Dot-eu domain goes live today

The sunrise period for the dot-eu top level domain has now officially opened.

Trademark holders and public bodies will now be able to register their own dot-eu suffixed web addresses from today.

According to the EU, the new top-level domain is not intending to replace country-specific web addresses but rather to complement them, and the EU is hoping that dot-eu will eventually grow to rival dot-com.

The EU's FAQs on the dot-eu domain explains: "If you view the internet as the global village, then '.eu' is just another street added to it. We of course hope that it will soon become a big boulevard but any European user is of course free to use any other street."

The first dot-eu domain is live already – that of the dot-eu registrar Eurid – but further domains are expected to appear within the next few weeks, once trademark owners' rights to a URL have been established.