AT&T Tech Support 360ICANN adopts new Web site naming rules
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers voted Thursday to relax rules for naming Web sites.
At its meeting in Paris, ICANN, a not-for-profit organization that oversees the naming scheme for Web sites, voted to accept a proposal that will allow companies to purchase new top-level domain names ending in whatever they like.
So, for example, instead of being restricted to sites ending in .com or .org., eBay could have a site that ends in .ebay, or New York City could end its Web site with .nyc.
The new naming process will begin in 2009. The first suffixes will likely be given to businesses and other major organizations. Countries are expected to keep their specific suffixes, but as in the example above cities could also get individualized URLs, such as .london or .chicago.
In an effort to deter cybersquatters, the organization is likely to charge a hefty price for the new names. Some experts estimate the new domain names could cost anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 or more. ICANN plans to give companies with trademarked names priority for their names.
Paul Twomey, CEO of ICANN
(Credit: ICANN)The group also voted to open public comment on a proposal that would allow countries to use non-English script. For example, companies could use Chinese or Arabic script to identify their web sites.
Paul Twomey, the chief executive of ICANN, told the BBC earlier this week that allowing the new naming conventions would create new "real estate" on the Internet. But some experts worry that it could unleash a gold rush mentality. While trademarked names will only be available to those trademark holders, there are loads of common words that people could want to register, such as .sex.
The suffix .xxx was rejected by ICANN last year, but it could also prove to be a popular suffix under the more relaxed policy. Still, Twomey told Agence France Press that the organization will still try to block or reject any domain name it deems inappropriate for security or moral reasons.
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.
This new rule will definitely reduce domain name speculation to a certain extend. On the other hand, it will create confusion with lots of people.
Sounds to me as if trademark holders may now have to police the TLD space themselves, just like copyright holders have to police the world. This should be manageable, however.
Yes, it could get interesting. "Pizza Pizza" was used as a catch phrase for Little Caesar's Pizza TV ads so they may put a claim on pizza.pizza
www.www
www.e.bay
www.eb.ay
www.eba.y
www.ebay
www.ebay. (with a period on the end.)
www.p.aypal
www.pa.ypal
www.pay.pal
www.payp.al
www.paypa.l
www.paypal
www.paypal. (with a period on the end.)
This is sooo going to crash and burn I can feel it... Who's bright idea was it to turn ICANN into another www.New(dot)Net type of company???? with their ".xxx "and ".travel" domains.
Most people can already get the domain name they want if they're clever enough to add a hyphen or something to their domain name.
Instead of adding more TLD names, I say ELIMINATE all TLDs. Stop the insanity.
Let's put the key points of the article together.
"At its meeting in Paris, ICANN, a not-for-profit organization that oversees the naming scheme for Web sites, voted to accept a proposal that will allow companies to purchase new top-level domain names ending in whatever they like....anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 or more. ICANN plans to give companies with trademarked names priority for their names."
So, ICANN seems to have decided that being not-for-profit is not good. Charging people big bucks for their trademarked names is better. Have ICANN decided that cybersquatters have something to teach them ?
Regards,
If a company wants to use an obscure url, why should I care if I can't find their web site?
I'm not usre that the proposal to open theTLDs to everything is a good idea.
Anyway, I'm not even sure that the ROOT servers are prepared to host thousands or more TLDs: these root servers will not support the load as they will be much more frequently requested if there are many new TLDs added everyday, even if ICANN may object a few of them.
It looks like ICANN wants to get its own money, by selling many TLDs (even if these sales are performed by existing third-party registrars that have a signed agreement with ICANN).
Note that many sites will not accept the automatic extension of TLDs due to conflicts with the local organization. It looks very important for many of us to easily detect and know that a domain name is part of the public Internet and can't enter in conflicts with the local privately administered networks.
OK for liberalizaing it a bit, but ICANN's desire to restrict them based on "security" or "morality" is certainly unsane:
- there's absolutely no "security concern" in any single TLD, even if it's called ".xxx" or ".sex" ; the issue is not the name itself but WHO is managing the TLD registry and how it applies security rules if it opens his registry to others...
- the question about morality to oppose the creation of ".xxx' or ".sex" is non-sense: how a domain named in "want.sex.com" can be more moral than "want.sex" ? The only good question to ask is if it is legal, based on international law and treaties (not based on a single national law). So ".pedophilia" or ".child-sex" or ".pro-nazi" would be rejected, but not ".israel" would be accepted even if this name is not recognized in some countries.
So what can we expect now? new TLDs like:
".beijing2008" (hmmm... too late?)
".olympic"
".euro2012"
".republican"
".democrat"
".communist"
".islam"
".christ" : let's talk directly to jesus@christ...
".god" : are 3-letters kept restricted?
".noel" : French children writing to pere@noel
".disney"
We'll see also many inter-corporations groups and syndicates promoting their members within their own domain, but what will happen when there are conflicting groups, sharing the same language but in distinct countries: one will create a name in singular, another using plural, another with abbreviations... So we'll soon have:
".restaurant"
".restaurants"
".restau"
".restos"...
Then add the various translations of the term, and internationally you'll get some nightmare to protect the brand of your restaurant, unless you're big enough to buy your own TLD: ".mcdonald" (but note that this is also a common personnal name) but how about ".quick" which is also a generic name?
Clearly, the ICANN ***must*** designate some TLDs are permanently reserved for private use, for this it must conduct a survey in various countries: this will include :
".loc", ".local", ".locale", ".lokal", ...
".private", ".privat", ".prive", ".priv", ...
".home"
".perso", ".personal", ".personnel", ...
".secret", ".secure", ".security", ...
But also some typical private subdivisions definining reliation types in organizations:
".sales", ".ventes", ...
".accounting", ".comptabilite", ...
".provider", ".fourn", ...
".customer", ".cust", ".client", ".cli", ...
".oem"
".service"
This is a *crazy* idea -- and I read somewhere that ICANN will forgo the decision to accept or reject new TLDs.... So who will decide -- the Pope?!?
See also http://gaggle.info/miscellaneous/articles/wisdom-of-the-language
They should have done it from the start. instead they do it now, but now the net is big so they put a high price to stop the flood of domain registratiions. That's wrong.
What they need to do is to just open it up but first month allow only those that have name.com register name (the tld). Then those that have name.net. Then name.org etc. The order is quite arbitrary but since there are already too many TLDs you have to compromise. Eventually everyone will have their domain name without the TLD, which would be equivalent to having just .com but without the annoying .com suffix. nes.com will be just new, hotmail.com will be hotmail. yahoo.com will be just yahoo (if they're still around etc.
End
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by JadedGamer
June 30, 2008 3:31 AM PDT
- In an age where most people find stuff via search engines, this will be less of a problem than feared.
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Reply to this comment
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See all 26 Comments >>The real problem is that companies and ISPs have been able to do this for ages already, by using their own DNS servers. When these "funny" DNS names now can become valid domains in the root servers, how should these other DNSes and their users respond? hould the old addresses stop resolving e.g. "foo.fun" to a local joke server and instead point to the DNS server of the ".fun" domain owner?
(The old naming scheme has failed anyway: There's plenty of porn in the ".name" and ".info" domains for instance. And ".com", ".net" and ".org" have long since lost their original meaning and purpose.)