Private individuals may soon be able to register their full name as a .ie address, eg joebloggs.ie, rather than the less attractive jb07.ie. John Collinsreports.
IE Domain Registry, the company responsible for administering .ie web addresses, will shortly put a proposal to its resellers that will allow for this more intuitive form of names, rather than what is allowed under the current system.
Currently individuals can register their initials followed by two digits of their choosing, eg Joe Bloggs can register jb07.ie, although there are some exemptions. Only eight people have chosen to register such a domain.
In advance of the publication of its annual report, IEDR chief executive David Curtin this week told The Irish Times that he planned to talk to the company's resellers shortly about relaxing the personal domains rules. He said the IEDR had made a proposal in this regard two years ago but there had been little interest from the large resellers.
If agreed, the ability to have their own easy-to-remember web address in the Irish name space on the web is likely to prove popular with bloggers and other individuals who maintain their own websites.
The proposal is yet another sign that the IEDR is opening up and responding to the needs of Irish internet users. To say that the registry has had a strained relationship with the local internet industry would be something of an understatement.
Common complaints included the length of time it took to register an address, the amount of paperwork required by an organisation to show it had rights to that address and the lack of automated systems at the IEDR.
Many felt Curtin was handed a poisoned chalice when he took on the role in 2002. "Those who were sounding off about us in 2002 had just cause - our back office systems in particular weren't up to scratch," he says.
Despite being one of its largest customers, Michele Neylon, chief executive of Blacknight Solutions, has been a vocal critic of the IEDR in the past.
"In the last four years, they have managed to drag the IEDR kicking and screaming into the 21st century," she says. "They are still not perfect but the average time to register or change a domain has dropped considerably."
The IEDR has always prided itself on being a managed domain. Unlike the dotcom name space, people who register a domain are checked to ensure they have a valid right to the address. Curtin credits this as being one of the main reasons why, earlier this year, US security firm McAfee ranked it as the second-safest country-level domain in the world.
Despite this, .ie hasn't been immune from incidents of cybersquatting. Last summer it emerged that two individuals had registered a range of addresses, including ipod.ie, adidas.ie, nike.ie and bebo.ie .
Curtin says the registry is "caught in a bind" when, for example, a business called "nike.ie" is registered at the Companies Office and then seeks to register that web address.
He points out that the brands in question have recourse to an arbitration process at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). Last year three domains - ikea.ie, travelcounsellors.ie and wiseowl.ie - were ruled on and in all three cases WIPO sided with the organisation that took the case.
Although he acknowledges that .ie addresses are more expensive than .com addresses, he believes the protections associated with it more than make up for the extra cost. Irish businesses seem to agree - the IEDR's annual report reveals 22,590 .ie addresses were registered last year, up 41 per cent on 2005.
