.anything-is-possible now in domain names

Good.food, learnto.salsa, glossy.lipstick – you will be able to set up a website with almost any domain address by the end of next year if you can prove a legitimate claim and pay a hefty fee.      

The regulatory body that oversees Internet domain names voted on Monday to allow virtually unlimited new domain names based on themes as varied as company brands, entertainment and political causes, in the system’s biggest shake-up since it started 26 years ago.

Groups able to pay the $185,000 application can petition next year for new updates to ‘.com’ and ‘.net’ with suffixes using nearly any word in any language, including in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) decided at a meeting in Singapore.

The new domain names will not be restricted to Latin characters written by users of English and other Western European languages but also other scripts, benefiting users of other languages such as Chinese and Russian.         

The new gTLD, or generic top-level domain, programme was approved by 13 votes to one with two abstentions by the board of the ICANN at a meeting in Singapore, officials who attended the meeting said.              

“This is the start of a whole new phase for the Internet,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of ICANN’s board of directors. “Unless there is a good reason to restrain it, innovation should be allowed to run free.”

 “Today we made history. It’s the dawn of a new age. The Internet addressing system has just been opened up,” ICANN President and CEO Rod Beckstrom said at a news conference.

Experts say corporations should be among the first to register, resulting in domain names ending in brands like .toyota, .apple or .coke.

The move is seen as a big opportunity for brands to gain more control over their online presence and send visitors more directly to parts of their sites – and a danger for those who fail to take advantage.

Japanese electronics giant Canon, for instance, has already said it plans to apply for rights to use domain names ending with .canon.

It will cost $185,000 to apply, and individuals or organisations will have to show a legitimate claim to the name they are buying. ICANN is taking on hundreds of consultants to whom it will outsource the job of adjudicating claims.      

ICANN's decision culminates six years of negotiations and is the biggest change to the system since ‘.com’ made its debut in 1984. High-profile entertainment, consumer goods and financial services companies will likely be among the first to apply for their own domain name in a bid to protect their brands, experts said.

“It will allow corporations to better take control of their brands,” said Theo Hnarakis, chief executive of Melbourne IT, which manages online brands for clients such as Volvo, LEGO and GlaxoSmithKline. “For example, .apple or .ipad would take customers right to those products.”

There are currently 290 country suffixes, such as ‘.ae’ for UAE, ‘.jp’ for Japan and ‘.fr’ for France, which often are restricted to groups or individuals with a presence in the countries, and 22 open names that include recent additions ‘.tel’ for telecommunications and ‘.xxx’ for pornography.

Analysts said they expect between 500 to 1,000 new domain names, mostly companies and products, but also cities and generic names such as .bank or .hotel. Groups have formed to back ‘.sport’ for sporting sites, and two conservationist groups separately are seeking the right to operate an ‘.eco’ suffix.<

The application process is arduous — the fee is $185,000 and the guidebook is 360 pages — and meant to prevent scammers from grabbing valuable domain names. ICANN will receive applications for new domains for 90 days beginning January 12.

“It’s a significant undertaking. We’re calling it the Olympic bid,” said Adrian Kinderis, chief executive of AusRegistry International, which helps companies to register domains and manages names such as ‘.au’ for Australia.

“But it’s worth it for corporations that have suffered from things like trademark infringement, and can now carve out a niche on the internet,” Kinderis said.

ICANN said it has set aside up to $2 million to assist applicants from developing countries.

“The board’s very enthusiastic about providing support for applicants from developing areas where the evaluation fee or access to technical expertise might be somewhat of a bar,” ICANN senior vice president Kurt Pritz told reporters after the meeting.

ICANN said in a statement that it will mount a global publicity campaign to raise awareness of the opportunities of new domain names.

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