ICANN Expected to Announce New Domains Today
M A R I N A D E L R E Y, Calif., Nov. 16, 2000 -- The international oversight board
for Internet addresses is expected today to select new suffixes
in order to help reduce overcrowding in online names ending in
.com.
With some 20 million registrations under .com, virtually all ofthe good names have been taken, forcing Web sites to use wordcombinations or abbreviations that are difficult to remember.
New names could make more simple addresses available, whichcould then make Web sites easier to find.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has beenreviewing possibilities and will likely select today six or sonew domain names. Some Internet users are advocating choosingdozens of new Web address suffixes and others are urging ICANN todo nothing for a few more months.
Look For Neo .Geo
Top contenders for new names include .biz and .web for businessand general Web sites and .nom, .name and some variation of .i forindividuals.
ICANN will also strongly consider designating names for specialgroups, such as .coop for business cooperatives, .museum formuseums, .union for labor organizations, .air for the travelindustry and .health for health sites that agree to abide byethical standards that have yet to be written.
Another strong possibility is .geo, for a service not yetavailable on the Internet. The proposal calls for creating Webaddresses based on latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, sothat users can narrow searches for restaurants, weather and otherinformation about a particular city or region.
Most of the companies proposing new names at a hearing onWednesday used their allotted three minutes to emphasize thestrengths of their suggestions and to challenge unfavorableconclusions in a report released last week by ICANN.
Lou Kerner, chief executive of dotTV, complained that boardmembers were rushing through proposals at the risk of denying dueprocess.
Jonathan Weinberg, who had headed an ICANN task force on newdomain names, urged the board to take all qualified applicants.
“You don’t need to select between them,” he said to applause.“You can take them all.”
More Domains to Come
Board member Vinton Cerf stressed that whatever decisions theboard makes Thursday, additional rounds of new suffixes areexpected. “I hope no one thinks it’s one shot and you’re out.”
But chairwoman Esther Dyson could not say what happens to theapplications not selected initially. “We still haven’t decided howwe go with this process.”
Companies whose names get selected can charge a few dollars forevery name registered—for some of the more popular suffixes, thatamount could total in tens or hundreds of millions. New names couldappear in use by mid-2001.
Barbara Simons, speaking behalf of ICANN’s noncommercial group,urged the board to consider at least one suffix that explicitlysupports free speech. Because of a $50,000 application fee, most ofthe applications were commercially oriented.
Dyson identified “.sucks” as a possibility, but its sponsorwanted approval of more than 100 other suffixes as well to stayprofitable.
Other discussions focused on the need of specific names—suchas whether a separate .secure channel is needed for securitytransactions, or whether those can be accomplished as part of .comor another suffix.
.Kids, .XXX Raise Doubts
Board members also raised doubts about using suffixes, such as.kids or .xxx, to create content channels for kids and pornography,respectively.
Board member Frank Fitzsimmons questioned whether ICANN, as atechnical-based organization, ought to be setting policies aboutcontent.
Before ICANN’s birth in 1998 to take over management of Internetaddresses from the U.S. government, an international ad-hoccommittee met to recommend creating seven suffixes to relieve thecrowded field of dot-coms.
But those recommendations were never adopted, and ICANN laterinherited the discussions and disputes.