Trademark holders can now apply to reserve domain names in South Africa’s new city top-level domains of .joburg, .durban and .capetown following the commencement of a preregistration phase by the ZA Central Registry (ZACR).
The not-for-profit ZACR, which was established in 2012 to succeed UniForum South Africa, operates the .co.za and .web.za domains and now the new city domains.
Parallel so-called “sunrise” and “land rush” periods have begun and are meant to protect the rights of intellectual property owners who will receive priority when it comes to registering domain names.
This parallel period will run for 90 days, with the land rush period running for a further 30 days beyond that. General availability will follow, during which any Internet user worldwide will be able to register a South African city top-level domain. This domains will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
“The land rush period is the first opportunity that the general public will get to apply for an Internet domain name using the new .durban, .joburg or .capetown suffix,” said Vika Mpisane, CEO of the ZA Domain Name Authority (Zadna), the government-appointed regulator of the greater .za namespace.
“This period does not employ the first come, first served principle, but will instead open an application window for 120 days, running concurrently with the sunrise period. During this phase, registration requests will be submitted for generic and premium domains.”
Registration of names will follow the usual process where applicants register names through their chosen accredited registrars. “As is normal practice, different registrars will charge different prices due to bundled services they provide in addition to the basic domain name registration service,” said Mpisane.
The ZACR has developed a trademark protection system called the Mark Validation System to assist in the adjudication of competing city top-level domain disputes.
The organisation said the launch of the city domains offers a way for locally based products and services to promote themselves. The domains could also play an important role in promoting tourism, it said.
The imminent availability of .joburg, .capetown and .durban domain names is a golden opportunity for organisations and individuals … to claim a piece of their valuable brands,” said Mpisane. — © 2014 NewsCentral Media
