In contrast to the sunrise period of .info domains, .biz domains did not grant trademark owners first chance at registration, but instead used a procedure whereby they could file intellectual property claims in advance and then challenge any eventual registrant through a policy named “STOP” (Startup Trademark Opposition Policy). A number of domains were successfully obtained by trademark owners from other domain registrants through this policy; some of the more controversial cases, where generic words were taken over based on trademark claims in a process deemed “reverse hijacking” by critics, included that of paint.biz and canadian.biz , the latter of which was reversed by a court decision.

Although intended to be a restricted domain aimed at businesses, in reality the .biz domain is run as an unrestricted domain, available to anyone for any use. No enforcement mechanisms are planned or intended, at least directly by the registry or registrars, though it is in theory possible for third parties to challenge noncompliant registrations through a dispute resolution policy.

Although many .biz domain registrations have taken place (second only to .info among the new TLDs), critics note that it still has low name recognition with the general public, little use by major reputable businesses, and much use in spam , scams , and porn .

.biz domains are very popular in Turkey as “biz” means “we” in Turkish. There are many Turkish websites using this domain because when you get the domain blabla.biz, it translates to Turkish as “we are blabla”. Examples are: “anneyiz.biz” which means “we are mothers” or “superiz.biz” which means “we are super”.

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.

.info domain is an unrestricted domain, meaning that anyone can obtain a second-level domain under .info. As a generic, unrestricted domain name, anyone can use .info domain for any purpose, similar to .com, .net or .org domains. This is in contrast to a TLD such as .edu or .coop , which comes with criteria. .info domain is the first and only top-level domain that was explicitly created and chartered for unrestricted use, though various other TLDs have ended up that way as a de facto situation. .info means information in about 37 languages around the world, and is a neutral name.

associations and non-profit organizations. The .org domain TLD is created in January 1985 but it has been operated since January 2003 by Public Interest Registry. .org domain is pronouced in word form as ‘dot-org’ when spoken, although, also consistent with the style, not all users of the TLD agree on this usage.

.org domain was originally intended for use by organizations that did not meet the requirements for other gTLDs. Now anyone can register a .org domain. .org was the domain commonly recommended for use by individuals, although .name and .info are now alternatives.

.net domain TLD was initially intended for use by network oriented entities such as ISPs. At present, there are no formal restrictions on who can register a .net domain name. Therefore, while still popular with network operators, it is often treated as a second .com.

In addition to being an abbreviation for “network”, “net” is also a romanisation of the Russian word нет (“no” or “not”, also commonly romanised as the more acoustically appropriate ” nyet “), and a domain name like “object.net” can be interpreted as “there is no object”. Some domains exploit this pun, for example mozga.net (brain absent) or putina.net (not Vladimir Putin ) and DamoW.net (there is no Damien Walsh ).

It is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used on the Internet ‘s Domain Name System . It was one of the original top-level domains (TLDs) , established in January 1985, and has grown to be the largest TLD in use.

The .com domain TLD is currently operated by VeriSign . In the English language it is consistently pronounced as a word, dot-com, and has entered common parlance this way.

The .com domains are officially intended to designate commercial entities other than government agencies and educational institutions but there has been no restriction on who can register .com domains since the mid-1990s.

Commercialization and popularization of .com domain has become the reason of the opening of the .com domain registry to the public. The .com domain quickly became the most common top-level domain for websites. Many companies which flourished in the period between 1997-2001 (the time known as the ” dot-com bubble “) went so far as to incorporate .com into the company name; these became known as dot-coms or dot-com companies . The introduction of .biz domain TLD in 2001, which is restricted to businesses, has had little impact on the popularity of .com.

Although companies anywhere in the world can register .com domains, many countries have a second-level domain with a similar purpose under their own ccTLD . Such second-level domains are usually of the form .com.xx or .co.xx , where xx is the ccTLD. Argentina (.com.ar ), Japan (.co.jp ), New Zealand (.co.nz ), India (.com.in ), the People’s Republic of China (.com.cn ), Pakistan (.com.pk ), and the United Kingdom (.co.uk ) are all examples.

Domain TLDs

Their Meanings

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) currently classifies top-level domains into three types:

• country code top-level domains (ccTLD): Used by a country or a dependent territory . It is two letters long, for example .us domain TLD for the United States .
• generic top-level domains (gTLD): Used (at least in theory) by a particular class of organizations (for example, .com for commercial organizations). It is three or more letters long. Most gTLDs are available for use worldwide, but for historical reasons .mil ( military ) and .gov ( governmental ) are restricted to use by the respective U.S. authorities. gTLDs are subclassified into sponsored top-level domains (sTLD), e.g. .aero, .coop and .museum, and unsponsored top-level domains (uTLD), e.g. .biz, .info, .name and .pro.
• infrastructure top-level domains (iTLD): The top-level domain .arpa is the only confirmed one. .root has been known to exist without reason.