A complete overhaul of the way in which people navigate the internet has been given the go-ahead in Paris.
The net’s regulator, Icann, voted unanimously to relax the strict rules on so-called “top-level” domain names, such as .com or .uk.
The decision means that companies could turn brands into web addresses, while individuals could use their names.
A second proposal, to introduce domain names written in Asian, Arabic or other scripts, was also approved.
“We are opening up a new world and I think this cannot be underestimated,” said Roberto Gaetano, a member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann)
The organisation said it had already been contacted about setting up domains in the Cyrillic script - used in many Eastern European countries.
“This is a huge step forward in the development of the internet - it will unblock something that has prevented a lot of people getting online,” said Emily Taylor, director of legal and policy at Nominet, the national registry for .uk domain names.
“At the moment, there are one-and-a-half billion people online and four-and-a-half billion people for whom the Roman script just means nothing.”
Dr Paul Twomey, chief executive of Icann, described passing the resolution as a “historic moment”.
Continue reading at BBC News website…
So, finally the internet will be filled with witty .xxx and .blog domains, as well as ‘funky’ domains such as firstname.surname/ Something which I’m not looking forward to. As far as I’m aware TLD’s such as .biz and .me.uk never really took off. I personally wouldn’t want one, rather sticking to .com and .co.uk - and the latter only because of the uk part.
The only thing that I can see myself doing would be having a .scot just because I’m so proud of my nationality - but it doesn’t make for a sexy looking domain name - ashesfromstars.scot, anyone? google.rocks? msn.sucks? Novelty, that’s all. It (hopefully) will get old quickly.
But out of interest, what would you want to register and why?
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July 1, 2008 at 10:12 am
Aimée (1 comments.)
Haha, oooh how msn should get MSN.sucks! So true.
July 1, 2008 at 10:15 am
Melissa
@Aimée I so agree with you, MSN does suck. I’m sure some smartarse will register that, or something similar and get a courtcase heading their way!
July 1, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Katy (3 comments.)
I was actually pretty excited when I heard the news, but come to think about it, I might just stay with .com or .net names just because it’s common and everyone will know and/or remember them. That is unless I think of something super original or something that I really like. =P
July 1, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Rhys (2 comments.)
I can’t see the point of this, as what about email addresses? rhys.wynne@rhys.wynne is just dumb!
July 1, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Melissa
@ Rhys - you know, I never even thought about that aspect of it.
There’s all the ’spoofing’ and spam emailing that could potentially happen here…
If somebody sets up eba.ycom and sends out phishing emails, the average user who mistakenly (on purpose) reads it as ebay.com could seriously get financially hurt. There’s hundreds of such examples.
The more I think about this, the more I dislike the idea. What’s wrong with sticking with what we’ve got and adding obvious TLDs like .xxx, .blog, .usa, .eng, .sco, .wal etc?
July 1, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Aisling (1 comments.)
Could be cool. I mean, I’d like an aisling.tld if I could. Other than .nu which I’m not a big fan of. :P
July 1, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Jess (2 comments.)
LOL, your title is so good.
I really do dislike this idea too. It IS a novelty and there will be so many people who abuse it, rather than make good use of it. You know those type of ’shock sites’, I don’t want to list them here though… but there would probably be more of them too. Or useless sites with one or two pages on them, simply just show off the web address.
What you brought up about fake sites such as eba.ycom is pretty scary, so many people could fall for that.