We could soon be gearing up for the arrival of a .eco top-level domain (TLD) to promote environmental awareness, if Al Gore has anything to do with it.
Formed in 2008, Dot Eco LLC intends to secure the .eco domain via the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ (ICANN) new gTLD application process.
Dot Eco LLC will be applying for the .eco TLD through the ICANN gTLD application process in late 2009.
At the ICANN Mexico City meeting on 4 March 2009, the company announced it had started an “integrated partnership” with Gore and his philanthropic organisation, the Alliance for Climate Protection.
According to Dot Eco LLC, it aspires to develop the new .eco domain for individuals to show their support for environmental causes, for companies to promote their environmental initiatives and for organisations to have their websites in a “namespace” that is more conducive to their core missions.
“This is a truly exciting opportunity for the environmental movement and for the internet as a whole,” said Gore.
According to the Dot Eco website: “Dot Eco will finance groundbreaking environmental initiatives that have a real, positive impact on our environment. The Dot Eco brand will build an open, ecumenical community around this shared cause, and create a common knowledge base that enables individuals to do their part to help the environment.”
The website continues: “By choosing to register their domain under the proposed .eco extension, individuals and corporations can signal their interest in joining a global ecological movement that promotes nonpartisan change.
“Profits from registration fees will be used to fund scientific initiatives and research in climate change, ocean analysis, economic policy and other environmentally related areas.”
The company was founded by Fred Krueger, Clark Landry and Minor Childers.
Both Krueger and Landry are entrepreneurs, who describe themselves on their website as being involved in successful internet ventures such as iwin.com, which was sold to Vivendi Universal, Flux (sold to Viacom) and Adconion.
In the meantime, Childers has worked at both Dreamworks and Paramount as a creative executive and producer on films such as Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Dot Eco has also accrued an advisory board comprising high-profile individuals such as Davis Guggenheim, director of An Inconvenient Truth, Roger Moore, actor and goodwill ambassador for UNICEF; Jeff Bowler, entrepreneur; Richard Muller, author of Physics for Future Presidents and contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and Jim Dufour of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
By Carmel Doyle
