dot kiwi
January 14th, 2012 at 10:19 am by David FarrarStuff reports:
People and businesses who find “.co.nz” insufficiently patriotic may be able to register websites that end with “.kiwi” from next year.
A group of ex-pat New Zealanders based in Vancouver has teamed up with Wellington lawyer Peter Dengate Thrush – a former chairman of worldwide internet governance body Icann – to found a new company, Dot Kiwi, which hopes to cater for those who want a more “Kiwi flavour” to their online identity. …
Dot Kiwi, which is Canadian-owned, would compete with New Zealand’s non-profit internet society, InternetNZ, which oversees “.nz” addresses and is funded by a compulsory levy on registrations.
Dengate Thrush said the administration of the “.kiwi” registry would be outsourced to Minds and Machines, a company he chairs that is based in Santa Monica in the United States.
InternetNZ president Frank March said all new and existing top-level domains competed with “.nz” and the society had not ruled out lodging its own application to run “.kiwi”.
“We’d certainly have a good case to put up, but there are very heavy costs involved in establishing a top-level domain and it is not a process we would undertake lightly. The arguments are quite finely balanced,” he said.
The .nz Domain Name Commission did some research last year through Colmar Brunton and around 11% of respondents (off memory) said that they would register in .kiwi in preference to .nz or .com, if they had the choice – so I think there is market demand for .kiwi. Whether or not the demand is high enough to cover the costs of a registry is another issue.
As a disclosure I’m on the working group which is looking at the pros and cons of InternetNZ applying for .kiwi. The WG’s role is not to decide, but to prepare consultation papers for discussion with the InternetNZ Council and members. As Frank March is quoted as saying, there are heavy costs involved, and many other issues.
Related posts:
- kiwi.nz approved
- NZer elected to ICANN Board
- New top level domains are coming
- Peter Dengate-Thrush elected Chairman of ICANN
January 14th, 2012 at 10:47 am
FWIW, in the US the name ‘kiwi’ has a fairly tenuous association with NZ in the minds of the average person in the street. Most people associate the name with the fruit, and relatively few associate the fruit with NZ. The idea that there is a bird of that name or that NZer’s like to call themselves kiwis is just not that well known. So although I’m sure there is some feel-good factor for people being able to use a .kiwi domain name, if it’s being viewed as part of a possible branding strategy for NZ companies doing business overseas, it’s not obvious to me that it would have a huge amount of value.
Vote:January 14th, 2012 at 10:49 am
All we then need are some good web product to adapt the .kiwi. I’m not sure the ever growing list of one day sale sites fits the bill.
Vote:January 14th, 2012 at 11:12 am
First things first. Get rid of the subsidy paid to InternetNZ in the form of the compulsory levy on registrations.
Then dot kiwi can compete fairly. We do believe in free market economics don’t we?
Vote:January 14th, 2012 at 11:17 am
I have just spent almost two minutes contemplating this but still cannot answer one question.
Why?
Vote:January 14th, 2012 at 11:56 am
Presumably most of the costs of a registry are subject to economies of scale – if you’re already running one registry, running a second wouldn’t be all that expensive. So InternetNZ could presumably do it relatively cheaply, sounds like this Canadian dude also has a company that’s running a few registries, so no doubt he can do it quite cheaply too. I wouldn’t mind it for an e-mail domain – paull@mail.kiwi wouldn’t be a bad address. I can imagine people using it, just not people paying a premium for it. A number of companies might choose to dual home – fletchers.co.nz and fletchers.kiwi could both point to the same web server, and it probably only costs $50 per annum for the extra domain, so for a large company not really a material cost.
Vote:January 14th, 2012 at 12:01 pm
Pathetic. What we need is less nationalism, not more. We need more recognition that humanity is one species on Earth, all for one and one for all.
There are two outstanding manifestations of this cynical manipulation of the general populace by way of fundamentalist patriotism: U.S.A. and North Korea.
Here’s a thought experiment: I’m North Korean and I despise the regime and take up arms against it – am I a pinhead or a patriot? Or, I’m a US citizen who sees his country engaging in murderous wars, justified through lies and distortions, against mainly civilian populations, and take up arms against it – am I a pinhead or a patriot?
(Hat tip to Bill O’Reilly)
Yes, I know, the obvious answer is that I would be dead, but let’s put that to one side.
Vote:January 14th, 2012 at 12:48 pm
No surprises there.
But seriously, this is outrageous – where’s the public consultation, the online poll? Has any anyone asked David Shearer what he thinks about this?
What about the other options: dot silverfern, dot aotearoa, dot southerncross, dot marmite, dot bussybee, dot fonterraland …?
Vote:January 14th, 2012 at 1:11 pm
We don’t need more TLDs! No-one uses them anyway. If you want a website, you google it.
It’ll make a bit for registrars when big companies need to purchase their domainname.kiwi to stop squatters.
Vote:January 14th, 2012 at 1:39 pm
dot honky does it for me as long as I can opt out of paying half my current tax bill that goes to support the indigenous folks in their race to the bottom of the shitpile!
Vote:January 14th, 2012 at 2:42 pm
Doubt its veracity as a commoin use domain register as the “world” doesn’t give a stuff about who we are but searches for information and product.
Vote:>co.nz is great if you want to keep your lookups inside NZ.(as would be .au.) Local lookups are better found on Google NZ rather than Google world.
my experience anyway.
January 14th, 2012 at 3:01 pm
MT-Tinman;Why?
Because a) there are people who don’t understand the concept of a hierarchical namespace, and b) they can make money from companies who feel obligated to register there to protect brands and IP from squatters (like the .biz scam).
Vote:January 14th, 2012 at 11:57 pm
Don’t really get the whole .kiwi thing.
On another note – I learned the other day that the Cook Islands owns the “.co.ck” domain. That should be a boost to the island economy – they should be able to make a killing hosting porn sites!
Vote:January 15th, 2012 at 1:14 am
Yeah nah – Sorry.
Vote:January 15th, 2012 at 7:28 am
I imagine the local Aids Foundation will be the first to use that kiwi suffix.
Vote:Afterall, in Europe a kiwi is a fruit.
January 15th, 2012 at 9:25 am
http://www.___.co.mic [made in china]
Vote: