ICANN to vote on new Internet domain names
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is getting ready to vote later this week to open up the Internet naming convention to allow more options.
On Thursday at its meeting in Paris, ICANN, the not-for-profit organization charged with overseeing the Internet's naming scheme, will vote on a proposal that would allow companies to purchase new generic top-level domains ending in almost anything they want. So instead of being limited to .com, .org or .co.uk as the last letters of their Web addresses, companies or organizations could add their company name to the end of their URL. For example, eBay could become .ebay or Intel could be .intel. Even cities could name their Web sites .newyork or .berlin.
But the new names, which could be ready in 2009, won't come cheap. As a result, it's unlikely that individuals will be able to take advantage of the new naming conventions to create more personalized Web sites. The exact price to register these new names isn't yet known, but some experts predict it could cost about $50,000 to register a new domain name.
The high price is also likely to deter cybersquatters. ICANN is expected to give priority to companies or organizations with trademarked names.
The new addressing scheme should alleviate fears that ICANN will run out of addresses. The organization estimated last year that only 17 percent of the original 4 billion network addresses remained available. And it predicted that it would run out of new addresses within the next five years.
Paul Twomey, the CEO of ICANN, told the BBC that allowing the new naming conventions would create new "real estate" on the Internet.
"It's a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the Internet," he said.
If the proposal is accepted by ICANN's board then almost any extension that is 64 characters or less could be used. My colleague at ZDNet.co.uk points out that this means that the .xxx domain extension, which has been proposed for the adult entertainment industry could be used. ICANN rejected the .xxx application in 2007.
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie. 
Why doesn't CNET get someone with a clue how technology works to proofread their articles?
Who do I write the cheque out to?
I guess the difference is that ICAAN is voting on whether they will continue to officiate over what TLDs can be made available. I see no reason other than allowing a company to become a registrar for a new TLD that can be seen publicly. This is not so great a leap as it seem, since it probably still costs around $50k to become a certified registrar for any TLD. (I haven't kept up on the cost. It was $50k when they first opened it up to additional registrars.)
1. IRC backchannel - irc://chat.icann.org#icann-general-discussion
2. Twitter feed - http://twitter.com/netfreedom
3. At Large (user) advisory committee - http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org
1. IRC backchannel - irc://chat.icann.org#icann-general-discussion
2. Twitter feed - http://twitter.com/netfreedom
3. At Large (user) advisory committee - http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org
Note that the US also owns ".gov" for its own use despite "overnment is a generic English word that other eenglish spzkaing countries would want to claim also for their own use.
Now suppose that ".gouv" is claimed by a rench speaking country, will it allow another French speaking government to register a domain there? If not, hen there will be ".gouvernement", and as well ".government" in English... If every country is doing that by registering a ".gov"-like domain at $50,000 each, the ICANN could generate immediately millions of dollars from the existing 192 countries or from their federal states, effectively subsidizing the US government through ICANN...
Well I also don't see how this will avoid some very rich cybersquatters to acquire their own TLD... If there are thousands of new TLDs, the ICANN will not be able to control all of them. This places the security of the Root domain at risk for the future, and severe scalability problems (given that ICANN wants to accept TLDs with any length up to 64 characters, this indicates that the Root domain will need to contain a very huge number of domains.) So the current cybersquatting problem in ".com" could easily rehappen as well in the root domain.
Also, it is very likely that all major ISPs and telcos of the world will want their own TLD for their existing customers, to keep them captive:
".att", ".mci", ".aol", ".sprint", ".vodafone", ".orange", ".tele2"... until some others will find problems to get registered (".bt" is already taken, so ".btel" ? ".dt" will be rejected but which TLD for the major German telco? Will it need a new 3-letters brand to make things simple for their customers?)
Really there's a need to open more TLDs, but only to rebalance the existing TLDs that are all based on English names, nothing more, in a way where eah country is satistifed by its own official or national languages. However, the TLD policy should make sure that it will favor the names meant for the associated language, but not specific countries that are using that language.
Finally, as there's a need for trust on the internet, the legal system covering sites using a name in any TLD should be identifiable. So even if the registries are left open to others, the TLD policy should be able to require legal conditions based on a restricted set of national laws, that name owners will have to agree with to register a domain in them.
It is then a matter of legal identification and trust, rather than a name, that should condition the existence of a new TLD. But the exitension of the Root to thousands of TLDs will expose to a new risk: the multiplication of roots, each one using its own policy and remapping the other roots in a TLD of their own root (this will work only if the remapped domains do not exhaust the 64-bytes limit: the risk being that this can fail, and the Internet gets finally fragmented because not all domains will be accessible).
What is the value of a domain name? What is the consequence on existing websites if they are accessible though various domain names managed differently, depending on the location of their clients and the root server they use? Are URLs then valid and really universal now if it must be changed according to the root in usage by clients?
Many folks may not remember the early days of .com with some of the bitter legal disputes which took place between companies.... (Delta, Delta, anyone, anyone?)
While the author cites two reasonable examples of .companyname TLDs in this article which would likely not be contested, there may exist many other cases where there is foreseeable debate over who deserves "the TLD name".
Is .united for United Van Lines or United Air Lines? A similar question was posed over 10 years ago with .com before the current holders acquired the name.
Well, you say, maybe each should exist as .unitedairlines and .unitedvanlines, but then, what about .united? Someone will surely want it and naturally, that will be for the courts to decide.
$50,000 will be a drop in the bucket in contrast with these kinds of court battles.
Well then, so now you say, auction it when parties compete. Fine, who gets the money? ICANN? That sounds a bit "ethically challenged".
Has anyone asked for input from two letter .com name holders? Do they see a fair amount of somename..com traffic where is also a TLD name?
It would not be a huge leap to believe folks will type in somename.newtld.com for what they expected as somename.newtld.
What about IDN names as TLDs? IDN names are those names created using specially encoded ASCII sequences to allow for the creation of names with characters in different national character sets. (e.g., ) If so called "phishing" by well funded organized crime gangs seems ugly today, well, you can guess what tomorrow will look like.
If approved, it appears this is going to be messy at best. For the sake of stability alone, there needs to be some control and administration of the process. It also appears that ICANN, who is charted with such duties, simply wants to abdicate their charter and seemingly the best interests of the Internet they exist to serve.
I really hope that is not the case.
- by Alex_Tajirian November 18, 2008 8:58 AM PST
- Adding more domain names is a solution that is looking for a problem. The ICANN announcment resulted in discussion and speculation. Is expansion supposed to solve trademark issues, brandability tangles, the conundrum of how many gTLDs will be successful? Or has ICANN decided to take an unexpected leap into the for-profit arena? All this wasted time and energy would have been better channeled into finding the best solution, or at least an acceptable solution, to the mysterious problem that ICANN is trying to address.
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(22 Comments)The often-sited justification that ?free markets decide what's successful? is hollow. It is true that markets can provide a solution to a given problem. But, markets cannot solve "it," when the ?it? is mysterious.
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