Domain naming blown wide open.anythingyouwantBy Sylvie Barak: Friday, 27 June 2008, 2:03 PMON THURSDAY THE Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved a major expansion of Web addresses, opening a whole plethora of top level domains. What it practically means is that now instead of just plain and boring .org and .com, we can now all likely expect to see a load of .orgy and .cum addresses instead.ICANN unanimously passed the proposal in Paris, along with another decree which will allow domains to be written in scripts other than Roman letters, including Chinese, Arabic and Cyrillic. .секс anyone? No... how about .性別?Apart from revolutionising the web addresses of online porn sites, the move will probably also cause endless legal battles between corporations fighting over the same domain names. Colombia, for instance, is rumoured to already be drafting an injunction against Coca Cola corp for wanting its .coke web domain.ICANN’s chairman, Peter Dengate Thrush, himself in the midst of bitter legal scuffles with several women’s pharmaceutical companies, noted “We’re expecting a broad range of applicants”. Using the most boring example that sprang to mind, he added “We may see a .smith so that all the Smiths in the world will have a place.”Of course squatters, spammers and scammers will be having a field day with so many new domain name options up for grabs, but ICANN says it will require applications to go through an independent review process, in which third parties can challenge applications which threaten “morality and public order”.We’re sitting tight with our pens poised for when the application for .gay turns into a major court case in the American mid-west.Price is something that ICANN didn’t disclose on Thursday, but certain un-named officials predicted that starting prices would reach the low six figures (in American dollars). Of course, it depends how popular a domain suffix might be, and popular ones (.movies, .music, .travel) could go to the highest bidder at auction.But ICANN know they’ll have to take things slow, probably through a year-long public review process, crossing the .bridges when they .com to them.
