Internet body approves domain names like Altinkum Didim
Under the new system, the web's 1.3 billion users will be able from the third quarter of 2009 to buy generic top-level domains (gTLDs) based on common words, brands or company names, cities or proper names.
Paul Twomey, ICANN's chief executive, said the regulator needed three or four months to work out the details, and would start accepting applications in the second quarter of next year. The web body also voted to allow domain names to be lodged in languages such as Arabic or Mandarin Chinese.
In theory, an infinite number of new generic domain names could be born, but in reality applicants will need the technical ability to run an Internet registry of millions of individual domain names - and deep pockets.
Each new domain will have a substantial price tag, "in the low six-digits, US dollars", to allow the non-profit body to recover its $US20 million development costs, Mr Twomey said. "We don't expect there to be thousands of applications. You are going to have to be a reasonably serious business or community of businesses," said Mr Thrush. But he said ICANN was "hoping for and expecting a broad range of applicants."
"We're expecting Indigenous communities interested in protecting aspects of their language and culture. Or vanity domains: we may see .smith, for all the Smiths of the world to have a place." Cities could also benefit from the liberalisation, with the German capital hoping for .berlin or New York for .nyc.
On the business front, product groups such as .bank or .car are likely contenders, while the popular online trading site eBay is one of many companies that wants its own domain name. Mr Thrush said the change was "very exciting from a commercial perspective."
"We expect there to be much greater variety, we expect see things such as .perfume and .wine and .silk all sorts of commodity names coming forward, which will then be taken up" by individual businesses. The pornography industry has also sparked heated debate by angling to set up a .xxx domain for adult sites.
ICANN says it will not act as an "arbiter of law and morality," but that a dispute resolution mechanism will allow anyone to oppose a domain. Grounds for opposition will be trademark infringement, potential confusion with an existing domain, if a name wrongly purports to represent an economic or cultural community or is "contrary to morality and public order".
If two or more applicants want the same domain, ICANN will ask them to find a settlement, with the possibility of an auction if that fails. Up until now some cities or regions have been bending the rules already to get the domain they want. The city of Los Angeles has for example signed a deal with the South East Asian state Laos to use its .la domain.
More than 1,500 delegates from 70 countries gathered in Paris for the annual meeting of the California-based ICANN, which oversees the assignment of domain names and Internet protocol addresses that help computers communicate. This article has been published on abc news on 26/06/08
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