The BBC has made a bold decision on its domain portfolio. Like any other big company, it owns a slew of domain names. And, like any big company, it makes no use of the lion’s share of these names. The bulk of the portfolio is defensive registrations – domains names which are similar to the company brand. Many companies resort to real “carpet bombings,” registering domains that at least remotely resemble the names of their brands. This approach is reminiscent of a joke about a vigilant Soviet theater censor who said: “If I see the words ‘down with’ on the first page of a play and ‘the CPSU’ on the last page, I read it as ‘Down with the CPSU.’”
The BBC decided to take a different road. Its domain portfolio consists of over 20,000 domain names, 90 percent of which are not used at all or were needed for websites that ceased to exist long ago. Obviously, the annual renewal of these domains costs a huge sum of money. “I just thought actually this is not an efficient way to spend money…” said Diane Hamer, head of business and legal affairs for brand protection at the BBC. She added that regardless of all efforts, it is still impossible to protect company brands from every misuse. It was therefore decided to halve BBC’s domain portfolio, reports Domain Investing.
That said, the corporation will retain its domains in traditional TLDs and, of course, the UK’s ccTLD. It will evaluate whether other registrations should be renewed. The first candidates to go are domain names using hyphens and those that imitate BBC brands using misspellings.
