New domains open for Net users

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Aug 4, 2003 | by Francine Brevetti, BUSINESS WRITER

Soon Web sites geared to children and professionals will have top- level domain names -- the letters after the dot in Web addresses. In coming weeks two new TLDs will be launc .kids.us and .pro.

On December 4, President George W. Bush signed legislation creating a domain that would designate safe Web sites for children, free of interactivity, that is no e-mail nor chat rooms. This domain has been subsequently rendered as .kids.us

The TLD will be useful for the "thousands of companies for which a segment of their business targets kids. We are anticipating a lot will post their info on .kids.us," said Barbara Blackwell, spokeswoman for NeuStar, the TLD's registry -- an agency which keeps tabs on who has which TLD.

Besides marketers of child-attractive products such as Nike, she said, educational and other sites might also be interested in registering the TLD.

"Anything appropriate for children," Blackwell said.

Currently NeuStar is accepting registrants whose names have been trademarked. When this "sunrise" period ends August 15, the name will be available to all others.

Also in a sunrise phase and to be available in the third quarter will be .pro -- for those people with certifications as medical doctors, lawyers and accountants.

Through this TLD, users should have immediate confidence that the professional who has the .pro TLD is in fact certified, something that cannot be determined by running a finger down the columns of the Yellow Pages.

Because RegistryPro, the registry that maintains .pro list of registrants, requires proof of professional credentials, it will be more expensive than most TLDs, costing between $250-300 a year, according to Annie Moorhouse the registry's spokeswoman. (The field is

competitive, but registering most TLDs costs a fraction of that.) But it will offer its customers digital certificates which will allow them to encrypt their e-mail.

RegistryPro is thinking of expanding its customers to include engineers, architects, certified financial planners and maybe dentists, she said.

Two years ago, ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers charged with overseeing Internet address space, introduced a raft of new top-level domain names.

To the already popular .com, net, .org, these were added in 2001 and are restricted to certain communities: .aero (for aviation organizations); .biz (for businesses only); .coop (only for cooperatives); .museum (only for museums); and .name (restricted to individuals). Also, .info was introduced to bear the burden of the oversubscribed .com.

It was expected these new entrants would bring more choice to a crowded field of .com addresses. Instead, not only have these TLDs been slow to attract adoption, the purpose of providing more choice for those wanting to establish an online address has been largely subverted, according to Network Solutions, a registrar of .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info and .name.

ICANN figures show that for the first year after the introduction of these TLDs, there was little movement. It took until the second quarter in 2002 for any group to request .aero or .biz, for instance, while .museum, has never been used.

Mary Hewitt, spokeswoman for ICANN, acknowledged .com is still the most sought after TLD. But she urged some patience for the idea of a new TLD to gain currency. Furthermore, the registrars who sell access to them -- 168 are accredited by ICANN -- are in an extremely competitive business. Some are offering TLDs just barely above cost, she said.

John Donoghue, executive vice president of Network Solutions, said the purpose of creating these TLDs -- to give people more choices and more latitude to get just the URL they want -- has been obstructed to a great extent by commercial motives that were never anticipated by the regulatory agency that fashioned them.

"(The new names) opened up a new world of possibilities, and that has value," he said.

For people who want to register a Web site address, a registrar such as Network Solutions searches for different permutations of the name they request to see what is available.

While .com is the "gold standard" in the United States, as soon as new TLDs became available, companies began buying up the variations of their name with new TLDs to protect their brands.

"Any large company will say: 'I want every permutation of my brand,'" Donoghue observed.

For instance, Coca-cola has registered www.coca-cola.com; www.cocacola.com; www.coke.com; www.coke.net -- and when .info became available, it took www.coke.info

For small businesses or individuals getting the exact name desired in .com or .net may be difficult because the chances it has already been claimed are high. According to Afilias, the registrar for .info, "your chances of getting your company's name in .com is virtually zero."

Also jumping on the new TLDs were Web entrepreneurs involved in speculation. They would register the names in the hope of being able to sell access to them to consumers for a premium.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Added in part to supplement the .com name for any business, .info has 200,000 registrants, according to registry Afilias. Slightly more than half are registered by European entities, and most are not yet active.