The board of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers, backed the move at a meeting in Paris yesterday.
Presently, users have a limited range of 21 top-level domains
(TLDs) to choose from, like .com, .org, .info.
Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN's president and CEO, said in a statement:
"The Board today accepted a recommendation from its global
stakeholders that it is possible to implement many new names to the
Internet, paving the way for an expansion of domain name choice and
opportunity."
"The potential here is huge," he said. "It represents a whole
new way for people to express themselves on the Net. It's a massive
increase in the 'real estate' of the Internet."
ICANN authorises the launch of every new TLD, though the launch
itself is conducted by an ICANN-approved registry and the domain
names are sold by registrars. Under the new proposal, applicants
for new TLDs can self-select their domain name and operate as a
registry. They can either use the names exclusively for their own
purposes or open them for sale to third parties through
registrars.
In a statement ICANN said: "It is expected that applicants will
apply for targeted community strings such as (the existing) .travel
for the travel industry and .cat for the Catalan community (as well
as generic strings like .brandname or .yournamehere). There are
already interested consortiums wanting to establish city-based top
level domain, like .nyc (for New York City), .berlin and
.paris."
Phil Kingsland, director of marketing and communications at
Nominet, the registry for .uk domain names, told OUT-LAW.COM that
the move would "present some interesting opportunities" but he
stopped short of endorsing it. "We will wait and see how it pans
out," said Kingsland, who attended the ICANN meeting in Paris. "We
welcome that they've listened to the community and that they've
reached a decision," he said.
Under ICANN's plans, a "limited application period" will invite
"any established entity from anywhere in the world" to submit an
application. That application will go through an evaluation
process, which is expected to last nine months. "It is anticipated
that there will be additional rounds relatively soon after the
close of the first application round," it said in its
statement.
Trade marks will not be automatically reserved, though there
will be an objection-based mechanism for trade mark owners where
their arguments for protection will be considered, ICANN said.
Offensive names will also be subject to an objection-based process
"based on public morality and order."
Kingsland said that many details of the plan have still to be
finalised. The main barrier to entry for would-be registries is
likely to be the application fee. There has been
speculation that the cost of an application will be $100,000 to
$500,000 but when it was put to him, Kingsland doubted that that
figure had come from ICANN.
"We don't know for sure what it [the cost] will be, but they've
spent $10 million over past three years in building this up and
they said they're looking to do it on a cost recovery basis," he
said. "Probably the bigger cost will come downstream, when you set
up and run a registry. They'll want to make sure you're in it for
the long haul."
John Mackenzie, a partner with Pinsent Masons, the law firm
behind OUT-LAW.COM, said the move is bad news for brand
holders.
"This has the potential for utter chaos," he said. "The
attraction for domainers and cybersquatters is not going to be
setting up a registry that matches someone else's brand, it will be
in the generic TLDs. All of a sudden, every brand will be forced to
register their name at .shop, .buy and .london to stop anyone else
getting it."
Nominet's Kingsland said brand owners will have a strategy to
apply to registrations currently. "Either they defensively register
all the names they can or just deal with them after the fact and
use the UDRP [dispute resolution process]," he said.
But Mackenzie warned that the scale will make that exercise far
more expensive.
"We saw this with the introduction of .eu," said Mackenzie, who
advises on brand protection. "Our clients didn't want the .eu
domain name but they felt they had no choice. They had to register
their brands as .eu names. Before that it was .info and .biz and
all the others. Each time a new TLD is introduced, large brands
spend a fortune on defensive registrations to avoid the greater
expense of recovering the names from cybersquatters further down
the line. ICANN has just multiplied those costs. It's a brand
owner's nightmare."
Upon approval of the implementation plan, it is planned that
applications for new names will be available in the second quarter
of 2009.
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