If you are like most businesses, you want .com at the end of your domain name. However, many .com names are unavailable, although the same choices may be available with .net or .org.
The availability of .net or .org is probably small consolation to you. E-commerce businesses often refuse to settle for .net or .org because .com has become, as it was intended to, uniquely associated with commercial activity. If you are one of these .com holdouts, you'll just need to keep plugging away with proposed names until a .com version is available.
If, however, your intended activity involves fostering access to the Internet (perhaps as an Internet service provider) or building a real or virtual organization of some type (as a nonprofit organization, for example), .net or .org may be just fine. In some cases, it may even be beneficial. Take the nonprofit national public radio and television entity, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). PBS, which derives its credibility and reputation for independent programming and news reporting from its nonprofit status, chose www.pbs.org for its domain name. By staying away from .com, PBS senthe message that the content on its website is non-commercial, which is appealing to those who support it.
Using .net or .org doesn't necessarily shield you from claims of trademark infringement. For instance, Amazon.com recently sued Amazon.gr (.gr is for Greece) for trademark infringement. However, a federal court has ruled that a domain name that ends with .net conveys a non- commercial purpose, which may reduce the likelihood of customer confusion between a .net site and a .com site. (If you want to read the judge's decision, you can find that case, Avery-Dennison v. Sumpton, at http://caselaw.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=9th&navby=case&no=9855810. See Section D, below for more on trademark infringement.)
New Choices Coming Soon
In the not-too-distant future, there should be a greater choice of domain names, including:
.stor, for e-commerce sites
.firm, for business or professional sites
web, for Web-oriented sites
.arts, for art-related sites
.rec, for recreational sites
info, for sites providing information services, and
.nom, for sites supported by individuals.
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