.eu Domains to Go on Sale in a Month

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.

Anyone else thinking?

But what about the Mints?!

Possibly called lifesavers in USA

Volvo Polo

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

Dibs on bl

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...

frack.eu

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

Time to grab...

All those french words end in eu.

Thats going to be a real Cadeau to some people.

Why would Volvo want polo?

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?

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

Re:organisation?

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?

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..."

Staggered registrations

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.

Why bother?

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.

Re:Why bother?

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...

Common Words Ending With eu

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

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 wrong, incomplete or not
% accurate in any sense.
%
% By submitting a query you agree not to use the information made
% available to:
%
% - allow, enable or otherwise support the transmission of unsolicited,
% commercial advertising or other solicitations whether via email or
% otherwise;
% - target advertising in any possible way;
%
% - to cause nuisance in any possible way to the registrants by sending
% (whether by automated, electronic processes capable of enabling
% high volumes or other possible means) messages to them.
%
% Without prejudice to the above, it is explicitly forbidden to extract,
% copy and/or use or re-utilise in any form and by any means
% (electronically or not) the whole or a quantitatively or qualitatively
% substantial part of the contents of the WHOIS database without prior
% and explicit permission by EURid, nor in any attempt hereof, to apply
% automated, electronic processes to EURid (or its systems).
%
% You agree that any reproduction and/or transmission of data for
% commercial purposes will always be considered as the extraction of a
% substantial part of the content of the WHOIS database.
%
% By submitting the query you agree to abide by this policy and accept
% that EURid can take measures to limit the use of its WHOIS services
% in order to protect the privacy of its registrants or the integrity
% of the database.
% % WHOIS di
Domain: di
Status: APPLICATION PENDING

Looks like that one's probably going to be taken, then.

grep 'eu$' /usr/share/dict/words

adieu
lieu
Mathieu

Well this sucks!

microsoft.eu

Hmmmm I wonder if they will buy it? Or perhaps even better screwedbythe.eu

It's Go! Go! for Dancing!

www.SentientMili.eu

.cat: when did that appear?

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).

You need a valid EU address, or else....

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

I know what I'll be reserving...

http://bl.eu/cheese

Re:Dibs

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

Re:But what domain will the EU use?

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