In defence of IEDR registration policies
Although called by many ‘arcane’ and ‘bureaucratic’, there are some benefits to the IEDR policies.
For example, a school rang our support line today wondering if there was anything she could do about an adult site with a domain name the same as the school she worked for. Realistically there’s not, as the name isn’t unique, although there’s no doubt the school had more right to it than a non-work-safe site.
Typically you can call your .com/net/org site anything you like. While some will argue that this is a right - you may not name your business with such freedom - it must pass the companies office screening procedure. Why should a domain name - which is essentially the same as a company name, trademark, or registered business name - be given unlimited leeway? At least the IEDR practice ensures some trademark and business name protection, and also assures against serious issues like adult sites taking names associated with schools. Aside from protecting business trademarks (since you have to prove ownership of the name you are trying to register), the policy also protects consumers from fraudulent people trying to capitalise on the brand value of other businesses.
Don’t take this post as a defence of all things IEDR, clearly there are other issues, and I’m sure they are working on these.
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The IEDR’s policies do provide some measure of protection however it’s quite simple for a business or individual to register BRANDNAME.ie as an RBN first and then pass the IEDR checks as a matter of formality. Note, that the RBN would be BRANDNAME.ie not just BRANDNAME.
There are certainly instances of domains being registered that are not being registered by the brand owners of the domain.
Certainly something to be aware of, but the wholescale cyber-squatting that goes on with .com,.net and .orgs isn’t something that seems to be a problem.
The problem isn’t necessarily in the IEDR being a managed registry per-se, but the way they’ve chosen to implement that. Hopefully sometime soon we’ll see revised policies and an automated way to register a domain. Meetings we’ve had with them recently certainly seem to have indicated they are considering this route quite carefully.