.helsinki Pre-Register Domain - .helsinki Domain Information

Finnish constitution and The Finnish Local Government Act, 17 March 1995, No. 365. Available at: http://www.localfinland.fi/en/authorities/local-self-government/Documents/Finnish%20Local%20Government%20Act.pdf The town of Helsinki was founded by King Gustavus Vasa of Sweden (which Finland belonged to for many centuries). 12.6.1550, is regarded as the date on which the city was founded.

The University of Helsinki registered the domain name www.helsinki.fi in the year 1987. The University of Helsinki has not been willing to assign the right of ownership of the domain name www.helsinki.fi to the City of Helsinki.

The City of Helsinki registered the domain name www.hel.fi in the year 1994. This name is a serious problem for the findability of the City website. Almost all other cities in Finland have the name of the city as their domain name, and Helsinki, the capital of Finland, is one of the few exceptions.

The name www.hel.fi has no meaning in the Finnish language and it is difficult to connect the name with the City. Therefore many visitors and residents of Helsinki accidentally go to the pages of the University of Helsinki, when looking for information about the City.

The University has consented to put some information about the City to www.helsinki.fi, but this has only further distracted the visitors and residents. The www.helsinki.fi website contains only links in three languages to direct visitors to the information and services located at the www.hel.fi domain (about 50 000 web pages and over 200 eServices and forms in six languages). Visitors who only read the www.helsinki.fi pages will not find these services.

The new gTLD domain .helsinki will solve the problems described above. It will improve the findability of the City web pages and help both visitors and residents to find the extensive services provided by the City.

The new gTLD domain .helsinki will improve the findability of the City web pages and help both visitors and residents to find the information, citizen's participation possiblities and services provided by the City.

The new gTLD will help the City of Helsinki to enhance the attractiveness of the City as an investment item, as the operation environment of businesses as well as a tourist attraction and a venue of events. It will help the residents to find information about the decision making, find possibilities to influence the decision makers and to participate in the planning processes.

The new gTLD will improve the findability of the City web pages. It will also make it possible to give new, more understandable domain names to the various city services.

The City will create new, short, understandable domain names, which describe the City services, instead of describing the organisational units and their abbreviations. For example, names like "health.helsinki" instead of the present names like http://www.hel.fi/hki/terke/en/Etusivu or "budget.helsinki" instead of http://www.hel.fi/hki/taske/en/City+Economy. The new domain names will be administered in the City of Helsinki Economic and Planning Centre, IT department, in collaboration with the City of Helsinki Administration Centre, Communications Office.

The Communications Office of the City Administration Centre will help to create and administer the new domain names. The Communications Office will inform the citizens about the City web pages and services and their new names through press releases, brochures and other publications as well as on the web pages.

The domain name adds security as well, because once established our citizens can trust that content under .helsinki is official and trustworthy. Currently we have many domains with the name Helsinki in it, such as www.helsinki200.fi and www.helsinkiopas.com, but out of which it is difficult for the user to know if the site is part of the official pages or provided by some other party than the city.

The new .helsinki domain names will be granted to the different City departments and other City units by the City of Helsinki Economic and Planning Centre, IT department, in collaboration with the City of Helsinki Administration Centre, Communications Office. The Communications Office will decide whether the new names proposed by the City departments are adequate from the communication and marketing point of view, and the IT department will decide whether there are any technical problems connected with the proposed names. If there are multiple applications for the same name, the Communications Office will decide who will get the domain name in question. This procedure is already in use in www.hel.fi.

All domain names will be granted free of charge, and only to the City departments and other units which belong to the City of Helsinki, like the City subsidiaries and foundations.

We will protect names with national or geographic significance by reserving and not publishing the country and territory names at the second level and at all other levels within the TLD, as per the requirements in the New TLD Registry Agreement (Specification 5, paragraph 5). Such geographic domains may be released only to the extent that Registry Operator reaches agreement with the applicable government(s).

The City of Helsinki will use geographic names at the second and other levels in the applied-for gTLD only in the following ways: The geographic name must belong to a place situated within the City of Helsinki, for example a city district, a street, a park, a lake or river or an island, for example "kaivopuisto.helsinki". The purpose of these names is to give information about the City services in the area in question, for example recreation facilities in a park.

In joint services or projects provided together with the neighbouring cities, which reach outside the City limits (for example public library services), the geographical name can also point to an area outside Helsinki, but within the neighbouring cities in the metropolitan area. In this case, permission will be asked from the neighbouring city in whose area the geographical place is situated.

The geographical name must not be a registered trade mark or a company name belonging to an organization outside the City organization. This will be checked from the Joint Business Information system provided by the National Board of Patents and Registration Finland. The second and other level geographic names must not resemble already existing domain names in a misleading way. This will be checked from the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority FICORA.

The City of Helsinki Economic and Planning Centre, IT department, in collaboration with the City of Helsinki Administration Centre, Communications Office will check whether the second and other level geographic names suggested by the City departments
and units will follow these rules.

Companies and private persons can appeal against the decisions as is described in the 11th chapter of the Municipal Law.


Regarding GAC advice regarding second-level domains not specified via Specification 5, paragraph 5: All domains awarded are subject to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute
Resolution Policy (UDRP), and to any properly-situated court proceeding. We will ensure appropriate procedures to allow governments, public authorities or IGO's to challenge abuses of names with national or geographic significance at the second level. In its registry-registrar agreement, and flowing down to registrar-registrant agreements, the registry operator will institute a provision to suspend domains names in the event of a dispute. We may exercise that right in the case of a dispute over a geographic name.