ICANN votes 12-0 to cancel .UM
ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, recently voted 12-0 to revoke the .UM top level domain because it was not being used. UM is the ISO 3166-1 code for the virtually uninhabited "U.S. minor outlying islands."
This decision brings the number of undelegated (unused) ISO 3166-1 extensions to five, the others being Montenegro (ME), North Korea (KP), Serbia (RS), and Western Sahara (EH).
ICANN board member David Conrad noted that there were no particular difficulties with resurrecting the extension in the future, should the need arise.
The decision to cancel .UM has not been carried out yet. The Daily Domainer found a two active .UM sites: The .um registry itself, and http://www.um/
There are at least 718 English words ending in -um, most of them being of Latin origin. David Utter of WebProNews quipped that with a little marketing and a little vision, ".um could have been a fulcr.um for lifting some clever domains onto the World Wide Web", including:
Tedi.um - could have been the home for another social networking site
Medi.um - perfect for psychics
Strat.um - the land of Fender guitars
Cerebell.um - would have made a great name and domain for a neurology conference
Even if the domain can be brought back, I think ICANN will keep this moritori.um in place.