In September, new registration regulations will give professionals the world over access to .PRO. We talk to RegistryPro Director of Operations Matt Buckland about the .PRO re-launch and the way new registration requests will be authenticated.
Although initially scheduled for July 14th, the .PRO re-launch has now been pushed back to September 8th. Why? We met with a number of registrars last week at the ICANN conference in Paris, and have been busy talking to current and prospective registrars about implementation of the modified restrictions passed by the ICANN Board on April 29. It is apparent that the time frame we first set is not sufficient to accommodate the interest! Therefore, we are moving the date to give registrars additional time to market the new offering.
Why open .PRO to a wider audience of potential registrants? Obviously, .PRO has been very restrictive in the last 4 years. It’s part of the natural expansion and development of the TLD. We've had plans for a couple of years to expand the TLD internationally. We did so in a way that was consistent with our ICANN agreement. And we are doing it at a rate that we think is going to be very beneficial to all registrants internationally.
The new system opens on July 14th, why no sunrise period? Since the start, .PRO has offered defensive registrations (to protect rights holders – ed.) and we are not a new TLD. We’ve been out there for a long time and we are being consistent with the normal operation of an existing TLD.
RegistryPro will be doing a lot of research to validate registrations
Will RegistyPro verify registrations directly or will you use a third-party validation agent? We're doing the verification right now, and will continue to do so after September 8th.
How will you cope with the fact that every country has its own set of parameters to define professionals? Registrants are going to be required to provide us with the information that is necessary for us to be able to confirm their credentials as professionals. So as far as managing it we’re will be doing a lot of research. We’re going to research credentials issuing authorities. We’re going to research individual registrants, or the corporation if the registration is being done on behalf of a corporation. We will do a lot of research when authentication and verification checks come up.
How long will the authentication and verification process take before RegistryPro accepts the registration of a domain name? Once we get the information and we initiate the process of the A/V check (Authentication and Verification – ed.), it shouldn’t take very long at all. It depends on the quality of the information that we get, the accuracy of the information that we get. But once the registrant has submitted the information to us, has submitted the complete A/V form, the domain will go live. A/V checks are going to be done on a random basis as part of our random monitoring and sampling of new and renewed domains, so that something that was in our statement to ICANN.
Already more than 6 400 .PRO domains
If necessary, will you be asking registrants for additional authentication information? Absolutely, there may be situations where the credential issuing authority doesn't have a website for example. We will offer registrants every opportunity to get us the necessary documentation.
Applicant will have to agree to the .PRO Terms of Use every year. What are the main points of this contract? The main obligations of the contract are that the registrants certify that they are in good standing with the professional organizations and credential issuing authority. That they are using the domain in a manner consistent with the credentials that were issued to them. One major component is that registrants are not allowed to extend their registrations to others. For example, a lawyer cannot register a .PRO name on behalf of someone else. Part of the terms of the user agreement includes an actual use stipulation that you’re using it in accordance with your professional credentials so it’s part of our random sampling and is part of terms of use.
How many .PRO domains are currently registered? Approximately 6400, so we expect that number to grow significantly in the first couple of month.
What are your expectations? Are targets are fairly high… and we will reach them.
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