Image via Wikipedia
SINGAPORE — Internet minders voted 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 website suffixes using nearly any word in any language, including in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers decided at a meeting in Singapore.
“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.”
came to fruition a few days ago. The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has finally given a go ahead to the xxx domain. We had considered the pros and cons of the move in our coverage of the news, and one major concern that emerged was the inevitability of conservative governments like Islamic states in the Middle East and Indonesia imposing a blanket ban on the domain, which would undermine the freedoms that the Internet stands for. Shortly after the news broke out, the Indian government expressed its intention to seek a ban on the pornographic domain; putting it in the company of Indonesia and the Middle East vying to protect the moral integrity of its citizens.
