This article is from page 58 of the 2005-10-25 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 58 JPG
MOST Irish companies choose be- tween the .ie and the .com domains for their email address. Now their choice 1s to be widened, with a new top-level domain (TLD) scheduled to become available for companies, bodies and individuals based within the European Union. A TLD is basi- cally the last bit of an email address.
Anyone wanting to be able to use the .eu TLD, should start making plans now.
EURid, the European registry of Internet names, has fixed December 7 as the start of a “sunrise period” for filing applications. Although any person or company within the EU is eligible to apply for names, it’s not going to be a free for all.
Top of the queue will be owners and licencees of registered com- munity and national trademarks, national and community public bod- ies, and the holders and/or licensees of a geographical indication or des- ignation of origin. They have been given a preferred two-month period from December 7, 2005, to Febru- ary 6, 2006, during which they can apply for registration of .eu domain names. All applications have to be
made through a registrar accredited by EURid.
Registered and unregistered trade mark owners then come next line, with a further preferred period of two months, from February 7, 2006,
to April 6, 2006.
Then, once this four-month sunrise period is over, .eu domain names are to be available on a first-come-first- served basis for everyone, with the proviso that applications are subject
to a dispute resolution procedure.
The Irish Internet Association (IIA) has issued a warning about queuing. On Tuesday, October 18, the Chair- man of the IIA Working Group on Domain Registration and Hosting, Eoin Costello, said that potential ap- plicants should be aware that queuing of applications cannot guarantee that the desired domain will be awarded.
The EURi1d’s website states, “First- come-first-served will be determined by the time/date at which the appli- cation is received into our database after it opens”.
The European Commission has been warning for some time about companies offering to “pre-register” or “reserve” domain names. It points out that pre-registering a domain name within the .eu TLD is techni- cally impossible.
“These companies can only com- mit to keep the application for reg- istering a domain name and to for- ward them to the Registry as soon as it opens its doors to accept applica- tions,’ it says. “This however cannot be considered a real pre-registration inasmuch as it does not guarantee to the applicants that their applications will indeed reach the registry prior to other registrations.”