The roll out of the .CO extension will offer a unique platform for entrepreneurs and established business alike. Lori Anne Wardi of .CO Internet S.A.S. discusses the roll out and the plans behind the extension with Damien Allen on today's program.
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DAMIEN: Good afternoon and welcome to Cybersquatting Law Radio. My name is Damien Allen, and joining me today on the phone is Lori Anne Wardi, Director of Marketing for .CO Internet S.A.S.. Good afternoon, Lori and welcome to the program.
LORI: Good afternoon, thank you so much for having me, Damien.
DAMIEN: It’s a pleasure to have you today. Lots of exciting stuff happening. We have the new .CO Extension coming to the internet brought to us by the people at .CO Internet S.A.S. This new top level domain what are the hopes and ideas for this? How did this come to be?
LORI: Oh, gosh so much to talk about on that front. There are a lot of exciting things on the horizon. This summer will be 25 years if you can believe it after the introduction of .COM and so many incredible things have happened in these 25 years. People have started businesses. We’ve seen the .COM boom with thousands and tens of thousands of new businesses around the world being created. It’s been quite a spectacle, but you know, in the last several years, it’s become harder and harder for new businesses and brands to find a space online to build a business that’s a credible name. It’s become very crowded and so people with hopes and dreams, they want to create new businesses, they’ll type in 10 – 15 – 20 names before they settle on a name and the name they end up building their business on is not the one they are proud of. So this summer as we launch .CO, we think there is going to be a new era of the internet born and it’s like a fresh slate where the name of the business or brand for your website or your company will be based on what it is that you really need, not just sort of the left over scraps that’s left from this amazing legacy that we have just created in the last 25 years. So it’s a new space full of opportunity.
DAMIEN: What are you hoping the .CO top level domain is going to bring to the table? Who are your target registrants?
LORI: Well the .CO domain really offers people a global recognizable, incredible option to brand their online presence. So the real sweet spot for us is anyone with an idea, anyone with a dream, anyone with a business they are waiting to build or brand that they want to extend or promote and giving them an opportunity to find that perfect name to build out. So we’re not trying to convince people who have domain names right now that they are happy with that they have built on, but around the world there is a real movement towards entrepreneurship right now. In every corner of the world, we have seen broadband penetration like we have never seen before and there are literally billions of people yet to come online who as they come on, more and more are looking for their space on the web. They are looking to create their opportunity on the web, and we think we have the place for them, because it’s a wide open name space. It’s meaningful around the world so .CO means company not just in the United States, but in so many countries around the world that recognize .CO to mean company, corporation, or other type of commercial meaning and actually over 20 countries already use .CO in their third level designation. So you see it already in .CO.UK, .CO.JP, so it is something that is recognized in many countries. It’s meaningful, memorable and so we think we have this new platform that anyone who wants to build a business or a brand around the world can tap into for their own purposes and that is what is exciting.
DAMIEN: Now, unfortunately, although having a new top level domain .CO is a great thing, it’s also a very common typo problem. Are there barriers set in place to reduce cybersquatting and bad faith registry under this new TLD?
LORI: Well I think your question is a great one and it certainly very high on the minds on our management team, because there is certainly a great deal of interest in this extension by people who see it as merely a way of getting traffic and there is nothing wrong with traffic as long as it is not intended to be traffic that is basically absconded from the rightful owner. So if there are people who are thinking that .CO will be a safe haven for cybersquatting on other people’s brands so they can get misdirected traffic and utilize it. It will definitely not be the case and it will be very unappealing for them to do so, because we have put in place very stringent requirements so that if they are cybersquatting or if people are out there using the extension in a way to do malicious things for things like phishing or mal-ware where they are tricking people or placing things on the computer to steal data or things like that ,we will have a very rigorous take down policy in place and we will be monitoring the usage very, very closely to make sure that none of that can happen, because we realize that if we don’t take a very firm stand on these types of issues the risk of basically pollution of our space is high and it is such a great name space that we really want to protect the integrity of it for the long term and that is why we have taken pretty much every conceivable measure that we could think of to protect the space and make sure it’s viable for the long term.
DAMIEN: Now ICANNS IRT has also proposed the implementation of rights protective mechanisms. What are these mechanisms and how will they work hand in hand with this new extension?
LORI: We looked very carefully at the IRT’s recommendations and there are a whole slue of things that they came up with that we really used as our guiding principals as we have been putting together our rights protection mechanisms. So at a minimum, like the very first starting point is we have put in place what is called a sunrise process and through the sunrise owners of registered trademarks will have the chance to register their matching domain names before the general public has the opportunity to register domain names. So anyone who has a trademark of national affect from any country around the world can apply to secure their trademark in the .CO extension and they have the right to do that starting on the 26th of April which is just around the corner and that will last all the way through June 10th. So that’s the first piece of it, but then beyond that the IRT had recommended things like putting in place an IP clearing house so registered trademarks could be checked and there would be an efficient and effective way for brand owners to obtain sort of upfront assurance that there trademark records meet the requirements of a sunrise policy and to keep the burdens at a minimal level for IP owners. So we have put in place an IP clearing house that is managed through Deloit and we have also put in place Who Is? It’s a data base essentially where all the domain name registration data that is provided by the registrars is going to be centrally stored and made available so that we will always know that the Who Is? Is up to date. We have also prohibited proxy registrations and the reason we have done that so that when people register domain names in the .CO extension, they will need to give their name and information and they can’t sort of hide their true identity through a proxy name. So that if, like you had mentioned earlier, because there is a risk of people wanting to use the extension in a bad way, having the restriction on proxy registration counter-balances this because if this incentivizes people who think they can hide behind a proxy registration and gives us a quicker opportunity to track people down who are doing anything wrong. And then lastly we also have what is called the Take Down Policy which we just discussed a minute ago which in case someone is using the extension in a wrong way for phishing or farming or things like that, we would have the opportunity to take down those sites. So those are just the high level of some of the things that the IRT talked about that we then have done our best to put in place.
DAMIEN: Is there a vetting process for the registrars who will be allowed to utilize the .CO extension?
LORI: That’s actually a great question as well. When we put together our list of registrars we are working with, it was based on a mandate from the government of Columbia to keep the number of registrars exclusive to 10 so we have 8 international registrars and 2 local registrars inside of Columbia that intended to really increase the presence that community of the registrar community within Columbia and build business in the country, but the 8 international registrars, the mandate was to partner with registrars who really understood our intention in building out the space as a safe, credible name space that would build it out in a thoughtful manner and not in any way that would enhance or promote the use of the .CO extension as a typo name and so the partners we have partnered with are some of the worlds largest and most well known, and well respected registrars and they’re all listed on our website www.cointernet.co and it’s certainly names you’ll be well familiar with. I’d like to list a few, but then I’ll forget the rest, so I’d rather you just go to the website and check them out.
DAMIEN: Now as this is a country coded top level domain, is Columbia stringently over seeing this entire process?
LORI: It is a country code domain historically and that is sort of a genesis of where .CO comes from and historically .CO has its benefits as a CCTLD country code domain for the country of Columbia and as a CCTLD it was quite restricted in terms of its use. You needed to have a business in the name of the domain you used or trademark and part of the reason why .CO is now being liberalized and being made available around the world is that the government of Columbia recognized that it really had a unique digital asset. It’s a unique digital resource that has very broad global appeal. So the country after many years of internal discussion and debate about the process and about doing it the right way and ensuring it was safe and protected, they made the really ambitious move to liberalize its domain policies and share this essentially national asset with the global internet community. So the big story really of that is that instead of only being available at the third level which would be .COM.CO you can now get a domain name just at the second level which would be just .CO. So it is seen as a unique opportunity to share their national asset with the rest of the world and even though it has historically been a CCTLD the way it will be marketed is as a GTLD. So it has history of a CCTLD, but the future of it is more GTLD like and open.
DAMIEN: .CO Internet S.A.S. has also set up a founders program. What is this and what is it all about, Lori?
LORI: The .CO Founders program is really an opportunity for early adopters who have the wherewithal and the interest to build out a website utilizing a .CO domain to have an opportunity to get early access to a .CO domain and to have sort of a first movers advantage. So we are taking applications until the middle of June for the .CO Founders program and we are giving people the opportunity to request a name that would really fit within their business and brand and tell us how they might use that domain so that they would add a benefit to the larger .CO community. And it’s an opportunity for individuals, businesses, bloggers, internet marketers, anybody that has an idea of business, blog to secure that perfect domain that they have always wanted and what’s in it for us really is that we get smart, talented people to help us build and develop the .CO space, and then we can showcase those websites to the rest of the potential world who might want to buy domain names. So they get their early, they get a premium domain name that is memorable in the .CO space and a first mover advantage, and we get the opportunity to showcase them to the world so that when the .CO names are available for the rest of the world in the middle of summer in July, we’ll actually have this great credible content online that we can showcase and that is what it really is all about.
DAMIEN: We’d like to thank you very much for joining us today, Lori, and discussing the new .CO TLD.
LORI: Oh gosh, thank you so much for having me. It was a real pleasure to be here.
DAMIEN: We have been discussing the roll out of .CO TLD with Lori Anne Wardi, the Director of Marketing of .CO Internet S.A.S. You’ve been listening to Cybersquatting Law Radio. My name is Damien Allen. Everybody have a great afternoon.
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