ICANN has .cheezburger?
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?
