Web site operators are jumping at the chance to register
easy-to-remember Web addresses, thanks to the newly introduced .biz
and .info top-level domains.
Some 675,000 .info domain names have been registered since July,
when the first applications were taken. The figures come from
Afilias, a non-profit consortium named by the Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to maintain the
registries.
More than 500,000 .biz addresses have been registered, according to
registrar Neulevel. The domain finally went live in November after
a Los Angeles judge dropped a court injunction against Neulevel.
The plaintiffs in the case had argued that Neulevel was operating
an illegal lottery by awarding contested domain names according to
a drawing.
Contested .info domain names will be decided by an arbitration
process in co-operation with the World Intellectual Property
Organisation, said Sabine Armbrust, a spokeswoman for
Afilias.
"In the first phase, until the end of September, only brand-name
holders could register names. Any disputes should be resolved by
the beginning of next year," she said.