.eu Domains to Go on Sale in a Month

conJunk writes "The BBC is running an article about the start of .eu TLD sales. From the article: 'The .eu domain was launched in December and opens to the public in four weeks. Trademark holders have had a 'sunrise period' since December to register their own trademarks... and all EU institutions will begin using the .eu domain in their web addresses from April next year.' Winners and Losers? Volkswagen scooped Ralph-Lauren for polo.eu by three and a half minutes." Update: 03/10 15:32 GMT by Z : Volvo != Volkswagen.

Comments

Anyone else thinking?

[Zebadias]

But what about the Mints?!

Possibly called lifesavers in USA

Volvo Polo

[defsdoor]

Is that for the Volvo Polo then ? (perhaps you meant Volkswagen - the article seems to thing so)

Re:Volvo Polo

[AKAImBatman]

Well, it's not entirely Swedish at this point. It blew my mind when Ford ran a commercial that stated that they were "using their Volvo brand to innovate in exciting new ways." I looked it up, and sure enough. Ford bought out Volvo in 1999.

Dibs on bl

[gEvil (beta)]

I should have sacre.bl.eu up shortly. Other subdomains will be available for low, low rates. Surprisingly, EURid says that it's actually still available...

Time to grab...

[mustafap]

All those french words end in eu.

Thats going to be a real Cadeau to some people.

organisation?

[Midnight Thunder]

Will everything be straight under .eu, or will there be some notion of categorisation, such as .com.eu, .edu.eu, .gov.eu, etc?

Re:organisation?

[timster]

I find the categorization in DNS to be about as useful as the "Subject" header on emails I send to my mom.

It's just not possible on today's Internet to meaningfully separate domains into a handful of arbitrary categories. Useful organization will require a new system; for most people, that system is Google.

Re:organisation?

[Conanymous Award]

While we're at it, can you explain to me why there are no www.domain.uk URLs? Every British URL ends in co.uk. Same in Japan (co.jp). The explanation is prolly damn simple, but I've never encountered it (and maybe I'm too lazy to google it up).

Re:organisation?

[jacksonj04]

NomiNET (The .UK registrars) are actually strict about some of the domains. .gov.uk, .edu.uk, .mil.uk and .ac.uk are all quite tightly controlled. .org.uk and .co.uk are fairly open.

Re:organisation?

[redalien]

It is pretty damn simple, some organisations decided to sell third level domains, some second level. This allows the same name to be used in different contexts. The .uk options that I know of are:

.co.uk COmmercial .org.uk ORGanisation .me.uk Personal site (clever name, eh?) .plc.uk Public Limited Company .ltd.uk LimiTeD liability Company .mod.uk Ministry Of Defense (Includes all armed forces) .police.uk Police, obviously .gov.uk Government .ac.uk ACademic institutions .sch.uk SCHool (this one is broken down more to schoolname.localeducationauthority.sch.uk, so my secondary school was barrbeacon.walsall.sch.uk) .nhs.uk National Health Service Why shouldn't there be a logical distinction between the hospitals in Birmingham and the government in Birmingham? It just makes sense to me, you wouldn't want birmingham-council.uk, birmingham-nhs.uk, as you wouldn't have a restrictive pattern to ensure uniformity. I once surprised somebody by going to a police website without googling...

"How did you know the URL?"
"Err.. it's the name of the force, followed by .police.uk..."

Staggered registrations

[Rob T Firefly]

From TFA:

Trademark holders have had a "sunrise period" since December to register their own trademarks.

Public bodies and some other rights holders were allowed to apply in the initial phase.

The names are given out on a first-come-first-serve basis to applicants who then have 40 days to provide proof they hold a trademark in that name.

I really have to commend the powers that be on this staggered-registration scheme. It's enough to placate the valid trademark holders while cutting down chances of companies who missed out suing whoever gets it after the fact, and I hope the folks in charge of future TLD releases take note of this.

frack.eu

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got faq.eu and frack.eu lined up in my sights. ;)

Why bother?

[hcdejong]

The only organisation for which the .eu domain makes sense is the European Union (government). Other organisations, both commercial and nonprofit tend to be either national or worldwide.
I suspect many .eu domains will end up being redirected to existing .com websites, with large companies buying YA domain name just to prevent domain squatters etc.

Re:Why bother?

[Rich0]

The polo.eu example only serves to underscore this. Why do we need new TLDs? The typical answer to this is that we're out of easy-to-type domain names. So, what do we do - we charge a million domain-holders $10 each to replicate the .com domain to the .eu domain. How exactly does this solve the problem? The only thing that would make sense would be to disqualify anybody from holding the same address in more than one TLD. The main objection to this is due to squatters leveraging typing errors or the confusion over com/net/org/whatever. Well, if that is the real problem then the fix is very simple - just restrict everything to a single domain and then you don't have volvo.com, volvo.org, and volvo.net...

The real purpose of new TLDs is to drum up revenue for registrars...

Re:Dibs

[zoney_ie]

Well, French Connection will probably *actually* register http://fcuk.eu/

Re:But what domain will the EU use?

[bitt3n]

I expect all traffic from the US government will be forwarded to screw.eu

Common Words Ending With eu

[michaelaiello]

1. emeu
2. eu
3. adieu
4. aeu
5. basbleu
6. beaulieu
7. bleu
8. boutefeu
9. calcasieu
10. camaieu
11. ceu
12. chisleu
13. feu
14. heu
15. jussieu
16. leu
17. lieu
18. meu
19. milieu
20. montesquieu
21. neu
22. pareu
23. pourlieu
24. priedieu
25. purlieu
26. reu
27. richelieu
28. seu
29. teu
30. virgalieu
31. weu
32. xeu

behold the power of grep.

Registering .EU takes 100 days in my case

[Elixon]

I understand it but what I don't is why it took them exactly 50 days to validate the application - to review my submitted documents. Why? How can they validate the submitted documents printed on my home printer from who-know what source? Probably by checking the on-line databases. There is no other way. Could not they do that before automaticly? They could ask me to fill the link pointing directly to the national database... or they could create a robot to do it it is not so difficult...

Yesterday they accepted my application after 50 days from the date they recieved the documents and 60 days after I applied for the domain. Now I have 40 days long period for ADR before I can use my domain => 60 + 40 = it will take 100 days to register my .EU domain.

As the customer I'm not satisfied with the speed of the service.

.cat: when did that appear?

[adnonsense]

Slightly off-topic (but only slightly, it's European): has anyone noticed the emergence of the .cat tld? As in barcelona.cat?

(I'd call dibs on cool.cat but I can't find any registrar offering it).

Re:.cat: when did that appear?

[paol]

Well, .cat obviously stands for Catalunya. I wonder how they got a TLD. Last time I looked Catalunya wasn't a country.

Anyway, the organization in charge of the domain is here: http://www.puntcat.org/

And cool.cat appears to be available :)

Re:.cat: when did that appear?

[gronofer]

This surprises me. I wonder how other successionist areas are doing in getting their own top level domains. There's no sign of .kurdistan or .quebec.

Note the odd claim in the Wikipedia article about .cat:

ICANN has expressly prohibited the use of the .cat domain for pages about cats, unless they are written in Catalan or concerning Catalan culture.