The .info domain will be unrestricted, open to any business or person to register for any purpose. However, .biz will be a restricted TLD open only for commercial or business purposes and .biz names are not intended for exclusively personal or non-commercial purposes.
Registry operators NeuLevel (.biz) and Afilias (.info) were among seven registry operators for new TLDs selected by the ICANN Board of Directors in November 2000 following an open process for submission of proposals. Agreements with the operators of .aero, .coop, .museum, .name, and .pro are expected shortly.
All ICANN accredited registrars in good standing for .com, .net and .org will be eligible to enter into revised accreditation agreements for the new TLDs. Currently, there are more than 170 companies accredited with approximately 80 operational. Retail pricing for the new domains is expected to be similar to pricing for .com names.
ICANN explained the application processes as follows:
- Beginning in late May through the beginning of July, .biz will offer a fee-based service for businesses to submit trade mark claims before the application process is opened. Under this service, domain-name applicants will be notified of a trade mark owner's claim when they submit an application for a claimed name and, if they decide to go ahead with the registration, the business submitting the claim will be notified of the registration and will be given a window of opportunity to challenge the registration using an administrative dispute resolution procedure.
- Beginning in July through late September, .biz will open the application process for businesses. Businesses will submit their applications through registrars; these applications will be randomly selected in batches and awarded. Businesses can submit an unlimited number of applications but there will be a $2.00 fee for each application for a .biz name.
- In October, .biz names that have been awarded will become operational. .biz will use a Restriction Dispute Resolution Process (RDRP) similar to the ICANN UDRP process to resolve challenges related to the business-only restricted nature of the registry.
- Beginning in late June and ending in late July, Afilias will offer a 30 day "sunrise" period during which anyone with a registered national trade mark can apply through a registrar for a .info domain name corresponding to the trade mark. Trade mark data will be provided at the time of application and the term of the domain name registration will be for at least 5 years.
- To assure fair and equal access during the sunrise period, registrars will first collect applications and deliver them to Afilias. Afilias will then implement a multi-round batch processing system in which it will randomly select applications from each registrar's batch.
- The World Intellectual Property Association (WIPO) will administer a challenge procedure through which any third party may challenge these sunrise period registrations to ensure that they comply with the applicable requirements. This challenge process will be available for approximately 120 days after Afilias begins accepting applications for .info domain names from the general public, ending in November.
- Within 15 days after the conclusion of the sunrise period, Afilias will begin accepting applications for .info domain names from the general public. To ensure that ordinary internet users have an equal chance to register names during the initial launch phase, .info names will be registered using a multi-round batch process similar to the one used for sunrise period applications. Using this process, Afilias will randomly select applications from batches submitted by each registrar.
- This process is an alternative to a pure first-come-first-served system which could operate to the unfair advantage of those with mechanised registration scripts. This batch process will last approximately three weeks, after which Afilias will process applications on a real-time basis.
- Names awarded during the sunrise period will become operational one week after the beginning of the general application and registration process. The remainder of the awarded .info names will become operational promptly after Afilias processes them.