More than 500,000 domain names have been registered worldwide in the first 90 days of availability, according to Afilias, the official registry for the dot-info domain name . However, only 2.1 percent of dot-info domains have been registered in Australia. In fact, the entire Asia-Pacific region has been slow on the dot-info front, with Australia making up 43 percent of registrations.
-Australians are very slow on the uptake. It's reminiscent of what happened with the dot-coms," said Simon Delzoppo of RegistrarsAsia.com. -When the dot-com's came out, the Americans picked up the majority of the good ones out there."
Delzoppo believes Australians have a -sit back and watch what happens" attitude, which he describes as intelligent in some areas but not when it comes to domain names. He says that with half a million domains registered worldwide, it's only a matter of time before the domain cements itself in the Internet.
-At the moment people think dot-com is everything, but in a few years we'll look back and think it's a bit silly, everyone's a dot-com," he said. He believes the new domain names will allow businesses to design sites with more descriptive addresses.
He suggests other explanations for the slow uptake might be that businesses are waiting for the .biz top-level domain, or simply don't understand what the new domains are for.
Some of the companies that have registered domains are using them to provide product-specific information. Delzoppo cites as an example Subaru Australia, which has registered wrx.info and allwheeldrive.info to provide a single entry point for all information about these two products.
Others see this as a good opportunity to achieve international coverage. Macquarie University already has macquarieuniversity.info up and running. The motive, according to Delzoppo, is to attract more international students. However, access to information also needs to be improved within the university, since neither the media manager nor the Web coordinator were aware of the new site when contacted by ZDNet Australia.
Those who have registered a dot-info domain comprise a reasonable spread of the population. Many entities, such as the University of NSW, are ensuring brand protection, while others are taking advantage of the sudden availability of domain names that had previously been captured as a dot-com.
There have been the inevitable problems with cybersquatting in the new domain. -In Australia there are some names being registered of very prominent names that the company hasn't registered." Delzoppo said. He stresses that it is not the responsibility of registries to reserve domain names in case someone else wants them.
Veronica Colvin, Australian representative for Afilias, admits that between 10 to 25 percent of domains registered during the initial phase (which Afilias refer to as the Sunrise Period) were by people who did not have a legitimate claim to the trademark.
Cybersquatters can be challenged by anyone who owns a trademark for their domain name during the Sunrise Challenge Process. After this process is complete, Afilias will challenge any further registrations they believe may be fraudulent.
