MALAYSIAN companies, especially publicly listed ones and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) were urged to get a .my top-level domain (TLD) name, .my Domain Registry director  Shariya Haniz Zulkifli urged at a media conference at her office on 25 August.

.my is the national level TLD for Malaysia. Such Malaysia-specific domain names – a.k.a. universal resource locators (URLs) -- include domains ending in .com.my. ,org.my, .net.my, .edu.my, .gov.my, .mil.my and so on.

Hitherto known as  MYNIC, my DOMAIN REGISTRY is the sole administrator for URLs ending with .my and as an incentive, it is giving 50% off the RM120 annual registration fee or for renewals of each .my TLD, in conjunction with National ICT Month which began on 20th July and runs till 4th September. So those interested should hurry and get a .my domain either from the .my Domain Registry or its resellers who may also offer them at a further discount and/or as part of a hosting package or other value-added services.

A concern is that 48.5% of Malaysian busineses publicly listed on Bursa Malaysia (the Malaysian Bourse) a.k.a the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE) -- do not have websites with a .my TLD name.

These include 287 or 44.5% of the 625 Main Board listed companies, 121 or 55.8% of the Second Board companies, whilst Bursa Malaysia's technology market MESDAQ (Malaysian Exchange of Securities Dealing & Automated Quotation) has the highest proportion or 67 (56.3%) of the 119 listed techology companies are without .my domains.

 As of 2008, there were a total of 80,786 active .my domains, up from 30,041 in 2003, though the growth rate has accelerated, with an a jump of about 20,000 from 59,076 .my domains in 2007.

 
Meanwhilst Bursa Malaysia has directed that all listed companies must have a web presence, irrespective of domain name.

To in support that, .my Domain Registry has announced that it has pre-registered .my domains for a number of Bursa Malaysia companies without .my domains, which it will hold until the 31st of October, 2009, as part of its continuing efforts to encourage more Malaysian businesses to secure their online intellectual property (IP).

“A .my domain gives Malaysian businesses a unique brand identity that is accessible worldwide on the Internet.  Utilising a .my address will therefore not only differentiate local businesses from foreign entities but will also enhance its export and international market potential as a Malaysian company,” she Shariya.

“Also, in line with the 1Malaysia concept, even SMEs should also make their Malaysian identity more noticeable online as e-commerce has become one of the most important facets of the Internet as it is relatively cost-efficient, is a very effective and a credible way to reach out to the global market,” she added.

Extortionists in cyberspace

Another issues are cyber-squatters. These are individuals or organisations who register, traffic in or use domain names in bad faith with the expectation to make a big profit from the goodwill of a trademark which belongs to somone else by selling them at a grossly inflated price, or to use the well-known brand to drive traffic to their own site.

Such parasitic activities by idle persons or companies who hope to get rich quick at the expense or others  who work are the equivalent in cyberspace of blackmailers and extortioners in realspace -- ie the physical world -- who leech off the hard work of persons, companies or organisations which actually create real wealth.

What's worse is that they can use their fake online identity to lure online consumers to unwittingly purchase counterfeit products, give away personal information and expose them to malware.

Whilst there is no 100% guarantee, Shariya contends that a .my domain is less attractive to cybersquatters, since according to the National Arbitration Forum (domains.adrforum.com), 98 per cent of domain name dispute resolutions in 2008 involved Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) ‘.com’ and’ .org’ domain names.

“So to protect your business IP, we advocate that Malaysian businesses, particularly public listed ones should register .my domain, which is arguably less open to cybersquatting, compared to the .com or other such domain,” said Shariya at the media briefing.

Also, whilst it's not 100% foolproof, as an added assurance, .my Domain Registry will only provide Malaysian citizens anywhere in the world or Malaysia registered companies owned by Malaysians or nationals of other countries with .my domains after it's verified their or their business identity.

.my Domain Registry is an agency under Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) and is regulated by the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), and is responsibile for developing TLD policies and is always conducting research projects such as IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), DNSSEC (domain name server security), ENUM telephone number mapping to IP addresses, Anycast network addressing and routing and IDN (Internationalised Domain Names).

The 32-bit IPv4 addressing scheme has 2³² or close to 4.3 billion unique URLs which are aren't enough for the over six billion persons of earth, let alone devices, so they require complicated network address translation (NAT) and other techniques to enable the IPv4 scheme to address more devices, whilst the 128-bit IPv6 scheme has 2¹²⁸ or about 3.4 x 10³⁸  or 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses, which in theory will allow even every grain of sand to have a unique URL

.my Domain Registry also conducts work on IDN addresses which use non-ASCII (American Standard Code of Information Interchange) alphabets and numerals, such as Jawi, Chinese or Tamil alphabets in domain names and it is curremntly in the process of testing Jawi script for use in .my domains, with plans to follow with Chinese and Tamil script.  

Further information, including about registration is available on its website at www.domainregistry.my.