.Pro

Purpose: Restricted domain for qualified professionals only

Applicant: RegistryPro LTD

Expected Release Date: Early 2002

This is what RegistryPro said about the dot pro domain name in their application:

"RegistryPro's mission is to create a reliable, sustainable registry of professionals such as doctors, lawyers and accountants by utilizing concrete registration requirements linked to evidence of professional qualifications."

What they intend to do is to have at least three sub-domains:

.cpa.pro 
.law.pro 
.med.pro

Then allow accountants, lawyers, and medical doctors to register names in the appropriate sub-domain. RegistryPro plan to work closely with professional bodies to ensure only qualified people get to register one of these names. The whole idea is that web sites and email addresses utilizing the dot pro name will have the trust of the public, because only qualified people can register these names.

The question is, can RegistryPro ever hope to maintain sufficient control of the name? Will they be able to ensure the integrity of each applicant? And what happens to the domain names / email address beyond the registration point. Can they really ensure 100% that registrants really are professionals?

On the Internet, scams artists, forgers, and impersonators have found an anonymous home. Sooner or later some rogue is going to get hold of a dot pro web site or email address and use it to scam customers. Once this happens, the trust that RegistryPro and its customers care so much about will be hard to repair.