Te Kete o Karaitiana Taiuru (Blog)

.indigi is a new Internet domain name that will be the self governing Indigenous equivalent of the .com or .org . In late December 2008 i was appointed the Leader for this initiative which can be found at www.dotIndigi.com .

While preparing our policy paper on .indigi i am often asked the same questions by Indigenous Peoples groups and potential business partners. So i have written my thoughts on the matter here as a quick overview pending the release of the official .indigi policy paper due to be released later this year.

I say self governing as the proposed .indigi domain will be governed by an international Indigenous group. This group will then allow Indigenous groups to create their own unique name space within .indigi . Corporations, cyber squatters, thief’s and racists will not have an opportunity to register a .indigi name thus offering all Indigenous Peoples of the world a safe haven on the Internet where by default their information will be protected and authentic. Disputes will be able to be raised and addresses in a quick, swift fair and Indigenous manner unlike our current Intellectual Property disputes processes and avenues of rectifying defamatory information on the web.

The way .indigi will operate is that any of the plethora of Indigenous groups in the world can have their own name within .indigi. With the introduction of Internationalised Domain Names (IDN’s) this will allow for any Indigenous group that uses non English characters to write their name can do so directly under the .indigi name.

A lot of groups and individuals have asked why we are doing this and why we are not supporting Indigenous groups to apply for their own Internet name and why are we seeking co operation from other Indigenous groups who are already applying to create their own gTLD.

The quick an answer is that most individual applications will be declined by the strict and thorough ICANN processes and the price is too excessive for most groups to contemplate the large $US application fee. This is not to mention the other debates of the Internet Naming system becoming polluted and confusing with so many new Internet names that people will not remember the new names and that the value of such new names will become worthless.
.
.
.