Piet,

I have got a request from the company "Einkaufsgenossenschaft des Schweizerischen Autogewerbeverbands" to register the domain esa.ch. ESA is the registered name of this company that appears also on their letters. I have called their attention to the fact, that esa stands for European Space Agency in different European countries (e.g. esa.de, esa.es, esa.nl) and that therfore it is not wise to register esa.ch for something completely different. But they insist on this name. Would you register it? In cases like this I would give international context precedence over national context. I would first contact the European Space Agency to see if they have any plans to register esa.ch in the (near) future. If they do, I would give them the "first option" on that domain, but at the same time I would ask them to register it immediately.

This will remain a can of worms, always. Some time ago the "Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis" (Institute for Dutch History) registered "ing.nl". However, two Dutch banks merged (aroud the same) and became "Internationale Nederlanden Groep"... If you ask somebody in The Netherlands where ING stands for, 99 to 100 he'll say "Internationale Nederlanden Groep". __ Erik-Jan.