Details of an interesting collision that occurred during the approval of a new gTLD .bar were released. The only candidate for the domain was Punto 2012, that of course wanted to use it as a platform for those who fancy alcoholic amusements and for bar owners to promote their establishments. However, Punto 2012’s application faced an unexpected difficulty. The problem is that “Bar” is the name of a tiny city and administrative region of Montenegro. And, according to ICANN rules, registration of the domain is possible only if local authorities approve.
At the end of last week it was announced that Punto 2012 managed to get the approval. Some details of the deal were also announced. The most curious part is that Punto 2012 is obliged to pay $10.000 a year to a school in the city of Bar for each year of its registry agreement, which is 10 years. Thus, the school will get $100.000 overall – it is a fantastic sum of money for a town with a population of 17 thousand citizens and not in the richest country of the world.
Also, Punto 2012 intends to reserve several names in the .bar zone for the needs of city enterprises and organizations and for the citizens of Bar. Seems like the city of Bar is going to be the smallest town to have its own city domain.
«The process of resolving disputes between applicants for the new gTLDs is regularly followed by such situations, when absolutely different firms, public organizations or even state authorities compete for a domain name. For instance, this is the case of .GDN domain, both Russian GLONASS and British newspaper Guardian applied for it», said senior deputy director of the Technical Center of Internet Marina Nikerova. «Similar cases occur on the second level in traditional domains as well – both Police Department of the UK and the eponymous Italian brand of sunglasses fought for police.uk domain. Mostly this happens because of the ambiguity of the words that are used for new domains or because the name of the proposed zone coincides with the name of a town, brand or public organization».
