Internet to be thrown open to new names
June 20th, 2011 - 7:47 pm ICT by IANSWashington, June 20 (IANS) The body that controls internet domain names Monday agreed to open up the naming system so that any organisation with enough cash can apply to create own version of .com, .org or .gov.
The Los Angeles-based Internet Corporation for Names and Numbers (ICANN) has been planning the naming expansion for sometime and approved it at a board meeting in Singapore Monday morning, the Los Angeles Times reported.
This means that instead of going to coke.com or nike.com, you might be able to go to drink.coke or justdoit.nike.
Nonprofit groups could reserve the .school domain and cities could consolidate their online presence at .nyc or .losangeles, the report said.
But this won’t come cheap. The price tag to get a new domain is $185,000.
Only “established public or private organisations” can apply, and all applications must prove they have the technical capability necessary to keep a domain running, the report said.
Internet experts believe the initial expansion might bring 500 new options for site suffixes. There are only 22 now, including the original eight, .com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net, .org and .arpa.
In 2000, ICANN added 14 new top-level domains, including .biz, .info and .jobs.
Few of the new names have caught on, with .com remaining the standard across many industries, even though it can be difficult and expensive to find new .com names, with the most snapped up by companies, individuals and cybersquatters long ago.
“ICANN has opened the Internet’s naming system to unleash the global human imagination. Today’s decision respects the rights of groups to create new Top Level Domains in any language or script. We hope this allows the domain name system to better serve all of mankind,” the Times report quoted Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s president and chief executive officer, as saying.
–Ind-Asian News Service
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