Entries tagged with “eurid” from Domains / Internet Technology News - DNS News

Eurid, the registry operator for .eu, have released a report in relation to how registrants register their .eu domain names ie. if you are based in country X, are you more likely to use a registrar based "in country" or go overseas?

The results show that 65% of registrants stay with a domestic registrar, 18% choose another registrar in the EU, while 17% choose a registrar from outside the EU.

The results are probably a bit biased, as some of the largest registrars in terms of reseller networks are from outside the EU and probably account for a very large portion of the non-EU registrar sales. Whether the registrants are even aware of this or not is an entirely different matter.

Further information is available on the Eurid site.

Eurid, the registry operator for .eu, will be signing the .eu zone from tomorrow at 10am Central European Time.

They expect that the full signing of the zone will take about two hours to complete.

Eurid now have a YouTube channel and so far they've got three videos on there, which isn't a bad start.

The number of domain registries and registrars setting themselves up on Youtube and Facebook is constantly increasing, though only a very small number of organisations seem to really do anything more than pay lip service to the concepts.

Will the same happen with Eurid?

Here's their video to promote the ICANN meeting in Brussels in June:

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When .eu launched a couple of years ago all member states were given the chance to put names down on a "reserve list". The idea being that these names should only be registered either by the state or its organs.
Unfortunately some governments didn't take advantage of this, with the end result being that the .eu launch led to domains like cork.eu and dublin.eu being registered to organisations with questionable entitlements.

Later this year Eurid will be launching IDNs in .eu. In simple terms you'll be able to register domain names using characters other than standard ASCII - think accents, Cyrillic etc.,

And again, as .eu is run by the EU, governments were given ample opportunity to get names added to a reserve list.

However, the Irish government seems to have all but dropped the ball - again!

While other governments submitted large numbers of names, the Irish one seems to have restricted itself to IDN versions of "Ireland" and "Irish". What's even more insane is that they didn't even bother putting a block on the word "dáil", which is the Irish parliament!

Here's the list (excuse the formatting, but the copy and paste from a PDF didn't work too well):

1. irlanda
2. irsko
3. irland
4. iirimaa
5. ireland
6. irlande
7. irlanda
8. Īrija
9. Airija
10. Írország
11. L-Irlanda
12. iρλανδία
13. ierland
14. irlandia
15. Írsko
16. irska
17. irlanti
18. irland
19. .irlande
20. Ιρλανδία
21. irlande
22. republicofireland
23. eire
24. irelànd
25. irelánd
26. irelánd
27. irelánd
28. irelând
29. irelãnd
30. ireländ
31. irelånd
32. irelænd
33. irèland
34. iréland
35. irêland
36. irëland
37. ìreland
38. íreland
39. îreland
40. ireland
41. irelan•
42. irelañd
43. irelānd
44. irelănd
45. ireląnd
46. irelanď
47. irelanđ
48. irēland
49. irěland
50. irėland
51. iręland
52. irěland
53. ĩreland
54. īreland
55. ĭreland
56. įreland
57. ıreland
58. irelańd
59. irelaņd
60. irelaňd
61. irelaʼnd
62. irelaŋd
63. iŕeland
64. iŗeland
65. iřeland
66. ирландия

You can download the full PDF here

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According to a news alert I received last night, Eurid's contract to manage the .eu namespace has been renewed for a further 5 years.

The news, which appears to have either been broken or leaked at the Eurid registrar dinner last night in Mexico city appeared on a French domain news site, but has since vanished.

If anyone can confirm or deny this news it would be helpful

Eurid, the organisation that runs the EU registry, announced the introduction of 24 / 7 support for its registrar community starting next week.

With the large number of accredited registrars based in North America (and elsewhere) this change is sure to be welcomed.

Eurid is expanding its technical infrastructure this weekend.

According to notifications sent to Eurid registrars they are expanding into a new data centre space.

Unfortunately the knock-on effect is that the registry backend will not be available to registrars for up to six hours on Saturday.

Eurid's EPP service has been offline or unstable for most of today.

The explanation provided was that the maximum number of concurrent connections had been reached... So why did it take them most of the day to increase the number in the configuration?

The mind boggles!

In some ways the failure of .eu to capture hearts and minds makes me sad. I'm European. I'd like to think that a European namespace could be a success, but that seems to be a misplaced desire.

As I mentioned some time ago, the only way to grow a namespace or TLD is through usage. Once people start to see a domain extension in "action" then they begin to start using it. If people start using it then everyone benefits - registry, registrars, "normal" registrants and domain investors alike.

When was the last time you saw a high profile .eu site?

You'd have to think long and hard about it, wouldn't you?

Even the "big boys" aren't really using their .eu domains actively.

Google.eu doesn't have any A records ie. it doesn't point anywhere.

Yahoo.eu points to a Yahoo site, but not to the European one!

Ebay.eu actually does what you'd expect it to do, but it was the only one I could find when I did a quick search this evening.

Why do I bring this up?

Last week John McCormack sent me some preliminary statistics on domain usage for the EU namespace and the figures were quite worrying. He's since published a blog piece with a breakdown of the stats and if I were in Eurid I'd be sobbing.

You can read John's article, but the basic underlying truth is hard to avoid.

Adoption of .eu has been pretty bad and that's being diplomatic about it.

While there may be a large number of domains registered only a very small fraction are in active use, with many simply redirecting to a ccTLD equivalent or being parked.

Launching a new TLD is not easy.

Afilias have resorted over the past couple of years to literally giving away domains for free and it looks like Eurid are adopting a similar approach.

DotMobi, however, have worked hard to build up interest in their TLD among users of all shapes and sizes and got the investors interested as well.

What will the future hold for .eu?

Will their PR pay off or will it all fizzle out?

Eurid, the organisation responsible for running .eu, is currently polling the public about their views on the introduction of IDNs.

The poll maybe found here

More information on IDNs maybe found on their site also

According to the latest report from Eurid to the EU Commission usage of .eu domains is up based on DNS query volumes.

Seemingly registrants average 2.6 domains each!

The full report is available for download as a PDF

While it is possible to register a .com for up to 10 years the same is not true of many ccTLDs.

In the case of .ie for example the only registration period currently supported by the registry is one year.

With .eu, which might be better described as a regional TLD, the registration period is one year also.

Nominet, for reasons that I've never fully understood, offer a two year registration period.

Is a one year or two year registration period enough?

Is ten years too long?

Should people be allowed to register domains for up to 100 years?

If you consider the importance of a domain name to a business, then you must accept that a domain is property. It's an asset of some kind. Whether you "own" the domain or not you definitely have some "rights" in it, so protecting it in much the same way as an extended lease agreement would be the norm for property only seems logical.

In the case of .ie multi-year registrations have been "on the table" for quite some time, but nothing concrete seems to have been decided. While there does not seem to be any resistance from the registry to the concept there also isn't a firm timetable available for their implementation. (The recent introduction of personal domains may have given them some breathing space).

With .eu the situation is slightly more complicated, as any core changes to the registry's functions may involve agreement and or discussion with the EU itself, as the registry's mandate is governed by them.

But what of *.uk?

Recent discussions would suggest that the concept of multi-year registrations is in a lot of people's minds, but the debate seems to be provoking some rather odd reactions.
One such reaction, which could best be described as "knee jerk" is that multi-year registrations would have a negative impact on the aftermarket and dropcatching.
Considering the size of the aftermarket and dropcatching services in the .com realm I find that argument a bit hard to believe.

But what should be the upper limit?

While ten years does not seem to be unreasonable offering a fifty or one hundred year registration brings a whole new set of issues. How many registrars or registries will still be functioning in 100 years time? While it would not be unreasonable to expect that some of the "big boys" would still exist there is an interesting issue to be faced.

Verisign's latest domain report makes for interesting reading.

The Chinese domain registry launched an aggressive price promotion at the beginning of the year and has seen in excess of 6 million names registered so far. Of course this could be similar to the .be promotion and the level of renewals is the thing to watch out for. Coming as it does at the dawn of .asia you'd have to be excused for thinking that they're making a last ditch effort to gain attention before .asia steals their thunder. Of course I could be wrong.

Be that as it may, the .cn ccTLD is now the 3rd biggest in the world, with .uk holding in second position behind .de (Germany).

The EU namespace has lost ground, but not as dramatically as some might have predicted.

What is most interesting, however, is that the overall market growth is still good and looks like it will remain so with more domains being registered every day.

A few short days ago I mentioned that Eurid had taken action against a Chinese individual who had registered over ten thousand domains.

While I initially did not expect to hear anything more about this story until the court made a declaration it seems that I was mistaken.

According to a story published by French domain news site DomainesInfo there could be a link between the squatter and a Eurid registrar.

The plot thickens.

Eurid, the entity charged with managing the .eu namespace, is reported to have taken action against an alleged cybersquatter based in China, Zheng Qingying.

John over on WhoisIreland picked up the story from DomainsInfo. He's also provided a list with some  of the domains affected.

The last suspension "en masse" was directed against Ovidio when over 74 thousand domains were suspended.

This time round the number is much lower - a paltry ten thousand!

In this instance there seems to have been a pattern of cybersquatting, with over a dozen ADR proceedings against the registrant in question.

The criteria for registering .eu domains may seem to be quite simple - an address in the EU - however this criterion has been "gamed" more than once in the past. The difference in this instance is that the registry seems willing to take action.
Eurid officials are quoted as saying that the UK phone numbers are proof of nothing:

It's common knowledge that anyone from anywhere in the world can get an English phone number

It will be interesting to see how the courts react when the judgement is handed down next month.

Will this set a reasonable precedent for other TLDs within the EU?

Maybe, maybe not.