Afilias to Launch Land Rush 2 to Redistribute .INFO Sunrise Names

HORSHAM, PA - May 22, 2002: Afilias, a global provider of domain name registry services, announced Wednesday that it has provided all Afilias-authorized registrars with the list of names being offered in Land Rush 2 (LR2). Land Rush 2 is the process Afilias is using to redistribute inappropriately registered .INFO Sunrise names that have been canceled as a result of Afilias' challenge process. Afilias expects to begin the LR2 submission process in June of 2002 and award the names in mid-July 2002.

The LR2 process will run simultaneously with Afilias' current real-time registration system for .INFO. LR2 names are available as a result of the successful Sunrise Challenge Process that opened for the public last summer. This process enabled Afilias to identify, challenge, and cancel names that did not meet the specific requirements of the Sunrise Period, which was designed to allow qualified trademark holders to register their marks in advance of the general public. LR2 restores these inappropriately registered names to the public with no trademark restrictions.

"As the first to implement a process designed to help protect intellectual property holders in the rollout of a new top-level domain, Afilias is pleased to return over 17,000 names to the public through Land Rush 2," said Roland LaPlante, Chief Marketing Officer for Afilias. "While the Sunrise period has already served as a blueprint for other registries, such as the rollout of the .US country code, our Challenge process is a major step forward in expediting the dispute resolution process and ensuring the protection of the Internet public during the birth of new domains."

Name Selection Process
Registrants should apply for LR2 names through their registrar of choice. Each participating registrar will then send the requests to Afilias in the form of a queue (or batch of names). Each registrar's queue will be processed utilizing the same randomized, round-robin name selection method employed during .INFO's initial launch. Additional information on the randomized, round-robin name selection method to be used for LR2 is available at: http://www.afilias.info/register/landrush2/lr2_selection

Registration Schedule
While many registrars have already begun accepting requests for LR2 names, Afilias expects to accept requests from registrars beginning in early June and continuing through July 2, 2002. Requests received from registrars during this time period will be placed into each registrar's individual queue. Following the close of the queues on July 2, Afilias will process all requests using the randomized, round-robin name selection method. Results of the awarding process for LR2 names will be published to the WHOIS database of .INFO names in mid-July.

Those interested in applying for LR2 names should contact their Afilias-authorized registrar of choice to determine availability of names and the registrar's individual pricing and policies. A list of LR2 registrars is available at http://www.afilias.info/register/landrush2/lr2_registrars

About Afilias
Afilias, a fully integrated global provider of domain name registry services, maintains international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, a sales office in London, sales and operational facilities in Toronto, and administrative offices in the U.S. near Philadelphia, PA. In addition to operating the .INFO registry, Afilias is a partner of AusRegistry Pty. Ltd. in the development of the new registry system supporting a variety of .au country code top-level domains (ccTLD) in Australia. Afilias was formed in September of 2000 and was the first new gTLD operator selected by ICANN in November of 2000 to launch a new registry system using a thick registry model based on the new EPP (extensible provisioning protocol) standard.

For more information, please visit www.afilias.info