Soon we will begin seeing websites with .asia addresses. Companies are presently registering their names now and the general public will be allowed to grab sites starting in February 2008 according to this article. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to grab http://www.google.asia and sell it to Google for a ridiculous sum but there will still be a large number of sites available for a small fee. As I was reading about this, I began to wonder who has the authority release the .asia addresses and who has the rights to sell these domains. Using keywords asia domain, I searched Google News and perused several articles that mentioned how to register a site. Dotasia is a Hong Kong based company that has been tasked with launching the Asia domain. To register a site with the .asia domain, you need to go to one of the accredited sites and submit your request. Dotasia has a great FAQ where I read this:
“The formation of DotAsia is therefore truly a bottom-up community-based initiative that was not created or mandated by any government or particular existing organisation or constituency. Rather it was a grassroots initiative that gradually gained the support from a broad and diverse range of well-established organisations in the region (see http://www.dotasia.org/about/members.html for list of supporters).”
So it is a community based initiative but how did they become the authoritative group for this new domain?
That answer and more coming on the next post.
DILigence 
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