Stephane Van Gelder - Extensions

England wants its own domain

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:19:10 +0200

After reading this post's title, your first thought is probably "the English already have their own domain with .CO.UK, don't they?"

Well it appears they don't agree. An online petition has been launched the persuade ICANN to sanction a .ENG domain. "For many years the UK's online entity has been represented by the .CO.UK domain extension," claims the petition's website. "The Welsh and the Scots have been campaigning for their own country-specific domains .CYM and .SCO respectively, despite not being classed as independent countries. We believe that we - the English - should also be allowed our own independent voice on the internet and show our patriotism through our choice of domain name."

The petition is still young as it was launched on April 23rd of this year. Its creators hope to gather around 10,000 signatures before taking it to ICANN and, in their own words, "lobby ICANN to make .ENG available."

Seasoned ICANN watchers will no doubt consider this plan a little flawed. New TLDs such as .ENG can of course be okayed by ICANN, but only if they are part of the Internet overseer's official new TLD request for proposals (RFP). This means putting together a complete business plan, like .BERLIN or .PARIS are doing, so that the new TLD project can be submitted to ICANN when the RFP process begins (the next one is currently expected early in 2009). Doing so requires deep pockets and, if you're claiming to represent a nation such as England, clear support from national authorities or government.

In other words, although a nice try, it's very doubtful that a web petition would suffice, even if it does draw a large amount of signatures.

P.S.: Here are the links to the Welsh's and the Scot's attempt to get their own domains.

.ARABIA, .RUSSIAN… a new run of TLDs?

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:38:50 +0200

Dubai's famous 7-star Burj Al Arab hotel. A recent ICANN conference held in Dubai prompted suggestions of a new TLD linked to the Arabic region.

There's a lot of talk about the possible types of new TLDs that could be made available on the Internet in the near future.

Just days ago, stories coming out of Dubai, where ICANN has just held one of its outreach meetings, mentioned a possible .ARAB or .ARABIA for the region.

I've also been hearing of possible "linguistic" TLDs like .RUSSIAN, .CHINESE or .GREEK. The idea remains one of pushing for a more regional Internet, where local flavours are brought to the fore. And it's also a great way of pushing for IDN use, as obviously if we're talking regional or linguistic TLDs, they would need to be useable in the areas or languages they represent. In short, a perfect solution for killing two birds with one stone, both IDNs and the launch of new TLDs being hot topics at ICANN right now.

But the "fad" of the moment remains the "City TLDs" or "cTLDs" for short. Projects such as .BERLIN and .PARIS are known to be underway and would obviously be the first on the table should ICANN start a new official round of request for new TLD proposals.

When might that be? By latest estimates, not before the start of 2009…

Whoa, hold your horses there, Dot ME!

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:54:14 +0200

Francesco paints a humorous picture of .ME's launch programme, which we revealed at the end of March in the French edition of Domaines.Info.

His message to the Montenegrin powers-that-be: don't rush things and make sure you get the launch right. Sound advice. Even if the local registry's angst to open for business is understandable, mistakes made at the launch of a new extensions are generally then carried over for years before they can be fixed.

So let's hope the people at .ME do resist the temptation to rush things, because there's a domain with plenty of potential if I ever saw one (just think of all those possibilities with a "me" on the end...).

For those of you who don't understand French, here's the current launch schedule published in the March 27th edition of Domaines.Info.

From March 25 to April 16, a priority period will enable prior registrants of .YU domains (.ME is being migrated from the ex-Yugoslav suffix) to request the equivalent .ME name.

From May 1 to May 6, .ME's sunrise period will be restricted to Montenegrin nationals.

From June 6 to June 26, the registry has announced a landrush period, the precise rules of which are apparently not yet finalised. This, in part, is what prompted Francesco's warning to the registry to take its time and do a proper launch.

Go-live is planned from July 17th.