Internet Newsletter for Lawyers |
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Back in November 2000 the body in charge of the Internet's domain name system, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ICANN, announced the introduction of seven new top level domains (TLDs). Designed partly to relieve congestion in the overcrowded .com space the new TLDs included a domain specially for professionals, such as solicitors and barristers, called dot-pro.
Slated to be available for registration in late 2002, the domain will be operated by Dublin and New York based RegistryPro, a joint venture between industry giants Register.com and Virtual Internet. Unlike other TLDs, such as dot-com, you won't be able to register directly under dot-pro (such as [solicitor].pro). Instead domains will be allocated a second level domain (SLD) depending on the profession concerned. Lawyers are one of the lucky few who have so far been assigned a sub domain in the form of .law.pro, others include .med.pro for doctors and cpa.pro for accountants. In their final form, registered domains will look like www.[solicitor].law.pro for web pages and info@[solicitor].law.pro for email.
Registrations will not just be limited to individuals - firms or barristers' chambers will be able to register names as well in a similar format - e.g. www.[firm name].law.pro. As with other new top level domains there will be a "sunrise period" for the first few months in which registrations must also be supported by relevant trade mark details. Designed to protect IP rights, this process gives trade mark owners first bite at the domain cherry before potential cybersquatters move in.
RegistryPro reports that it intends to create an online database of all professionals who have signed up for a dot-pro domain to allow the Internet community to search for a lawyer or doctor by speciality and geographic location. This in itself may be the "killer app" of the whole project as there is no such system currently in place on a worldwide basis. As with all such developments, however, its success will depend on uptake from the userbase and the popularity of the search system with the Internet community.
There has also been a suggestion in some of the advance publicity that RegistryPro are intending to set themselves up as a Certification Authority for the issuing of digital certificates. This would allow lawyers with a dot-pro domain to electronically "sign" documents. However, what professionals would actually be able to do with the certificate depends, as always, on the extent of its adoption. Such methods of authentication are invariably only as good as the breadth of their acceptance within the online community.
Thus, providers of other certificates, including perhaps those operating, for example, the Law Society of Scotland's secure electronic communications project, should be watching RegistryPro closely as its popularity and user base may make it the preferred standard.
But perhaps most importantly dot-pro will differ from other TLDs in that it will be a so-called "restricted" domain. To register a domain you must demonstrate to RegistryPro that you are a "qualified professional in good standing". In contrast, most TLDs are unrestricted domains allowing anyone to register any domain on a first come first served basis - with trade mark and other IP abuses resolved after the event through arbitration processes such as The Uniform Dispute Resolutions Policy (UDRP) or Nominet's Dispute Resolution Service (DRS).
However, details of how registrations will be checked in practice are, at best, vague. Whilst RegistryPro's web site abounds with the merits of dot-pro there is very little information about how professionals will actually go about registering a domain and how their status as "qualified professional[s] in good standing" will be checked. Worryingly, whilst there is a great deal of technical detail about servers and technology behind the domain there is very little detail in RegistryPro's original proposal to ICANN to make it any clearer. RegistryPro simply says they will be "working with leading professional associations around the world" to determine guidelines for which applications will be accepted and which declined.
RegistryPro also propose to use a combination of public and private databases to check an applicant's history and records. All domains will be re-checked once a year so that registrants who have ceased practising or have been struck off by their professional bodies will lose their domain name. If RegistryPro's primary target markets of the USA, the UK/Ireland and Japan are considered, there are an estimated 2.4 million lawyers out there. If even some of these registered a dot-pro domain the costs of researching and maintaining accurate details for each one would be an enormous task. If you also include 2 million doctors, 2.7 million accountants and then expand the system to include other professions in other countries it soon becomes clear that RegistryPro's plans are somewhat ambitious.
Whilst maintaining such a large quantity of data is perhaps achievable, the costs would certainly be astronomical. Whilst no guides as to price have yet been set there have been rumours that a single dot-pro domain will cost several hundred dollars per two year registration. When a .com or .co.uk domain can be registered for less than £10, demand for dot-pro is not likely to be overwhelming.
As noted above, dot-pro will initially only be available to lawyers, doctors and accountants. There have been complaints that so far other groups like engineers or surveyors have been ignored, though RegistryPro say they will be rolling out more SLDs for other professions, with dentists and architects (who will probably be set as .dentdot-pro and .arcdot-pro) being the first additions. There have also been charges that the second level domains are too US-centric. Outside the USA the acronym "CPA" for accountants has little meaning and although the more relevant "ACA" has been proposed for the UK market, this does not take account of all languages.
So are there any possible advantages to lawyers in registering a dot-pro? Well, not really. New TLDs do give an opportunity for people, such as sole practitioners, who may have missed out on a suitable .com or .co.uk to register a domain for email or a web page. However, law firms or individuals who already have a web presence will see little advantage from registering a dot-pro domain.
If you already have a .com or .co.uk and a loyal number of visitors each month, why bother changing to dot-pro? If your firm doesn't register a dot-pro, client perception is unlikely to suffer. Research shows that take up of other new top level domains has not been high -.biz and .info were released late last year and apart from a few notable exceptions most domains have simply been registered by the respective .com owners to block cybersquatters. Customer recognition of new TLDs is low and it is clear that dot-com is still king.
Dot-pro may yet take the professional world by storm but perhaps it is more likely that it will come too late for those who have invested a great deal in dot-com or dot-co.uk. The answer is simply to "watch this space" and be ready to jump on the band-wagon if it proves necessary. But as someone once said (and it's all the more true of the Internet) "If you see a bandwagon it's too late to jump".
Tim Brown is a consultant with Edinburgh-based Demys Limited, who as well as working on Internet brand matters for their international clients, also produce a free domain news service for business.
Email t.brown@demys.com.
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