The launching of .info domain involved a ” Sunrise Period ” for trademark owners followed by a “landrush” open to all, the first time such a process had ever been done for a new domain name gTLD. This process came under much criticism for giving trademarks precedence over words that are generic in other contexts; for instance, the Caterpillar construction equipment company was able to get cat.info before anybody else, such as a feline enthusiast, even had a chance.
Although a large number of fraudulent .info domain registrations were initially made by domain registrants who didn’t actually own a valid trademark, a challenge procedure later weeded out most of these. Some fraudulent registrations remain in the control of bad faith registrants, and some feel that Afilias needs to mount a final clean-up effort.
In a controversial move, prior to domain registrations beginning, the names of countries were reserved from domain registration at the request of ICANN , to the consternation of those who had paid pre-registration fees to attempt to register these domain names in the landrush. ICANN ’s Governmental Advisory Committee, comprised of representatives appointed by countries around the world applauded the move, the first by any major domain to protect the alleged national interests of sovereign nations. Many others, however, regard the names of countries (as well as cities and other geographical features) as generic terms which should not be monopolized by anybody, including the governments of the given places, since they may also validly be used for independent or critical sites about the places.
Many .info domain names have been registered (the most of any of the new TLDs), but some critics say that recognition by the general public is low, and many are hoarded speculatively or used for unsavory purposes such as sites advertised in e-mail spam and for domain parking , although the .biz domain name is most popular for spam.
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