The usTLD Stakeholder Council (“Council”) and Neustar, Inc. (“Neustar”), the registry operator for the usTLD, sought public comment on the Council’s recommendation to Neustar to release one and two character domain names in connection with the usTLD Premium Domain Name (“PDN”) plan. The primary goal of the proposed PDN Plan is to increase the use and awareness of the .US brand in the consumer marketplace. Additionally, the PDN Plan provides the opportunity for Neustar to allocate .US Premium Names to support organizations or activities that will help spread awareness or encourage growth of the .US domain.

1. Background

As part of an overall effort by Neustar, to raise awareness and use of the .US domain, the PDN Plan would make available to the public at a premium price certain high-value, highly-visible, premium .US domain names (“.US Premium Domains”), some of which are currently designated as “reserved” (including one- and two-character .US domain names), and others that would be newly designated as such. Given the level of investment, buyers of high value premium domain names typically put these names to good use – building web properties that are heavily marketed and promoted. This is beneficial to the entire namespace, getting the most coveted names circulated.

While intended to protect existing intellectual property rights and preserve the legacy locality namespace, the release and implementation of a premium name space will foster new growth for the .US domain extension using current best practices and allocation standards. Throughout the plan, all policies and restrictions regarding two-character state and territorial abbreviations or numbered domain names are recommended to still be in effect.

THE .US PREMIUM DOMAIN NAME PLAN (PDF)
For more details, please review the full text of the plan

1. Questions

The Council sought public comments on the following questions:

• Should the usTLD policy be revised to allow the release of 1 and 2 character domains?
• Should the usTLD registry operator include currently unregistered and registered name as premium names? (The premium plan will not affect existing registrants’ domain names, nor will it affect transfers of existing names.)
• What, if any, impact would the introduction of 2 character names at the second level have on the legacy city.state.us registrations in .US? Please explain any concerns you have in detail.

1. View Comments

The usTLD Stakeholder Council received one public comment on the proposed usTLD Premium Domain Name Plan.

View the comments here