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THREE NEW TOP LEVEL DOMAINS
1st November, 2002
While no official announcements have yet been made, it has been reported that President and CEO of ICANN Stuart Lynn has hinted that ICANN may be a step closer to the introduction of the next three generic top level domains (gTLDs).
While the "Final Report of the New TLD Evaluation Process Planning Task Force" - released in July, 2002 - covered issues such as the effect any new gTLDs might have on the scope and competitiveness of the domain name market, details of what format the new TLDs will take have yet to be finalised. (see: ICANN president hints at new TLD's - July 18th, 2002). However, forerunners are likely to include .travel, .health, .shop or .news, while other controversial TLDs, such as .xxx for adult sites, remain unlikely to be implemented in this round.
The experience of the launch of the last seven top level domains - including .biz and .info - has shown that new gTLDs can prove controversial, with criticism inevitably levelled at ICANN over the final choice and number of suffixes released. Some commentators have questioned the usefulness of restricted gTLDs such as .coop (for co-operatives) and .aero (for the aerospace industry) over more generic ones like .shop; while others say that many more new gTLDs should be introduced to allow for the improved categorisation of the Internet.
The effect on end users of new gTLDs has been mixed - with some being confused over the purpose and use of the new domains, while others take the opportunity to register a domain they may have missed out on in other domain spaces. However, rest assured that when they are finally released the arbitration panellists will be kept busy as the speculators, cybersquatters and business users fight it out yet again.
More at: http://www.demys.net/news/02_nov_01_tld.htm
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