E-Commerce Update October 2007 - Domain Names

auDA releases geographic domain names from Reserved List

On 21 October 2007, the Australian Domain Name Administrator (auDA) released the geographic domain names that have remained on its Reserved List since 2005.

The release was conducted according to normal auDA policy rules on a first come, first served basis. From 21 to 26 October 2007, auDA charged the registrar’s registration fee plus $825 (the equivalent of the 2005 ballot fee) to register a geographic domain name. After this period, auDA’s charges dropped to $21.45 (the normal registry fee) plus the registrar’s registration fee.

A list of the geographic domain names released by auDA is available via the auDA website.

ICANN launches live testing of Internationalised Domain Names

On 15 October 2007, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) launched the live testing of Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) in 11 different languages:

• Arabic
• Persian
• traditional Chinese
• simplified Chinese
• Russian
• Hindi
• Greek
• Korean
• Yiddish
• Japanese, and
• Tamil.

The top-level domain name ‘.test’ was inserted into the root in each of the above languages, enabling internet users to access wiki pages, which allow them to create their own subpages with their own names in different languages.

According to Dr Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN, ‘This evaluation represents ICANN’s most important step so far towards the full implementation of Internationalised Domain Names’. Once IDNs are fully implemented, internet users will be able to write the whole of a domain name in the characters used to write their own language. Until now, this has only been possible for the part of a domain name that comes before the dot.

ICANN’s evaluation aims to focus on the following aspects:

• how the URL displays in the internet browser
• how links to IDNs work in programs, and
• how links to IDNs work when cut and pasted in the body of an email.

The 11 evaluation wiki pages will remain online until IDNs have been fully implemented.

For further information please visit the ICANN website.

For more information please contact

Name : Duncan Giles
Title : Special Counsel
Office : Sydney
Phone : +61 2 9225 5954
Fax : +61 2 9322 4000
Email : duncan.giles@freehills.com