Internet Just Got Bigger Than Ever

Opening up of new domain names on the World Wide Web will change the way we surf
THE INTERNET’S real estate just went boom. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Thursday was all set to open up the Internet to virtually unlimited possibilities in Top- Level Domain (TLD) names, potentially ushering in a new era for the World Wide Web and changing the way we conduct business and access websites. For its sheer impact, this has aparallel in what Chinese leader Deng Xiao- Ping did in 1978 to turn around his country’s economy.

It can also be compared to the great land grab of 1803 when United States president Thomas Jefferson ordered one of his ministers to broker adeal with France —which owned alarge part of the US —to allow his government to more than double the size of the country. ICANN’s proposal allows cities and corporate entities to create their own domain names. Theoretically, this ensures there will be millions of more websites created by companies and cities across the world. Simply put, vanity domain names are now possible and any applicant- specific address can be bought from ICANN, the California- headquartered world governing body for allotting domain names and website addresses. For instance, the city of Delhi can register “. delhi” or acorporate entity such as Microsoft can buy “. microsoft”.

The only hitch? Each of these exclusive domain names will be worth anywhere between $100,000 (Rs 43 lakh) and $500,000 (Rs 2.15 crore). The first domain names expected to be sold are “. NYC (for New York City) and “. Berlin” for the German capital. Besides these domain names, websites can now have addresses in as many as 15 languages, except for the part that comes after the dot in their address. However, at this moment, this list does not include any Indian language. In an interview to the Wall Street Journal in New York, ICANN’s president and chief executive officer Paul Twomey said the emergence of new and hugely variable domain names will be the biggest change ever to the way people find each other on the internet. “We are opening up new land, which people will be able to go out and claim — like the United States in the 19th century,” he said ahead of ICANN’s annual meeting in Paris. “It’s a massive increase in the real estate of the internet.”‘New names won’t be for mom-and-pop businesses’ However, Twomey also added that given the prohibitive cost of the domain names and the actual infrastructure cost of setting up a website will mean “these new names are not going to be for momand- pop businesses”. Apart from cities and corporations, the ICANN proposal may hugely help cyber squatters — internet entrepreneurs who buy domain names and then sell them off at a premium to either the highest bidder or to the company that owns the trademark. However, cyber squatting is now illegal in most countries, especially with domain names that are trademarked by corporate entities. According to media reports, the first batch of applications for these domain names would be processed sometime at the end of the first quarter of 2009, and sites are expected to go live on these domain names in early 2010. Interestingly, the first attempt at putting a structure to Web addresses was made in the 1980s. In the first set of registrations, users could append only three extensions — “.com” (for commercial sites), “.edu” (for educational institutions) and “.gov” (for government). Since ICANN was instituted in 1998 as a non-profit organisation, there have been several amendments to the TLD structure, and domain names could be registered based on country (“.in”, “.tv”, etc), or according to the nature of activity (“.biz”, “.info”, etc). After Thursday’s announcement, the possibilities for domain names seem to have become limitless, albeit at a price. ICANN said not everyone can apply in the new TLD regime. Any new applicant would have to have a business plan and display the technical capacity to be eligible for filing an application. It also added that disputed domain names — especially in the case of two companies in different countries with the same name — will be sold to the highest bidder. In some cases, where the intellectual property law applies, ICANN will decide in favour of the entity that owns that intellectual property. At present, according to ICANN, there are over 71 million websites registered under the “.com” TLD, while the next highest is “.de” for German websites. The fastest growing TLD is “.cn” for China which has nearly 11 million websites.

What is ICANN?
THE INTERNET Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is headquartered in Marina Del Rey, California. It is a non- profit corporation created on September 18, 1998, to oversee a number of internet- related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the US government by other organisations, notably the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The ICANN is responsible for managing the assignment of domain names and IP addresses. Its other functions involve helping preserve the operational stability of the internet, to promote competition, to achieve broad representation of global internet community and to develop policies appropriate to its mission through bottom- up, consensus- based processes.