Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water….along comes another change to the domain name world.

This is a final reminder that the Sunrise period for the .XXX blocking process runs until Friday, October 28, 2011, to protect Canadian trade-marks. To be eligible for this procedure, the request must correspond to a trade-mark that was registered by Sept. 1, 2011. For more info, see this link. 

Next up:  The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) recently announced its own changes within the .CA domain. CIRA is currently proposing to introduce French-accented letters. The current system only recognizes .CA domain names in ASCII or non-accented letters (a-z) and numbers. CIRA is considering the implementation of French Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) at the second level (to the left of the dot). What does this mean? This would permit the use of accented letters such as those listed below:

1. é, ë, ê, è
2. â, à
3. ô
4. ù, û, ü
5. ç
6. î, ï

Yes, this would come complete with its own Sunrise period, to permit existing registrants to preregister and a landrush protocol which is similar to other domain name changes such as the introduction of the .XXX domain. For more info on CIRA’s proposed changes, see this link. Calgary – 07:00 MDT