ICANN Tries to One-Up XXX with New Top-Level Domains - The UpStream

Domain names have gotten more and more difficult to register with companies and individuals hijacking sites before the popularity of their content has been established. For example, a personal domain from one of our staff members was once being sold by one of these hijack organizations for $2500 and the domain for our sister company was purchased for a little over $500. One way to eliminate this problem is to offer more specialized top-level domains.

For those who don't know, top-levels are the suffixes at the end of a domain name, such as .com and .net. ICANN, the organization responsible for moderating the Internet domain, has been taking suggestions for new top-levels over the past few months. As of the closing of the requests, 1930 applications were submitted, including .cloud, .music and .lol. Personally I really like .lol and would consider purchasing one just for laughs.

Not all of the applications have been well-received, however. A panel of officials from 50 countries have given a list of 50 of these applications that they believe to be concerning either globally or regionally. For example, .patagonia has been contested because of being a name of a region and the problems that could come from assigning it to a private company. Also, some intolerant countries, such as Saudi Arabia, have protested the use of .gay because of their collective dislike of the people and the fear it might encourage more gay people to be born, I suppose.

This Government Advisory Committee (GAC) has submitted 242 "early warnings," which equate to concerns over usage. Some of the concerns are of the type mentioned above, while others are over registrations by companies that might end up owning a top-level, such as Google or Microsoft owning .search or amazon owning .book. The applicants have 21 days to respond to the warnings and, if no response or no application withdraw happens, then the GAC can lodge a formal complaint to ICANN in April.

We know that formal complaints do not always equate to canceled top-level domains. At the beginning of 2011, ICANN approved .xxx, even through massive complaints. My guess is that some of these top-levels will be approved, such as .gay, despite protest, and others, like .book, will not because of Amazon's possibility to register one for every book ever (not really, of course - that would be insane).

We probably have another six months before any of these are available to register, but if you would like to be prepared, you can check out the list here and the ones that have been marked as warnings here.