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| New Names Are
Closer To the Web Verne Kopytoff, Chronicle Staff |
Saturday, November 11, 2000
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Web domains .biz, .air and .web got a step closer to being adopted by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the organization that oversees online address. Staff for the nonprofit group recommended yesterday that 16 suffixes out of 44 get further review, boosting their chances of joining major domains like .com, .net, .org and others created more than a decade ago. The final hurdle will likely come next week, when ICANN's board convenes its annual meeting in Los Angeles. The board usually follows the recommendations of its staff, though it can choose to ignore them. Among the domains endorsed by ICANN are .nom and .i, intended to be used by individuals who want to register a personal address with their name. Others looked on favorably include .union and .health for specific groups like labor unions and health organizations. About two dozen companies and nonprofit organizations submitted domain names for ICANN's consideration earlier this year. They paid $50,000 for each application, with the payoff being the right to manage the domain in the event that it is approved. ICANN's staff judged the submissions based on criteria like need and financial backing. Many of the applicants were criticized for being inexperienced and lacking the necessary technical capabilities to succeed. One of the most high profile domains that ICANN's staff passed over was .kids, for children's Web sites. They wrote that choosing which Web sites are appropriate for children is too cumbersome. ICANN's staff also recommended against .xxx, for adult content. They said that pornographic material is ``readily available on the Internet'' and that the domain ``does not appear to satisfy any unmet needs.'' If new domain names are approved, they would not go into use until at least mid- 2001. They would be the first general suffixes to be adopted since the original ones, .com, .net and .org, in the 1980s. Naseem Javed, frequent ICANN critic and president of ABC Namebank International, a brand name consulting company, opposed the organization's limiting of domain names. He says that the group should open up all domains for registration. ``You cannot let one group like travel have a domain, but not a group like hotels,'' Javed said. E-mail Verne Kopytoff at vkopytoff@sfchronicle.com |
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