The National Communications Commission (NCC) this week passed an amendment to the Telecommunications Act (電信法) allowing private corporations to use their names when registering Internet domains.
Article 20-1 of the act allows only non-profit organizations to do so.
The amendment must be submitted to the Executive Yuan first and then be approved by the Legislative Yuan before the commission can enforce the new law, the NCC said.
NCC Chief Secretary Jason Ho (何吉森) said the amendment was proposed because the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has begun allowing people to apply for new generic top-level domains. The amendment would enable private corporations to use their names as Internet domains, rather than being limited to .com or other common domain names, he said.
ICANN first launched the new generic top-level domains in 2012, with 1,930 applications from more than 60 countries approved.
Among them, only four were from Taiwan — Acer Computer applied for .acer, HTC Corp applied for .htc, the Taipei City Government applied for the .taipei domain name and the Executive Yuan applied for .政府 — which means government in Chinese.
Applicants pay US$185,000 for the new domain extensions once their applications are approved. They then pay an annual fee of US$25,000.
The Taipei City Government began allowing people to register their Web sites using .taipei in December last year, saying that the move would help promote the city to the world.
The city government has stipulated that only companies, community groups or business associations registered in Taipei or New Taipei City are eligible to apply for the .taipei suffix.
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