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.eu Domains to Go on Sale in a Month 109

Posted by Zonk 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.
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.eu Domains to Go on Sale in a Month More

.eu Domains to Go on Sale in a Month

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  • But what about the Mints?!

    Possibly called lifesavers in USA

  • Volvo Polo (Score:2, Informative)

    by defsdoor ( 737019 )
    Is that for the Volvo Polo then ? (perhaps you meant Volkswagen - the article seems to thing so)
    • Is that for the Volvo Polo then ? (perhaps you meant Volkswagen - the article seems to thing so)

      Swedish car.. German car... Both start with a V and come form that Europe place, so close enough for the submitter!

  • Dibs on bl (Score:5, Funny)

    by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @11:20AM (#14890708)
    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... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mustafap ( 452510 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @11:20AM (#14890710) Homepage
    All those french words end in eu.

    Thats going to be a real Cadeau to some people.
  • Since Volkswagen manufactures and sells the Polo, not Volvo..

    Oh wait, TFA is correct.

    Not like I should talk tho, linklexic that I am...

    (ps: mondi.eu dibs!!)

  • organisation? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @11:24AM (#14890734) Homepage Journal
    Will everything be straight under .eu, or will there be some notion of categorisation, such as .com.eu, .edu.eu, .gov.eu, etc?
    • Given the polo.eu example in TFBlurb, I don't think we'll see categorisation. Pity, really.

      • Re:organisation? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by timster ( 32400 )
        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? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Conanymous Award ( 597667 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @12:16PM (#14891062)
          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? (Score:3, Informative)

            by jacksonj04 ( 800021 )
            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.
          • Um, no. The .uk, for example, have "*.police.uk", such as cityoflondon.police.uk (unfortunately, not that intuitive, since london.police.uk does not even exist). They also have gov.uk, org.uk, ac.uk, etc.

            Domains with .co.uk are very useful for Google searches. Such as "fookeyword -site:co.uk". Or search all academic institutions: "foo site:ac.uk".

            Also, by having different subdomains, you can charge different prices for them. org.TLD should be cheaper than co.TLD. Afaik, it's like that with the .yu TLD, as l
            • (unfortunately, not that intuitive, since london.police.uk does not even exist)

              Not the only one, apparently - a quick lookup shows that metropolitan.police.uk doesn't exist, either, it's met.police.uk. Odd.

          • Re:organisation? (Score:5, Informative)

            by redalien ( 711170 ) <matthew@matthewwilkes.co.uk> on Friday March 10, 2006 @12:44PM (#14891294) Homepage
            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 [birmingham.nhs.uk] and the government in Birmingham [birmingham.gov.uk]? 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..."
            • Interestingly, there's also parliament.uk. At first it seems strange that it's not parliament.gov.uk, but in the UK system, it's Government that is subservient to Parliament, and therefore parliament.gov.uk would give out quite the wrong idea.

              There are also a few holdouts from before the .uk domain was rationalised - bl.uk, for example, is the British Library.
          • 2 reasons: Because these domains are more organized than ours and categorize entities in those countries as subdomains of those countries. The .co distinguishes a company from a government entity. www.hse.gov.uk, northumbria.ac.uk, etc.

            2nd, co.us is Colorado. We would have probably ended up with com.us endings had this caught on.
          • it comes down to the policies of whoever manages that countries TLD. some alocate directy under it, some only give under subdivisions, some allow both.

        • ...which is why things generic top-level domains are frowned upon and why the existing ones are slowly gotten rid of and no new ones are being introduced, right?
          • No, that's because the system is being run by committee, and thus the changes implemented are by nature of the process completely pointless.
        • I rather like being able to search .ac.uk, and only hitting academic sites. Searching .gov.uk is quite handy to. And to all those folks out there who don't get it, if you're a shop in the UK, selling mainly to the UK, please use .co.uk. If I'm looking for bicyle parts, for example, I usually limit my googling to .co.uk. The internet might not care about geography, but the postman does.

        • Geography was the only really useful structure I ever saw out of the DNS system. It certainly would have made Google's life easier for google.local to have law.redmond.wa.us instead of lawyersofgreaterwashington.com.

          Think if you could set your browser to a certain locality and automatically reduce name completion for the address to your city.
      • What I don't get is that if they don't go on sale for a month, why was anyone allowed to scoop up "polo" early? The word isn't trademarkable and I thought the sunrise period was just for trademarks.
    • Will everything be straight under .eu, or will there be some notion of categorisation, such as .com.eu, .edu.eu, .gov.eu, etc

      More to the point: How is this an "online rights" issue?
    • Will everything be straight under .eu

      Not if I can get gay.eu.

  • Staggered registrations (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @11:26AM (#14890747) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • in li.eu of this sunrise period you speak of, would sex.eu be spoken for already by some entity?

      I ask, because there will no doubt be a huge rush at that domain.

      I wonder, how would one even get that domain registered? Will someone with "connections" have the better chance?

    • Re:Staggered registrations (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yes, it's almost as if they acknowledge that there is no "invisible hand of the free market" to keep things in line for them...
    • "40 days to provide proof" :-)
      I was VERY surprised when I was applying to my .eu domain. The proof is simply any paper you can print on your personal printer. It does not need to be validated, approved... nothing like this. If you go to any national trademark authority's web pages and you hit PRINT in your browser - then you have a PROOF.

      I found it when packing the proof and checking the condition terms. I had OFFICIAL declaration of ownership issued by state authority which means that it is a "public docu
      • I would guess that the requirement of even a copy of your proof is meant to be something that the registrar can keep on file as your evidence of claim, therefore ensuring the burden of proof is not on the registrar themselves. That way, if you use something you made up yourself in Word and some company who actually owns it challenges your claim, it's between you and that company to prove it and you'll lose that fight without a real document.
        • 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 accep
          • Dude, it's Europe. Get used to it. For all of my life, everytime I have to deal with Europe or European companies -- I re-learn the fact that my concept of "time" is not the same as theirs. Just try to get ANYTHING done in August or September and you will get a first hand lesson too (Europe goes on vacation during those months)

            Sucks that it has to be that way and I am certain they are not alone but it is what it is.

            What takes 2 weeks here in America, often takes 2 months when you go abroad. I am

  • Why bother? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hcdejong ( 561314 ) <hobbes@nOspam.xmsnet.nl> on Friday March 10, 2006 @11:38AM (#14890822)
    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.
    • You might be mistaken. Europe is real! I think alot of companies see this as a good way to strengthen their european presence. It is now yet again a little bit easier for, say, a Belgian company to trade with customers all over Europe.
      • Europe might be real, but that doesn't mean people are going to look at companies as being "European". I know of exactly two exceptions: EADS and Airbus. Both have .com domains registered.

        Companies that operate internationally often already have a .com domain. If I want to know more about Volvo, for instance, I either go to volvo.com (expecting to find the Volvo Worldwide site) or volvo.[country] to find out about their national distributor. Volvo.eu I'd never bother entering as an URL.

    • Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rich0 ( 548339 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @12:10PM (#14891018) Homepage
      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...
    • Move *.uk to *.uk.eu and so on. (for all EU states: fr, de, pl, no...)

      While we're at it, it's no fair for the EU to get more than one vote in the UN. It seems the EU likes to be a country only when the circumstances suit them.

  • Common Words Ending With eu (Score:4, Funny)

    by michaelaiello ( 841620 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @12:08PM (#14891004) Homepage
    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.

  • Hmm (Score:1, Funny)

    by ajs318 ( 655362 )

    ajs318@marijuana $ whois di.eu
    % .eu Whois Server 1.0
    %
    % (c) 2005 (http://www.eurid.eu/
    %
    % The WHOIS service offered by EURid and the access to the records
    % in the EURid WHOIS database are provided for information purposes
    % only. It allows persons to check whether a specific domain name
    % is still available or not and to obtain information related to
    % the registration records of existing domain names.
    %
    % EURid cannot, under any circumstances, be held liable in case the
    % stored information would prove to be wron

  • adieu
    lieu
    Mathieu

    Well this sucks!
  • Hmmmm I wonder if they will buy it? Or perhaps even better screwedbythe.eu
  • www.SentientMili.eu

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

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

    • 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/ [puntcat.org]

      And cool.cat appears to be available :)
    • 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.

      • 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.

        No, apparently they've prohibited the use of the .cat domain for pages about ANYTHING unless they are written in Catalan or concerning Catalan culture.

        From http://www.puntcat.cat/en_faq.html#p10 [puntcat.cat]

        unlike [.com or .org], .cat has a more restricted personality as it is addressed to the Catalan linguistic and c

  • ... no .EU domain name for you, bucko.

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