With more and more new top level domains delegated, more registrars are now offering pre-registration service periods. Some companies guarantee pre-reserved domain names for their clients. This causes concern – not just with the domain community, but with ICANN as well. In particular, Cyrus Namazi, Vice President of DNS Industry Engagement for ICANN, published a blog post yesterday in the corporation blog where he called both registrars and domain applicants for caution.
”As responsible Registrars are advising, successful pre-registration of a domain cannot be guaranteed. ICANN seconds that advice”, Namazi writes. He specifies situations which can impact the availability of pre-registered domain names. In particular, a domain name can be claimed by an trademark owner during the sunrise phase; it can also be allocated to a premium category, or become a subject of a string similarity conflictt. Finally, Cyrus Namazi points out that some top level domains may not end up being delegated. He is calling for the entire domain community to be cautiouswhen pre-registering domain names in new gTLDs.
