ICANN know a man who can, can ...
Date Published 26/06/2008 - Click here for more recent news
Are you tired of that 'old-familiar' .co.uk, .com or .org web address you’ve been using for years? Presently, users have a limited range of 21 top level domains to choose from — names that we are all familiar with: but fear not however - you’ll soon be able to have any top-level domain you like ... for a price...... with the prospect of fees of around $US100k per domain being floated around by the cognoscenti and it's forecast that applications for new domain names will become available in the second quarter of 2009.
As part of a massive change to the way in which web addresses are allocated, ICANN plans to allow the use of virtually any top-level domain (TLD). Gone will be the aforementioned restrictively small number of approved TLDs. Instead, virtually any word in any language will be able to be used as the final extension on a web address. "It's a massive increase in the real estate of the internet,” says ICANN chief executive Paul Twomey. “It will allow groups, communities and businesses to express their identities online."
The new system will allow large companies, governments and other groups to register their name as a TLD. Expect to see everything from .coke and .nike to .sydney and .australia appearing on the web. Some industry observers are concerned the move will create a massive virtual land-grab as cyber-squatters race to register large numbers of the new TLDs in the hope of selling them on for profit.
This proposal allows applicants for new names to self-select their TLD so that choices are most appropriate for their customers or potentially the most marketable. It is expected that applicants will apply for targeted community strings such as (the existing) .travel for the travel industry and .cat for the Catalan community (as well as generic strings like .brandname or .yournamehere). There are already interested consortiums wanting to establish city-based TLDs, like .nyc (for New York City), .berlin and .paris. However ICANN says a 'stringent approvals process' should prevent this. Add the prospect of fees of around $US100k per domain and any would-be squatters will need very deep pockets indeed.
NB: So who is ICANN? It was formed in 1998 as a not-for-profit partnership of people from all over the world - dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers.
ICANN doesn’t control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn’t deal with access to the Internet. But through its co-ordination role of the Internet’s naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet.
Here in EASIserv.com Towers we wish them well with their 'policing' of this latest TLD initiative: as they weren't around during the last TLD land-grab we can hardly hold them to be responsible for the chaos back then - but it'll be interesting to see how it all pans out, so watch this space.
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