Filed under: Internet
.XXX back on the drawing board as ICANN plans big domain name changes
A far reaching transformation of domain names could be in store as Internet guardians, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meets to discuss changes to top level domain names.
According to a report from the BBC, ICANN has plans to deregulate top level domain names to allow any string of letters to be used as a top level domain, paving the way for long proposed domains such as .xxx, for company names like .Disney or even personal names such as .gordonfinlayson to be used as a domain name.
The proposed system would also allow for internationalization of domain names so that additional new languages and characters could be used to register domains which will be a plus for the billions of people who don't use Latin alphabets.
ICANN will vote on the proposal on Thursday on the last day of a series of public meetings which are being held in Paris this week. ICANN acts as the guardian of all Internet domain names and more informally as a global regulator of the Internet, but such services don't come cheap and the new domain names could see the cash rolling in for ICANN.
The release of a new domain name system could see a feeding frenzy as people individuals and companies compete to acquire catchy or unique domain names, and will no doubt be a considerable disappointment to all the poor saps who have paid good money for quality .com, .net or .tv domain names. All this is is inevitably going to result in a ton of new disputes over precedence for registrations, trade marks and issues like obscenity so lets hope ICANN has a really good dispute resolution procedure in the works.
[Via the BBC]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jfjb said 11:36PM on 6-23-2008
it is about time !
Changes should have been made in the first draft of the conventions, that was poor White Caucasian thinking.
But, come to think of it, wasn't the (US) constitution written also for White Caucasian duddes?
Never mind my comment, then.
It was only food for thoughts; i was hungry, that's all.
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Klerud said 6:45AM on 6-24-2008
Personally I'm against allowing company names and private names as top domains. Even though some companies are bigger than a small country I feel that the national domains, along with .com/net/org/info/etc. is enough. Why does it need changing?
I'm all for allowing non-latin characters, but giving users/companies free will when it comes to top domains I'm against.
.xxx seems like a good idea though...
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James said 9:10AM on 6-24-2008
It occurs to me that this would have far-reaching unintended consequences all over the place. I'm sure plenty of people (well aware that they *shouldn't*) have made software that depends on TLDs being 4 or less (and probably in a lot of cases 3 or less...) characters. Old folks that just barely understand computers have finally started to get it through their heads that "web addresses" tend to look like "www.WhatImLookingFor.com" -- now we're going to yank that out from under them? I'm not saying they shouldn't open up more TLDs, I just think they need to really ponder the legacy transition before they make any rash decisions.
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James said 9:14AM on 6-24-2008
I almost forgot two other things:
1.) This would be a boon for phishers -- now instead of buying bankofamerica.info and hoping people don't notice, they can send you to www.bankofamerica and hope people don't notice.
2.) I'm strongly against non-latin characters in domain names. Again, think legacy -- you can't find a single web-enabled device that doesn't support latin characters, but you can sure as hell find plenty that don't do Unicode. Think how many of them will break when they try to do a reverse lookup and get high-byte gibberish back as a response. Again, far-reaching unintended consequences.
If you want to add unicode domain names to IPv6, by all means do so. But for the love of God don't go changing the IPv4 spec so drastically! Won't someone *please* think of the embedded devices!
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Samuel said 10:29AM on 6-24-2008
This is all happening because Bush is leaving office soon, pitty, doesn't say much for ICANN as an indipendent. Still, I love the idea of the internet exploding, this is what the internet is about, things happening in all directions.
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Scopique said 10:24AM on 6-25-2008
Part of the "ease" of your average web address is that the top level domain is limited to a handful of somewhat descriptive abbreviations. Doing away with this standard would totally fubar basic web browsing.
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Lucius said 3:37PM on 6-26-2008
I agree that messing w/ this could be a bad move. I mean, the top level domains have important functions in that they reveal a lot about the organization controlling the website. It's nice to know that, .gov is a government website and .com is a corporate site. It tells u a lot about potential issues w/ the information such as weather or not it might be biased, or spun, if its just a cheap sales gimmick.
Why even have TLDs if they are going to be completely open to whatever you want them to be.
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