PIR to join GlobalBlock, but its crown jewel won’t
Public Interest Registry is set to join GlobalBlock, the multi-TLD trademark blocking network, following approval of a series of ICANN registry contract amendments.
It will become easily the largest registry operator, by domains under management, to sign up for the service. But its crown jewel, .org, will not be included, I’m told.
.charity, .foundation, .gives, .giving, .ngo and .ong, along with four translations in non-Latin scripts, will become part of GlobalBlock, meaning trademark owners will get to block their brands rather than defensively register them, saving a bit of money.
But the protections will not extend to .org, which with over 11 million domains is the third-largest gTLD. This is probably quite telling.
GlobalBlock says it currently blocks domains in 634 “extensions”, by which it means a mix of gTLDs, ccTLDs, and second-level domains in the consensus DNS, as well as some newer blockchain-based namespaces.
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