .org, .gov, .edu and .mil.
  • gTLD: Generic top level domains have a generic name, for instance,

    www.books.com, www.music.com.

    One cannot immediately associate these with a company or a person, but they define a category in general. Your website is likely to get more hits if you manage to register yourself a generic name related to your business.
  • CTLD: Country top level domains are mostly given to specific countries and are usually a two letter name controlled by an authority in the relevant country. For instance, .in for India,

    .fr for France, .ca for Canada, .br for Brazil, and so on.

Also, though ICANN has formulated different domain names for different Internet communities, you may find personal websites in .biz or even .museum. Keeping a check on the Web content will be a Herculean task, unless some rules and regulations to be followed by the registrars are chalked out.

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The launch of new domains has raised as many, if not more, issues than it has set out to quell. The answers for these can be found only as the scheme gets operational.

The Indian angle

NCST (National Center for Software Technology) is the non-profit organization in India taking care of the registration of Indian sites. About 150 .in (specific to our country) sites get registered with NCST each month. Now they are also planning to introduce more categories under the .in domain

name.

Is there someone who tracks what NCST does? Yes, there’s IMG (Internet Management Group), constituted by the Telecom Commission with representatives from DoT, BSNL, MIT, VSNL, and NCST. The IMG supervises the domain name registration activities carried out by NCST for the .in domain. New sub-domains are also regularly reviewed.

Recently, IMG approved the addition of a few more categories to .in. They are: .firm for various firms (non-registered companies), .ind for individuals, .gen for general, or temporary use or for entities outside India. The registration to .co.in domain is for companies registered in India only.

Register your .biz on www. nic.biz

Neulevel has started offering its .biz TLD registration services for businesses at www.nic.biz. To get the .biz TLD for your business, you first need to protect your trademark with the IP claim service at an approximate fee of US $90 and then your .biz domain name application has to be submitted. Applications submitted before the September 21 will go live on the October 1. Upon successful registration of your domain name, you have to pay the registration fee determined by the registrar, which depends on the length of the registration terms (two years minimum) to secure your URL. A list of registrars provided on the site help you choose your registrar to file your IP claims. www.directi.com can be reached from India for .biz registrations.

Register your .info on www. afilias.info

Protect your intellectual property
.biz: Neulevel’s start-up plan included an Intellectual Property Claim service, which will provide notification to prospective .biz applicants of conflicts with intellectual property claims, and allow claimants to challenge any registrations made in conflict with pre-existing trademark rights.



.info:
Afilias has implemented a “sunrise” period during which trademark holders will be able to register (through accredited registrars) their exact trademark as a second level domain in .info.



.name:
The Global Name Registry will offer a “NameWatch Service” and “Defensive Registrations” in order to prevent consumer confusion and protect intellectual property holders, protections are subject to challenge by persons seeking to register their own personal name.



Source
www.icann.net

You could register your general purpose site on .info, which has to be first pre-registered on www. afilias.info. Afilias is a non-profit corporation appointed by ICANN, which helps in technical management coordination of the Internet’s DNS. A list of registrars currently accepting requests for .info domain names is available here. Once you’ve applied for your .info domain name and are assigned that name, you can start using them September 19 onwards.

Vini Goel

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