Policy Alignment
- Uses ICANN-style principles for registration agreements, abuse mitigation, RDAP publication, accuracy, lifecycle controls, and dispute handling where appropriate for a policy-driven domain registry.
- Preserves upstream country-code registry authority for AFNIC-family labels in .pm, .wf, and .yt and Greece-family labels in .gr.
- Requires qualified legal review before production publication in jurisdictions where UDR, registrars, or registrants operate.
01 Purpose
UDR reserves certain labels to protect DNS stability, registry operations, upstream registry standing, public authorities, users, rights holders, technical standards, and future registry development. A reserved label may appear unavailable even when no RDAP registration record exists.
02 Technical and Registry Operations Names
Technical and registry operations names are normally unavailable for public registration because they are needed for namespace operation, security, documentation, or user protection.
- nic, whois, rdap, www, mail, smtp, imap, pop, mx, ns, dns, dnssec, epp, api, registry, registrar, admin, support, abuse, legal, contact, status, help, billing, auth, login, portal, console, root, hostmaster, postmaster, webmaster, security, and noc.
- Single-character labels, certain two-character labels, labels beginning or ending with a hyphen, labels with invalid IDN syntax, and labels reserved by technical standards may be blocked or manual-review.
- Names needed for testing, documentation, monitoring, collision handling, security research, or registry operations may be withheld.
03 Public-interest and Protected Names
UDR may reserve labels that could mislead users, imply public authority, interfere with public services, or create heightened harm if abused.
- Government, judiciary, election, emergency, military, police, tax, customs, immigration, health, medicine, school, university, central-bank, financial-regulator, child-safety, and public-service terms.
- Country names, territory names, ISO-like codes, geographic names, city names, national symbols, culturally sensitive names, and names restricted by upstream policy.
- International organization names, intergovernmental names, sanctions-sensitive names, and names that may require authorization.
04 Rights-sensitive Names
UDR may reserve or review labels that are likely to infringe or confuse because they match famous marks, regulated brands, institutional identifiers, platform names, payment brands, financial institutions, major public bodies, or names frequently targeted by phishing.
- Reservation does not create ownership rights for any third party.
- Rights holders may request review, but UDR is not required to reserve every mark or adjudicate complex ownership disputes without a proper legal or dispute process.
06 Release, Exception, and Review
UDR may release a reserved label, require proof of authorization, assign it through a special program, price it as premium, or keep it permanently unavailable. Requests should include the label, intended use, authority, risk controls, and public-interest justification.
- Release of a reserved label is discretionary unless a binding legal decision requires a specific outcome.
- UDR may re-reserve a label after release if continued registration threatens users, rights, upstream compliance, or registry operations.
07 Example Reserved Categories
The public reserved-name list may include representative categories rather than every blocked string. The operational registry database controls real-time availability.
- Registry operations: nic, whois, rdap, epp, api, registry, registrar, dns, ns, status, abuse, legal.
- Public services: police, court, tax, election, health, customs, immigration, government, gov, centralbank.
- High-risk authentication: login, auth, account, verify, wallet, payment, secure, update, support.