eu Registry contract finally signed

The European Commission and EurID have finally signed the contract which means that the .eu top level domain (TLD) can become a reality.

It was October 2002 when the Commission invited interest from organisations wishing to operate the .eu Registry. Its hope was that individuals and companies would have the opportunity to show their European identity on the Internet by having .eu website and e-mail addresses. As the Commission explained, a company with branches in several EU countries could use such an address to reflect its Union-wide presence on the Internet. The new designation will therefore complement rather than replace the existing European country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs), such as .de, .fr and .uk, which already exist alongside generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) such as .com, .org and .info.

To avoid what EurID call "unjustified applications", a "sunrise" period has been built into the start-up of .eu registrations. Organisations able to prove ownership of a Registered Trade Mark for any of the 25 EU Union countries will have priority for the first two months. This will be followed by a further two months when any organisation or person with an official address in any of the EU countries will have precedence. After that, it will be a free for all - anyone can apply to register any as yet unregistered name. EuroDNS, an European-wide domain name registrar, provides further details about the sunrise period at: www.eurodns.com/preregister/euinfo.php. Xavier Buck for EuroDNS said: "Act now and get in touch with us to ensure that your .eu Domain will be taken by yourself and not by a cybersquatter or your competitor. If you have not yet pre-registered your .eu domain name with us, now is the time to do so. It's a free service on: www.eurodns.com."

Source : http://www.smallbusiness-centre.net/