By Daisy Ayliffe and Chris Jones - 6th April 2006
The EU warned the US on Friday that it must not meddle with the internet and prevent freedom of speech.
“I say to our American friends, who often plead for a free internet but hesistate when it comes to addresses they don’t like: governments should stay out of the internet,” EU media commissioner Viviane Reding told journalists.
“Europe will always stand for a free internet and will always fight against censorship.”
Brussels and Washington fell out late last year over the future governance of the internet, with the US keen to keep domain name authorisations under its control.
But the UN-sponsored conference on the future of the internet, held in Tunis last November, backed European plans to allow governments greater control over their own domains.
Reding was speaking at the launch of the newest top level domain, .eu, which became available to all EU residents at 11am on Friday.
In the first hour alone, more than 300,000 people registered their interest in the .eu domain, joining the thousands of companies, organsations and brand owners that have already registered.
“The .eu launch is a dream come true,” said Reding. “This is a very important day in the history of the internet.”
She said that while the .eu project had been developed by the European commission, national governments and the European parliament over the last five years, their role in the project was now over.
“The authorisation of .eu names will be managed entirely by the independent registry Eurid,” Reding said. “We will not interfere in the process.”
Eurid has already been responsible for checking the requests of the thousands of companies and organisations that have registered for .eu names.
“By only allowing companies and organisations to register first, we have significantly reduced the level of 'cybersquatting', where brand names are registered by people with no right to them so they can then be sold on to the rightful owner at a major profit,” said Reding.
Nonetheless, of the 340,000 requests, only 54,000 have been granted.
Public registration requests will be processed quickly - within a matter of hours, rather than the weeks that Eurid took to verify some business requests - and should cost around €15 on average, the Luxembourg commissioner said.
The highest level of interest in .eu names among the general public has come from the UK, Germany, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands, she added.
Reding said that companies registering for a .eu name would be showing their European credentials, and that this would be “good for their business”.
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