.Asia Landrush opens with 300,000 Domain Applications
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Derek Iwasiuk February 25, 2008
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The long-awaited landrush period for
top-level .asia domain is under way. It is expected huge demand for
the first Internet domain name extension dedicated to the
Asia-Pacific region.
DotAsia, the organization responsible
for administrating the new domain name suffix “.asia”, announced
that they have received a total of 266,663 applications within the
first 24 hours from the opening of the Landrush period. Over 35% of
the received landrush applications came from Asia, another 40% from
North America and the rest 24% from Europe. About 28,000 domain names
received more than one application on the first day.
Leona Chen, spokeswoman for the
DotAsia, said she anticipated plenty of interest and hoped the suffix could
have as significant impact in Asia as .com had globally.
To avoid the chaos, squabbles and
cybersquatting that were witnessed during the launching of .eu
domain, the applications for the new domain extension were divided
into three time periods.
The commencement was set up on 9th of October, 2007 for government bodies and companies with registered
trademarks. The companies were enabled with the opportunity to
reserve domains names that match their trademarks.
The second period began on 13th of November with registration for those companies that have an
official presence in Asia, regardless of trademarks. In accordance
with their business line, the organization that had already secured
registered trademarks, could then secure additional domain names.
The third and final period started on
February 20th and will finish on March 12th ,
2008 aimed at the large public. During this period anyone can apply
for .asia domain name.
The leading principle of Landrush
according to which domain names will be assigned is not a “first
come first served” one. There is a model of equality which was
developed by DotAsia and is being applied. No domain will be assigned
by the registry till the end of the Landrush. No matter if you submit
the application within the first second or on the last day of the
Landrush period, all applications will be treated equally. The
registry will accept more than one application per domain. Any domain
name that has received multiple applications will be auctioned
between those that have applied. Auctions will be conducted by
Pool.com or Registrars like EuroDNS/AsiaDNS. Domains with one
application will be directly allocated.
About two weeks after the completion of
the landrush period, .Asia will come back to the
“first-come-first-served” application system.
There are character restrictions for
minimum of 3 letters long domain names.
Some industry experts are concerned
about the proliferation of domain names suffixes. Instead of
promoting brands, the business of buying domain names has focused on
protecting them. This change in the nature of buying domain names is
a result of the lucrative business of cybersquatting.
In addition to this concern, legitimate
conflicts over domain names possession can be expected when a couple
of companies apply for the same domain name. In Europe, there were
95,000 conflicting claims for domain names during the sunrise period
for the .eu suffix.
DotAsia believes that through the
adherence to the above mentioned rules for domain name assignment
many disputes and cybersquatting will be
avoided.
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