Web .info names available in May-consortium

Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON: Internet users will get a chance in May to reserve domain names

like hawaii.info and science.info, after domain manager Afilias finishes

rousting thousands of cybersquatting speculators from the new Web marketplace,

Afilias said Monday.

The company said it would release an expected 10,000 names back into the

marketplace in May, after it recovers them from squatters who used false

trademark claims or pure bluff to reserve them in a special "sunrise"

preregistration period for trademark holders.

Afilias, a consortium of 18 domain-name retailers, was swamped by thousands

of the cybersquatters last summer, when it began to roll out the .info Internet

domain as an alternative to established domains like .com, .net and .org.

"By the end of May, the whole sunrise thing will be behind us,"

said Roland LaPlante, Afilias chief marketing officer.

Afilias, had set up a sunrise period to allow companies to reserve

trademarked names like www.cocacola.info before cybersquatters could claim them

and sell them back for exorbitant fees.

But by the time the month-long sunrise period ended, Afilias found through

its database that cybersquatters had grabbed thousands of names, like

municipalbonds.info and science.info, using questionable trademark data or no

data at all. As many as one in four preregistered names used questionable

trademark data, according to one estimate.

Afilias said that it would challenge the questionable entries through an

intellectual-property arbitration forum, after letting individuals mount

challenges of their own.

The process has been successful so far, LaPlante said, with the company able

to recover all 741 of the first batch of challenged names without opposition.

Afilias has challenged another 6,800 names, LaPlante said, and expects to

challenge another 5,000 before it is through. To handle anticipated consumer

demand for desirable names like scanners.info, the company has set up a process

that will randomly shuffle the applications submitted by each domain-name

retailer.

Consumers will be able to place orders with any of 90 retailers, starting in

April, LaPlante said.Afilias was one of seven groups chosen to introduce new

domains in November 2000 by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and

Numbers.

Other new domains include .biz for businesses, .museum for museums, .name for

individuals, .aero for the aviation industry, .coop for cooperative businesses,

and .pro for lawyers, doctors and other professionals.

Dot-info now contains 750,000 names, more than any of the other new domains.

Roughly 7,800 of those names point to unique Web sites, LaPlante said, while

another 1,500 refer to existing dot-com sites. The rest are under construction,

for sale, or held in reserve, he said. The .com domain accounts for about 22.5

million of the 35 million Internet names registered around the world.