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.eu Domains to Go on Sale in a Month

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the domain-squatters-of-the-old-west dept.

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.

10 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Dibs on bl by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...

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  2. organisation? by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

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    1. Re:organisation? by redalien · · Score: 5, Informative

      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..."

  3. Staggered registrations by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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.
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  4. frack.eu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  5. Why bother? by hcdejong · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Why bother? by Rich0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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...

  6. Re:Dibs by zoney_ie · · Score: 4, Funny

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

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  7. Re:But what domain will the EU use? by bitt3n · · Score: 5, Funny

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

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  8. Common Words Ending With eu by michaelaiello · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.