New .eu domain 'as important as .com':
European Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding said on Thursday that she expected “several hundreds of thousands” of companies to apply to use the new .eu domain name.
Reding spoke at a press conference in Brussels to announce the start of the “sunrise” period on Dec. 7, during which trademark holders and public bodies can apply to register .eu names.
The Commissioner said the .eu domain name would become “as important for European businesses as .com addresses.” It would give European businesses the tools to protect themselves under European Union law and help make them more visible, while giving a unique European dimension to their image, she said.
Actually, it's mostly an annoyance that businesses have to register all their domains with yet another extension (and pay a fee to a EU bureaucracy) in order to keep squatters from confusing the surfers. But I'm digressing from the really important stuff which is that I hope no one beats me to
pee.eu!
To deter cybersquatting, the applications submitted before April 7 [2006] will be examined to ensure that those applying actually own the rights to the name, brand or trademark for which they are applying.
Hey, who would claim the rights to "pee"?
Non-E.U. companies will be able to apply for .eu addresses if they have a registered office in the E.U.
Darn! Another great idea bites the dust!
The domain name will be available only in its English version, as opposed to the French spelling ".ue" for Union européenne. Asked if this was an admission of the dominance of English in cyberspace, Reding said the E.U. was using the Latin name "europa." “It is nothing to do with France or England,” she said.
I'll bet the Eurocrats burned a lot of midnight oil coming up with that one!
The E.U.’s institutions will start using a .eu name for their Web sites from next week, and email addresses for E.U. civil servants will end in .eu from next year.
And if the citizens are lucky, the "institutions" and "civil servants" will be incommunicado for months.
