As already reported by the media, the International Olympic Committee has selected Brisbane, Australia, as the venue for the 2032 Summer Olympics. Cybersquatters became quite active following the decision that was made. In this connection, the auDA registry managing Australia’s national domain .AU, has announced counter-measures to deal with what’s going on. According to its blog, the number of attempts to register domain names mentioning the Olympics has skyrocketed in the past few days. The registry is asking the Australians to refrain from such actions that will yield no results.
The words Olympic, Olympics, Olympic games, Olympiad and Olympiads are included in the registry’s new block list, and the national government’s permission alone is required to use them in newly-registered domain names. While reporting this news, Domain Incite notes that this approach is more comprehensive than that of ICANN. Contracts between ICANN and registries of top-level domains also note the need for blocking some domains, including those linked with the activities of the International Olympic Committee and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. However, ICANN insists on blocking only those domains whose names fully coincide with the official names of organizations and their events. In turn, auDA experts came to a decision to include some possible alternatives.
