New top level Internet domains up for debate at ICANN 35 in Sydney
Proposed new global top level Internet domains (gTLDs) will likely move closer to becoming a reality at the upcoming Sydney meeting of the world’s top
Internet rule-making body – ICANN ( Internet Corporation on Assigned Names and Numbers) later this month.
Many larger businesses are expected to want a global top level domain (gTLD).
It will enable those businesses to have their brand accessible at www.brand instead of www.brand.com.
And it will give them the ability to register and control the registration of names in their own domain.
That would see web addresses such as www.service.brand, or www.support.brand or www.australia.brand and is clearly an attractive option, particularly for larger online businesses.
Indeed, a survey of Melbourne IT’s top tier corporate clients late last year showed that around a quarter are interested in taking up a new gTLD.
Perceived benefits include better protection against parasitical sites using typo variants of the brand-name and also a solution to so-called cyber-squatting.
But there is still considerable uncertainty about whether the new gTLDs will be a step forward, or instead will just confuse Internet users.
Moreover there is real concern that the new gTLDs won’t actually reduce the need for businesses to register their brands in multiple registries.
Indeed Melbourne IT’s survey showed that almost all (i.e almost 100%) of the respondents felt that the new gTLD’s will actually increase the cost of brand protection.
Theo Hanarakis, Melbourne IT’s chief executive officer, said that the situation is very uncertain.
“Some of our larger corporate clients with sophisticated online brand and marketing strategies are excited about the opportunities that having their own branded top level domain name will present and are keen to start the process.”
“At the same time, many of our clients are concerned that the new gTLDs will increase the cost and complexity associated with managing and protecting their digital brands
“There is still confusion in the market as to what these new gTLDs will mean in practice. Although the roll out now seems likely to be delayed until early 2010 while trademark issues are resolved, we recommend that brand holders start preparing for this change now.”
Getting a better understanding of what lies ahead with the new gTLDs proposal is one reason why big numbers are expected at the upcoming ICANN meeting in Sydney.
So too many global and Australian ecommerce and online businesses are expected to send representatives to the meeting to learn more about the proposed introduction of so-called Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) .
IDN’s will enable domain names to be represented in other characters sets or scripts, instead of just English.
The proposal, which has been under development for some time, will see Arabic, Chinese, Thai, Cyrillic and other character sets used for domain names.
ICANN’s Sydney meeting may not see the finalization of either the new gTLD or IDN proposals, but timelines for their introduction should become clearer.
Registration to attend the public sessions of ICANN 35 in Sydney is free and already more than 700 people from all over world have done so.
A list of those already registered can be seen online at
http://www.registration123.com/ICANN/35/ (click on the list of registered attendees)
To register online go to:
https://www.registration123.com/ICANN/35/syd35.cfm?
For further information go to:
http://syd.icann.org
www.melbourneit.com.au
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