Please be aware of the following Domain Name updates that may affect your organization:
.XXX domain extension approved
ICANN has approved the domain extension .XXX, which is designed for the adult entertainment industry. The Registry for .XXX expects to ‘go live’ in early 2011; however they have started to take pre-reservations from companies in the adult industry.
The .XXX extension will provide a place online for adult entertainment providers and their service providers who want to be part of our voluntary self regulatory community. There will be an opportunity for intellectual property owners to prevent third party’s miss-using their brands and CSC will be contacting its customers with full details shortly.
Expansion of IDN ccTLDs – China, Taiwan & Hong Kong
ICANN has now approved a set of Chinese language internationalized domain names. The three countries which have had the approval are China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The .CN Registry has been given approval for two IDN extensions for simplified and traditional Chinese language.
Millions of Chinese language users will soon be able to access the Internet entirely in Chinese script. One fifth of the world speaks Chinese and today’s decision increases the potential online accessibility for roughly a billion people.
CSC will keep you up-to-date with future launch announcements for these extensions.
New gTLDs
ICANN has released the fourth Draft Applicant Guide (DAG) that describes the process of applying for new generic Top-level domains. To download a copy of the DAG please click here.
The public comment period is now open and will close on July 21st 2010. If you are interested in providing comments you can do so through ICANN’s web site by clicking here.
The ICANN board is planning a two day retreat in mid-late September to review public comments on DAG v4 and will attempt to resolve all outstanding issues to enable the receipt of new gTLD applications in Q2 2011. However, many industry experts are skeptical of these timings.
To find out more about the status of new gTLDs join CSC’s web seminar tomorrow.