New top-level domains could arrive by mid-2008, ICANN says
New top-level domains are once again on the horizon.
ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, said on Thursday that it would begin accepting applications for new suffixes early next year.
The problem, though, is that new top-level domains aren't necessarily going to be that useful or interesting.
The venerable .com suffix still remains the Internet's prime real estate, and ones like .info and .biz seem to have become more used by spammers than legitimate businesses. ICANN's final rejection of .xxx this year, even there was no technical or legal reason not to approve it, has severely politicized the process. Instead of using .museum, the world's most famous ones go by louvre.fr, museumoflondon.org.uk, and metmuseum.org. And so on.
Still, ICANN is going ahead. "If the new approval process comes on-line as planned, the global Internet could see new top-level domains added and available between June and August 2008," ICANN president Paul Twomey said in a statement.
Expect more details at ICANN's meeting in June in Puerto Rico.
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
