Daily Domain Name Registration Blog

I’ll be really interested to see what happens with .asia. It’s something of a pioneering TLD, I think, because of the way that DotAsia has decided to manage it. The following things are unusual:

• Domains aren’t issued on a first-come, first-served basis. Instead, if more than one person wants a domain, they have to submit applications and DotAsia decides which is the most deserving. If they think that two or more applicants have equal claim to the domain, an auction is held. I think this is interesting for several reasons. Firstly, it means that tedious disputes over domains might be bypassed. Secondly, it means that hopefully the most deserving applicants will be able to get the domains that are going to help them out best. Thirdly, it means that not all domains will cost the same to register. Up until now, it’s always been that it costs x amount to register a domain, and then it’s the aftermarket where the prices fluctuate. But with .asia, initial registration costs will obviously vary according to how desirable the domain is.
• DotAsia recently announced that it is going to to permanently ban from the registry domains which are persistently used for phishing websites. It’s interesting that a registry is taking that level of responsibility for fraud. I’m not sure how I feel about it yet.

DotAsia is also doing a dotMobi and requiring that their ‘.ASIA Pioneers’ devote a certain quantity of time and resources to development and maintenance of their .asia websites. DotAsia are clearly very focused on avoiding the embarrassing situation that .eu is in, where companies register websites just to stop other people from registering them, and then leave them to stagnate.

It’ll be interesting to see how all these grand schemes play out once the TLD goes public at the beginning of 2008. I wonder how tight a hold DotAsia will be able to keep on the registry at that point.

Resources:

DotAsia’s official website.

More on DotAsia’s ban on phishing domains.

More on the launch of .asia.