Intended to end the shortage of meaningful domain names and allow even more businesses to get online, the new Top Level Domains (TLDs) are already causing a stir before even going live – especially amongst a group of French winegrowers.
Under the new naming scheme, businesses will be able to order their choice of domain extension to personalise their website address; in place of .com and .co.uk, businesses can now apply for .banana .stuff and .reallylongdomainextension (among others).
However where cybersquatters would once buy desirable domain names and resell them for thousands of pounds, the new TLDs also appear to be vulnerable to similar speculation. French wine producers are already complaining about the new TLD system after it emerged three bids had been placed for ownership of.wine and .vin. What incensed the vintners most however was that none of the companies is involved in the production of wine, nor do they hail from wine producing regions.
Washington-based Donuts, Afilias from Ireland and Famours Four Media who are registered in Gibraltar are completely removed from the ancient art of grape growing. In fact all three companies are specialist brokers in registering website addresses based on the new TLDs. If you wanted to register LovelyBottleOf.wine, you will probably end up dealing with one of these brokers.
The ire of the French wine makers is likely to be repeated by other industries which discover similar registration issues in the near future. All of which serves to underline the importance of putting in a prompt order if you want to snap up one of the new TLDs for yourself!
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