On June 1, 2015, the Cyber Kyoto Institute of Kyoto Institute of Information Technology (KCGI), which is the sole operator (registry) of the geographical name top-level domain ".kyoto" with the support of Kyoto Prefecture, opened at the Keihanna Open Innovation Center (KICK), a prefectural academic research facility in Seika-cho and Kizugawa-shi, Kyoto Prefecture, and in addition to the management and research of ".kyoto," will promote efforts toward building "Open University Kyoto" to promote collaborative education with universities worldwide using e-learning.
KCG groups such as The Kyoto College of Graduate Studies for Informatics and Kyoto Computer Gakuin (KCG) commemorate the establishment of Cyber Kyoto Research Laboratories. We are planning to hold “Investigating Cello”.
In September 2014, the Cyber Kyoto Research Institute received the first certification from the prefectural government as the center's research utilization plan.On May 26, 2015, Kyoto Institute of Information Science and Technology and Kyoto Prefecture signed a comprehensive agreement on collaboration and cooperation, which includes strengthening the dissemination of the Kyoto brand using ".kyoto".
In operating ".kyoto", Cyber Kyoto Institute has recruited founding members as part of the Founders Program, a priority registration program (up to 20 domain names can be reserved and acquired in advance), and on June 1, 2015, the first registration, "lasenke.kyoto" by Urasenke, a Kyoto-based tea ceremony company, debuted in cyberspace, with more Kyoto-based corporate organizations preparing for registration in the future.The Founders Program runs through November 30 of this year.The subsequent sales program is based on the regulations of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), a U.S. non-profit organization that manages domain names used on the Internet, with the following schedule: "Sunrise I" (for character strings registered as trademarks using alphanumeric characters and hyphens) from October, priority registration for public and utility organizations and "Sunrise II" (for character strings registered as trademarks) from December, "Landrush" (at premium prices) from January 2016, and general registration from February.