The next phase will be the approvals from IANA, Department of Commerce of the United States and ICANN. Once granted, the Universidat de los Andes will transfer all the operations of this domain to .CO Internet S.A.S. However, this joint venture has to implement the new policies and adjust them to best practices known.

This .co is linked all over the world with the words company, corporation and commerce so that it can become the new online presence-branding tool for businesses, entrepreneurs or developers of every kind. Pre-registration for .co domain is already open, however, the launching schedule will consist of three stages:

1. The Global Sunrise – April 26, 2010: this is for trademark holders with equivalent domain names registered before July 30, 2008.
2. The Landrush – June 21 until July 13, 2010: this stage will be open for everybody interested in registering domain names of high commercial importance.
3. The General Availability – July 20, 2010: .co domain names will become available for anyone in the world.

Due to some limitations imposed by governing policies, there will be only 10 .co Accredited Registrars during first year of operation: Dotster, MelbourneIT, My.com.co, eNom, Register.com, 1&2, GoDaddy, InternetX, Tucows and Network Solutions. However, any other ICANN and non-ICANN registrars may join as resellers.

Prices for this domain will be decided by each of the 10 registrars, though they are supposed to be higher than other domain names due to the linking to business development opportunity. One of the 10 registrars already offers pre-registration, with prices from $299/year for Global Sunrise and Landrush stages to $29,99/year for General Availability stage.

12 March is be the date on which .xxx domain names plan exclusively for adult websites will be reviewed by Icann. First launched in 2001, this scheme was approved four years later, in 2005 and reconsidered in 2007 due to massive protests started by conservative groups from the US.

In recent times, a mediation board of retired judges at ICDR (International Centre for Dispute Resolution) decreed that this plan must be reconsidered. They considered that Icann’s rejection was “not consistent with the application of neutral, objective and fair documented policy”. Therefore, on 12 March, in Nairobi, Kenya, Icann could decide whether the plan to create a place only for pornography should be approved or rejected again. If they will grant this,.xxx domain names will hit the market by the end of 2010.

Even though this meeting could mean a new era for Internet pornography, an Icann spokesperson said this pronouncement will not be taken without seeking advice with other members of Icann and the Internet community.

This plan, if applied, is to base on a voluntary scheme, so that adult websites will not be forced to use only .xxx domain names but they will also be allowed to be placed on other domains like .com.

.xxx domain names resurrection news comes attached with the auction of probably the most valuable Internet domain name, sex.com, which is planned to be sold in New York on 18 March. Starting price is $1 million.

The European Commission has introduced the use of non-Roman characters in .eu domain names, allowing the names to incorporate characters from all twenty-three official languages of the European Union for the first time.

The introduction of internationalised domain names (IDNs) means domain names can include accented accented characters such as ‘ç’, commonly used in Portuguese and Catalan, and ‘ñ’, as used in Spanish and Basque, as well as names written in Greek or Cyrillic characters, the Commission said on Thursday.

“Many internet users will come from countries where most languages are not based on the ‘a to z’ Latin script and they will naturally want to use their own scripts,” said Viviane Reding, the EU’s Information Society Commissioner, in a statement on Thursday. “The launch of international domain names under .eu will respond even better to the needs of a multilingual and multicultural Europe.”

The change marks one step in a gradual shift that will ultimately allow the top-level domain (TLD) ‘.eu’ itself to be written in non-Roman characters such as Cyrillic or Greek, the Commission said.

The Commission first adopted the rules allowing for the use of non-Roman characters in .eu domain names in June of this year. At November’s Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Reding informed the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) that the EU would also move towards introducing variants of the ‘.eu’ TLD in non-Roman characters as soon as possible.

“When Icann approves international domain names at the top level for .eu, EU registrants will be able to register a whole web address in their own script,” the Commission said in a statement.

The .eu TLD was approved by Icann in 2005 and registration was introduced in phases from 2005 to 2006. The TLD is intended for both individuals and organisations, and there are now more than 3 million .eu domain names, according to the Commission.

source/full story: zdnet UK

The Egyptian authorities seem not to have wasted time making the new. masr domain extension available. Mr Kamel, who was speaking at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) being held in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, said the registration of the new web address would begin at at midnight. Mr Kamel added further that the new domain name extension will bring prosperity to the Arab speaking word as new opportunity and investment to launch and promote the new domain extension will follow. It is estimated that 15 million or the 80 million people in Egypt are Internet users.
Other countries whose alphabets are based on non-Latin script are expected to start launching domain name extensions based on their script. The largest new non- Latin based domain name is expected to be in China.

Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s president said if the proposed changes are approved, by middle of 2010, we could start expecting to see domain name not based on Latin characters on the Internet. Application for the new non-Latin domain names is expected to start coming thick and fast once the proposal is approved at this weeks ICANN meeting. This proposal should have be put in place long before now when you consider the fact that more than half of the world estimated 1.6 Billion Internet users use non Latin based character.

Many other countries has been concerned but the links between the USA governement and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Some demand the USA government made off ICANN during the Bush administration cause alarm in many countries and also ruffled feathers at ICANN who then threatens to relocated to Switzerland.