.biz
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| Introduced | 2001 |
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| TLD type | Generic top-level domain |
| Status | Active |
| Registry | Neulevel (90% owned by Neustar) |
| Sponsor | None |
| Intended use | Businesses |
| Actual use | Various uses |
| Registration restrictions | No prior restriction on registration, but registrations can be challenged if registrant is not a bona-fide commercial entity |
| Structure | Registrations at second level permitted |
| Documents | ICANN registry agreement |
| Dispute policies | UDRP, Start-up Trademark Opposition Policy (STOP), Restrictions Dispute Resolution Policy (RDRP) |
| Website | Neulevel .biz registry |
.biz is a generic top-level domain (TLD) intended for domains to be used by businesses; the name is a phonetic spelling of the first syllable of "business." It was created to relieve some of the demand for the good domain names available in the .com top-level domain, and to provide an alternative to businesses whose preferred .com domain name had already been registered by another party. There are no specific legal or geographic qualifications to register a .biz domain name, except that it must be for "bona fide business or commercial use" (i.e. no personal or "soap box" sites, and no cybersquatting), and the usual legal remedies for trademark infringement are applicable. It was created in 2001 along with several others as the first batch of new gTLDs approved by ICANN following the boom in interest in the internet in the 1990s. It is administered by Neulevel.
In contrast to the sunrise period of .info, .biz did not grant trademark owners first chance at registration, but instead used a procedure whereby they could file intellectual property claims in advance and then challenge any eventual registrant through a policy named "STOP" (Startup Trademark Opposition Policy). A number of domains were successfully obtained by trademark owners from other registrants through this policy; some of the more controversial cases, where generic words were taken over based on trademark claims in a process deemed "reverse hijacking" by critics[who?], included that of paint.biz and canadian.biz, the latter of which was reversed by a court decision.
It was announced on June 23, 2008 at the Paris, France ICANN 32nd International Public Meeting [1] that .biz had officially surpassed two million registrations worldwide. Consequently, the .biz extension is now ranked as the tenth most registered domain extension in the world.
The APWG 2008 Global Phishing Survey [2] identified the top twenty domain extensions most subject to abuses, including phishing. The study concluded that .biz, along with .com and .info, were comparatively superior to many other leading extensions in safety, and less subject to phishing attacks as demonstrated in statistical analysis. Per the study "Two gTLDs had notably better performance than the others: .INFO and .BIZ. Both the .INFO and .BIZ registries are known in the anti-abuse community to have proactive stances for dealing with phishing abuse within their namespaces."
Registrations are processed via accredited registrars.
[edit] Alternative DNS roots and .biz
Before ICANN approved of .biz as a top-level domain it was already in use by one or more alternative DNS root(s). This created the possibility of a .biz domain pointing to different IP addresses depending on the domain name server used. For this reason, NeuStar, which currently has control of the .biz root, requires that a DNS server be officially registered with them on their list of approved DNS servers before a domain registrar may register it in WHOIS as the DNS server for a particular domain.
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[edit] External links
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