Registration under the new .coop top-level domain (TLD) opened
yesterday to all co-operatives worldwide. The domain name, being
available to a relatively narrow market, received only around 4,100
advance reservation, considerably fewer than the other recently
introduced domains, .biz, .info and .name.
In contrast to .com, .org, and .net domains, in which registration is open to anyone, to buy names under the new .coop domain, registrants must meet strict eligibility.
The names are available only to credit unions, co-operatives and co-op support organisations. Co-operatives are businesses that are owned and controlled by their members - the people who buy goods and services produced by the co-operative - not by investors.
According to dotCoop, the sponsor of the new domain and a wholly owned subsidiary of the US-based National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA), there are 750,000 co-operatives worldwide which provide services to an estimated 760 million members.
NCBA proposed the .coop domain to ICANN in September 2000, in co-operation with the International Cooperative Alliance and Poptel, a co-operative ISP in the UK that will serve as the .coop registry operator.
.Coop was one of seven generic TLDs were approved by ICANN in November 2000, the others being .biz, .name, .info, .museum, .aero and .pro. These add to the existing generic TLDs: .com, .org. .net, .edu, .mil, .gov and .int.
For more information, see: www.ncba.coop
