Allow me to first present some basic domain information for context. Top Level Domains (TLDs) are all mandated by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Some examples of TLDs are .com, .org, .edu and .biz. Beneath TLDs come the ccTLDs; country code Top Level Domains. These include .eu, .de, .uk, and so forth. Many counties have specific domain extension, such as the .ca here in Canada has its own authority that operates underneath CIRA.  There are usually specific criteria that need to be met before a ccTLD can be registered. CIRA requires that the domain owner must be a Canadian citizen, corporation, property owner, or have some other ownership within Canada.

CIRA is proposing that, along with many other countries, Canadians should have the ability to have Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). IDNs are domain names that contain at least one character in a language-specific script or alphabet. Examples of these are Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Latin, Arabic – or characters with diacritics, such as French. IDNs themselves have been around for more than ten years; though it was only two years ago that ICANN approved the creation of IDNs for country code Top Level Domains. It has taken since then for CIRA to propose the integration of IDNs for the .ca domain extension. On September 20th, CIRA opened a public consultation to receive feedback regarding the integration of IDNs and the implications for current domain owners. Their proposed plan is to move ahead with the registration of IDNs in two phases.

The Sunrise Period
The Sunrise Period is a proposed 12-week period that would provide current registrants the opportunity to register any IDN variant combination of their existing domain names. To borrow the example provided by CIRA in their official documentation outlining their proposed IDN policy, the existing owner of preside.ca would have the opportunity to register all variants of their domain (préside.ca, prèsïdë.ca, prësîdê.ca, etc.) during the Sunrise Period before anyone else can attempt to register these domain variants. Current registrants may choose to register any and all variants that they choose; there will be no automatic assignment of IDNs for either current or future .ca registrants. At the end of the twelve weeks, the Sunrise Period would end and the Landrush Phase would commence.

The Landrush Phase
The Landrush Phase will immediately follow the 12 weeks outlined in the Sunrise Period and would allow any eligible party to register an IDN that was not previously either applied for or registered. CIRA is expecting high volumes of domain registrations during this phase and have outlined that, in the instance where more than one party applies for any given domain name, the name would be allocated on a random basis. This Phase will also last for 12 weeks. At the end of this phase, IDNs will be made available to the general public on a first come, first serve basis.

In an attempt to be both fair and objective, as well as cover all significant topics, CIRA has opened forums that address four of the major questions and concerns surrounding these proposed changes. They are outlined below, along with some opinions and potential issues that have been brought up.

1.    Does the proposed Sunrise period unfairly favour existing Registrants over trademark owners? Should trademark owners be provided further rights protection?

Some issues being raised on this particular point are regarding the trademark office and the concern that they no longer closely monitor trademark infringements; rather, it is the responsibility of the trademark owner to report and follow up on any concerns. Also, because the trademark office prohibits the registration of one business name that is similar to another with only diacritical differences, CIRA should follow that same policy to protect trademark holders and business owners. There are also concerns about cyber “squatters” who may purchase domain names with diacritical marks and confuse prospective clients of the original domain name and attempt to sell those IDNs to the original company for exorbitant sums of money. While most commenters seem to agree that IDNs would improve the culture and experience for French businesses and companies by allowing them to register accurate domains for their business names, the major concerns regarding trademark infringements, cyber squatters, and phishing scams seem to be most prevalent within this discussion forum.

2.    Are CIRA’s objectives appropriate? Is there anything that you would suggest be added or removed?

In regards to CIRA’s objectives to keep Canadians connected, there are concerns that these domain extensions with actually do the opposite: places divisions between French and English Canadians and the rest of the world. In this viewpoint, going ahead with the proposed place will hurt everyone but the registrars, who will be capitalizing on businesses that are registering every possible variant of their domain (at the regular cost of a new domain registration) in order to keep their interests secure. A proposed solution for this method would be to have an automated process that prohibits the registration of a domain that only different from a current domain in diacritical characters. CIRA currently has this policy with matching provincial variants. For example, it is currently not allowed to register domain.bc.ca if someone else already owns domain.ca. This solution would work the same way, so that if someone attempted to register domaîn.ca it would be listed as ‘unavailable’.

3.    Given CIRA’s mandate and existing Policies, Rules and Procedures, have we left out any issues that need consideration prior to developing a draft policy on the launch of IDNs?

In the issue of fairness to current CIRA registrants, it is theoretically a good idea that all current registrants will be able to first register any diacritical variants they so choose before the general public has a chance to do so. However, commenters are voicing opinions that mainly state that only the registrants of the original domains should be allowed to register any and all variants with diacritical characters. Moving forwards, CIRA could possibly implement a policy that allows all new domain registrations to have IDNs that are open to any other person that would like to register the variant.

4.    Do you have any other comments or concerns about any other elements of the proposed launch?

Concerns that do not necessarily fall under the other three categories can include potential problems with DNS, accessibility and the search engines. If CIRA takes the suggestion that all previously registered domains have the diacritical variants protected and held for them, there are concerns as to how this would work. If the goal is to include the Francophone community, would all possible variants be redirected to the existing domain? If so, what implications does this pose to DNS settings?

Accessibility is another concern. Previously mentioned above, perhaps rather that connecting Canadians, this policy will only serve to divide Canadians amongst themselves, as well as separating them from the rest of the world. Would we potentially see a rise in ‘bilingual’ keyboards that facilitate typing French properly? Furthermore, how much business would be lost to French companies with redirection errors and typing confusion?

Lastly, and potentially most disconcerting, is that there is not much information on what effect these diacritical characters will have in the search engines. Engines like Google presently typically treat special characters as equivalent to their unaccented versions. Coupled with the likelihood that the average English speaker neither owns a French keyboard nor knows the keyboard shortcuts for the characters on their current keyboards, these sites will likely only be accessible by the Francophone community.

While there is a high degree of uncertainty regarding this policy and it’s currently unknown how much input from the public CIRA will take into consideration in their final decision, CIRA has done their part to involve the public and give advanced notice of their intentions. The potential solutions to problems raised by those participating in the forums seems endless and CIRA will undoubtedly have their work cut out for them in terms of wading through the comments and finding actual problems and viable solutions that benefit the greater good. One thing is for certain, though: the implementation of IDNs WILL have a significant impact on Canadian, whether they are domain registrants, business owners, or trademark holders.

1) “Domain Monetization Strategies” – Bill Sweetman

Bill Sweetman is the General Manger of YummyNames. This is a service that offers people the opportunity to purchase or lease premium domain names. Bill is a highly respected authority in the Internet marketing industry and it was very interesting to hear his tips on making the most from domain names.

Besides regular monetization tactics such as sales, leasing and basic parking, Bill’s presentation covered two parking services that enable a greater level of control over the content and presentation of the parked pages.

The first of these services is WhyPark. WhyPark is different to conventional parking services in that it assists in the establishment of the domain’s brand. The WhyPark service includes pages of real content that are based on keywords provided by the domain owner. This content is updated on a regular basis. This means that relevant information is provided for visitors on the WhyPark site and they are not simply redirected to other sites. This is a significant value added service compared to traditional parking services that just provide links to other sites.

The second parking service that Bill discussed was DevHub. DevHub is a service that provides domain owners with the ability to build quality web pages that are of high value to both the users and owners. DevHub advises domain owners on site content, monetization modules, design and editing. This is a huge improvement on other domain parking services that regularly produce mediocre sites that are at risk of being designated as spam or not recognized by search engines.

2) “Development Tools” – Christian Heilmann

Christian Heilmann is a professional web developer who has worked for several agencies including Yahoo, where he was responsible for delivering Yahoo Answers and Yahoo Maps Europe. Christian’s presentation at the Domain Convergence Conference outlined several of the amazing web development tools that are available to the general public at no cost.

Christian spoke about the advantages of distributing data on many of the free information-sharing websites in order to direct traffic back to a specific website. Examples of ways to do this include uploading photos or videos onto Flickr and YouTube, tagging URLs at Delicious and linking addressed on Google Maps. Doing this means that the information reaches many different internet communities and that the data is spread over multiple servers, thus increasing its accessibility.

Another interesting tool that Christian discussed was Chat Catcher. This is a WordPress plug-in that monitors social networking sites for updates that provide a link to a specific website. Site owners can use Chat Catcher to have Twitter updates or Facebook statuses that link to their site as comments in their blog.

Chris posted the notes for the presentation on his blog.

Online web development resources are great, however you should keep in mind that when you are using web development tools or open source platforms they must be monitored and kept up to date so as to decrease the chances of the website getting hacked.

The keynote address of this year’s conference was presented by Michael and David Castello (CEO and COO of the Castello Cities Internet Network) and was titled “The Future of Domaining – Building Your Brand”.  The Castello brothers highlighted the importance of memory retention in branding.  They emphasized the importance of creating and building a brand that visitors are able to remember so that the site is not reliant upon search engines to direct traffic.

Justin Hayward (Communications Director of Telnic) then gave a very interesting presentation regarding new TLDs and .TEL.  The .TEL service is a communication hub that enables businesses and individuals to store and control their keywords and important contact information in a real time database.  It does not require hosting, coding or managing a website, however all the information is accessible over the web.  This new service has already proven to be very popular with 100,000 new .TEL domain names being sold within the first 72 hours since  .TEL  extension became available on March 24, 2009 and a further 200,000 new domain names were sold in the following two months.

Mr Hayward also detailed the new technology that is being developed by Telnic and their innovative plans to hold user community events.  The first of these events will be “TelCamp” which will take place at the Royal Ontario Museum on 15 August 2009.  The objective of TelCamp is to exhibit the attributes of the .TEL domain and the TelCamp.tel site.  This is a newly created site that facilitates event management by automating registration, attendee lists and agendas.

Rick Silver then spoke about Domain Development 2.0.  In particular, he discussed a business review site called “n49″.  This is a site that allows community members to review local businesses and share their opinions with other members. The site utilizes many generic .CA domain names by forwarding the domain name to a relevant category of the site.

In the afternoon of the first day of the Domain Convergence Conference the Domain Owners Association of Canada (DOAC) held its General Meeting.  The DOAC is a new organization (founded in 2009) that was established to represent the corporations and individuals in the domain industry in Canada.  This includes domain owners, parking providers, the media, registrars, advertising agencies and lawyers.  They aim to promote the use of .ca domain names and enhance their value, as well as protect members from fraud in relation to domain names.  Membership of the DOAC is increasing, however they are still looking for ways to increase member sign-ups and this was the main focus of the General Meeting.

Looking forward to day two of the conference.

Domain Convergence is a conference for domain name owners, developers, investors and entrepreneurs which will include updates, discussions and sharing of ideas.

The business and use of domain names has been a hot topic ever since the beginning of the Internet.  This conference is sure to fire up ideas and discussions around the topic, and attract some of Canada’s biggest domainers.

If you register with the promotion code “9thsphere” you will receive $50 discount off the registration.

Hope to see you there.

Currently anyone can locate the owner of a domain name through a WHOIS search, which displays the person, organization or institution name, address, telephone, fax, and email address. Information of this nature can serve a range of purposes, including unwanted advertising efforts.

On June 10, 2008, CIRA’s new WHOIS policy will protect the personal information of new dot-ca domain registrations. Anyone wishing to contact a domain owner will be able to do so through an online contact form. Domains registered before June 10 will not be affected by the policy.

We have yet to see how CIRA will manage the contact form and communication process. If it’s anything like most registrars’ WHOIS privacy feature, the registrar will send an email or mail to the domain name owner with the third-party request. The domain owner will then decide if they wish to respond.

Dot-com domains have a similar WHOIS privacy feature, but it’s dictated by the registrars themselves and not ICANN (equivalent of CIRA that operates dot-com and other top-level domain names). To protect your information for your dot-com, simple enable WHOIS privacy with your registrar.

Next time you register your Canadian domain name, your personal information will not be disclosed to the public.

Province and city level extensions were once commonly used to identify the location of a registration. For instance, if you had an Ontario provincially registered business your domain extension was – name.on.ca, or if you were a sole proprietor in Toronto, it would be – name.toronto.on.ca. This format was later removed and dot-ca was opened for registration by anyone/anything “Canadian”, proof of Canadian citizenship not required.

If Quebec were allowed its own extension (.qc), without the dot-ca, how would the rest of Canada respond? Most likely, on principle alone, other provinces would want their own extensions as well. And that could very well lead to the end of Canada’s internet nationalism – our proud-to-be-Canadian, dot-ca.

No doubt, for the benefit of a province’s revenue, having its own extension may be advantageous. Many smaller countries have released their own extension in an effort to profit and form a clearer identity. And most have succeeded. Even the previously held dot-tv used to be owned by one of the Polynesian island nations, Tuvalu.

Nothing against the beautiful province of Quebec, but I hope this form of separation doesn’t become a reality, as the all-Canadian dot-ca could start to loose the global presence it’s steadily acquiring. Read Canada’s One Million Domain Names.

So where does that place Canada in comparison to other country-level domain extensions? Here’s where dot-ca ranked in the fifteenth spot back in February 2008, according to “Global Domain Name Statistics“.

And these are some generic extensions.

We decided to run an analysis using these statistics. We wanted to know the percentage of domains specific to each country based on its population. Here’s what we got.

*population numbers form the CIA World Factbook 2008

Out of 25 countries Canada ranked in 13th place in our analysis. Countries like Netherlands, Denmark and Germany rated highest. Does this mean that we are less willing to appeal to our fellow Canadian consumers? Does a dot-ca registration or any other country level extension make you more patriotic?

One could say that the Internet savvyness of a country may affect the number of domains registered. However, country-specific domain registration in many ways could also reflect the effort made by a country to target its particular market and populace. A dot-ca domain name for instance, directly targets local markets, sending the message that a website is proudly Canadian.

It’s true, English speaking countries have a larger competitive market to contend with and have more domain extensions to choose from. There may be less incentive to differentiate Canadian targeting with a dot-ca, when you can opt for the better known dot-com. A dot-com domain name may widen the demographic scope of a website, but more times than not, a focused demographic tends to fare better.

According to CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, 75% of Canadians prefer to shop on a dot-ca website. Privacy and security issues often deter Canadians from online shopping across the border, along with extra costs associated with shipping and duties. CIRA reports that in 2005 Canadians ordered $5 billion worth of goods online and 63% of these purchases were with Canadian vendors. For some small businesses, a visible dot-ca website could be the deciding factor for sustenance.

If your Canadian website is an established dot-com, why not register your dot-ca domain and at the very least, direct it to your dot-com.

For more information on choosing a domain name extension, read Dot-Com or Dot-CA?

Researched & written by Marta LeClair

A dot-com stands for United States commercial whereas the dot-ca is the country level extension for any Canadian identity. Where the dot-com was the first extension available and can be registered by anyone anywhere in the world, the requirements of a Canadian “identity” is required before registration of dot-ca. The identity can be a citizen, corporation, institution, etc. as long as it’s Canadian.

A study was done in 2001 found 70% of Canadians prefer to do their online shopping on dot-ca websites than on dot-com. In a more recent 2007 study, found 100% of Canadians preferred dot-ca, followed by dot-com (94%), dot-net (29%), dot-org (29%),and then by dot-info at 24%. Preference to the Canadian extension was given because it increased trustworthiness. One may conclude that other country level extensions have the same preference among its citizens, however in the same study American’s preferred the dot-com over the dot-us.

Ideally if one is selling to both Canada and the US, you would want to have both dot-ca and dot-com domain extensions. Use the dot-com to promote in the US and the dot-ca to Canadians.

Visit 9th sphere to purchase your Canadian domain name.

Reference:
http://www.dnjournal.com/columns/extensionpoll.htm

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has sent many news releases on the issue. If you receive a renewal notice, you should contact your current registrar to confirm that your domain name needs renewing.

If you decide to renew your domain(s) by sending a response to one of these renewal notices, note the following:

1. You will likely pay too much for your renewal. Renewal rates that we’ve seen from these mailings are expensive, typically between $25 and $30 US per domain/year. Some will take your payment and not even transfer your domain.
2. You could lose the services being provided by your current registrar. Some registration services providers also provide DNS, email forwarding, hosting, or other services with their domain registrations.
3. You could lose your customer service. Once your domain is transferred to another registrar, your current provider will not be able to provide customer support for your domain.

This is a sample letter you should ignore.

To protect your contact information, your domain registrar should provide WHOIS Privacy service which allows you to retain your domain name without having to expose your personal information to the public.

This is typically how it works:

• Your domain registration information, including the Administrative, Billing, and Technical contacts, are masked with generic data within public WHOIS databases. This way you retain full ownership and privacy of your domain information.
• Requests to view your domain’s contact information are filtered and forwarded to you.
• You decide whether or not to respond.

To enable WHOIS Privacy contact your domain name registrar.

Now that you are aware that this is possible be cautious of your renewal notices.

Visit 9thsphere.com to renew or purchase a Canadian domain name.