Universal Postal Union loses objections to .mail top level domain name

Group that runs .post fails to end bids for .mail top level domain name.

The Universal Postal Union (UPU) has lost community objections against five applications for the .mail top level domain name.

UPU filed objections against all five active applicants for .mail, including Amazon.com, Google, Donuts, WhitePages TLD and GMO Registry.

The objections on community grounds seemed like quite a stretch, although not as ridiculous as the United States Postal Service’s objection to .mail on trademark grounds.

UPU argued that the .mail top level domain name would cause confusion with postal services:

The risk of confusion of the public is important, says UPU, as the .mail TLD “and the associated websites” would be given the same level of trust by the public as they give to the mail when, in fact, those websites would not warrant the same security and privacy (Objection, p.16). Having that in mind, UPU predicts that “Posts will […] have to commit time and resources to complaints directed at them by mistake as a result of unregulated activities conducted at the .mail TLD” (Objection, p.16).

This makes me wonder how much time the UPU deals with complaints about mail.com and Yahoo! Mail.

Where UPU ultimately failed in its objection was showing that there was significant objection to .mail from within the postal community. Although UPU had USPS’ backing, ultimately few of UPU’s members expressed opposition. The USPS’ objection was also somewhat undermined by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

UPU runs the sponsored top level domain name .post. As of October, .post has only 17 domain name registrations.