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Internet Icann Domain Names

ICANN be a part of it, .nyc, .nyc

By Mark Leiser, Research Fellow

July 3, 2013 | 4 min read

New York City granted the new ".nyc" top level domain

ICANN, the organization tasked with implementing and controlling the Internet's domain name addressing system has formally approved ".nyc", New York mayor Michael Bloomberg announced yesterday. This makes the metropolis one of the first geographical locations to be granted the precious geographical "top level domain" and opens the door for the city's businesses and entrepreneurs to sell second level domain names like "grandcentral.nyc" and "florists.nyc".ICANN is a California based non-profit corporation tasked with implementing and overseeing the Internet's domain name system. The organization originally limited the types of generic top level domains (gTLD) to 22 like ".com" and ".net". However, as the words that make up the crux of the addressing system like, "amazon" and "google" ran out, and more people and businesses have ventured into cyberspace, the choices for domain names have become few and far between. The change has brought about to increase competition among registrars and to change the way we do business and search on the Internet and to resolve the demand for localization on the Internet. The move to expanding the GTLD system is controversial. Business and trademark owners, in particular, have expressed concern about how their they will go about protecting registered trademarks in cyberspace. Claiming ownership of NIKE.com would be easy enough for the sporting goods company, but now the trademark could theoretically be sold by every single registrar that has been licensed by ICANN to administer the new gTLDs. Others question whether or not the localization program is at all necessary. A citizen of London travelling on a train to Glasgow searching for a seafood restaurant already receive specialized search and geographically-based returns. Proponents of the expansion claim that search and business will be reinvigorated by the localization strategy. For example, residents and visitors would be able to find local recommendations and services, rather than relying on search engines to make guesses about your location with tailored responses to search queries. Secondly, the initial offering would allow for a second domain name grab for those businesses who missed out on purchasing lucrative, generic domain names the first time around. The hope is that substantial value will vest in the owners of domain names like "music.nyc" or "coffee.nyc". Opponents of the expansion usually fall into three camps: trademark owners, governments, and civil society. Trademark owners, who have just gotten to grasp with cyber-squatters (those who buy domain names linked to or resembling a trademarked item with the hope to profit from it) will already are expressing grave concerns about how trademarked items can be protected under a 500+ gTLD system. Previously, it was relatively easy to for rights owners to protect their trademark. NIKE could ensure ownership of the domain name by purchasing NIKE.com. If there was a disagreement about ownership, mechanisms were in place to resolve the complaints - otherwise it was first-come-first-serve, reminiscent of the land grabs of the 1800s. IN other words, if you could register a domain name and it didn't conflict with the rules, it was yours. Under the new expansion program, the situation just got a lot more tedious. Trademarks will have to be protected at every single variation of the new gTLD. Instead of NIKE just having to worry about who owns NIKE.com, after the expansion they'll have to worry about who registered "nike.shoes", "nike.clothes", and "nike.sports". Furthermore, governments who have lodged objections about ".sex" and ".muslim". And then there is the uneasy tension between civil society, governments, and big business. Both agree that large corporations have no inherent right to own generic words and have expressed concerns about the expansion of the new gTLDs like ".amazon" which has a completely different cultural relevance to the Brazilians and Peruvians than here in the west. The expansion has also criticised for its cost. Each applicant had to lodge a non-refundable fee with ICANN for $185,000. ICANN keeps the money even if the applicant wasn't successful, and with any excess, the organization will decide how best to be spent.
Internet Icann Domain Names

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