Film studios will be happy to know that they can now register domains with the .film extension (domain name followed by dot film). Launched recently, the .film extension already has two takers – www.February.film registered for Osgood Perkin’s movie called February and www.Septembersofshiraz.film for Wayne Blair’s movie called Septembers of Shiraz.
Gone are the days of just .com and .org extensions, there is a new web extension in town, namely .film which film studios can avail of. And many believe that the new TLD (known as Top Level Domains) will benefit the film industry, particularly for protecting intellectual property, and fighting cybercrime.
Besides the popular .com or .edu web extensions, there are many more extensions that one can chose today. You now have the option of choosing brand specific, location specific and industry specific extensions, and this step definitely seems to be in the right direction.
Motion Picture Domain Registry (who will be managing the .film TLD) has created policies for this sub-world to protect and satisfy the needs of the film industry in the digital era, and also to reinvent the film business model.
Here are some possible benefits of the .film web extension:
- Protection against Cyber crime. Registrars will need to have a point of contact to investigate reports of illegal activities (fake phishing site intended to steal credit card data using a domain name that is close enough to a movie title), and the allegations must be investigated within 24 hours. There are also procedures to effectively deal with cyber-squatters.
- Not everybody can register a domain with .film extension, the registrant must belong to a film association and should provide evidence of rights to the movie’s title on which the domain name requested.
- Marketers and advertisers of films can better associate their brands and product to the film industry.
Also Read: Offline media marketing plans used commonly for promoting events.
- Some feel that, over time as consumers start trusting this source (.film extension will provide authenticity to a film), it can turn out to be another direct-to-consumer option for video content.
Although there are benefits of moving on to the new .film extension, whether it will really take-off will finally depend on the users. Besides, they also have competition from another web extension called .movie. So how far the .film extension becomes successful is now to be seen.
