Board approves 7 new Internet suffixes

.biz, .info, others to join the mix

In this story: 'Time to refill the tank' Charges of nepotism New suffix bids cost $50,000 RELATED STORIES, SITES

MARINA DEL REY, California -- A new wave of domain names should spring up on the Internet early next year, giving relief to the dot-com name crunch. The governing body for Internet names approved seven additional online suffixes, the first such address expansion in more than a decade.

The new Web address suffixes authorized by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names (ICANN) are as follows .info for general information, .biz for businesses, .name for individuals, .pro for professionals, .museum for museums, .coop for business cooperatives and .aero for the aviation industry.

VIDEO CNN's Steve Young looks at the decision Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)     DOMAIN NAME Q&A Why do domain names matter? How will new suffixes affect average Internet users? Click here for some answers     ALSO New Web suffixes coming, but will it matter? July 19, 2000    New domain names:   • .info   • .biz   • .name   • .pro   • .museum   • .coop   • .aero

They will join .com, .net and .org as generic suffixes available worldwide.

The action drew cheers from industries seeking the expansion and jeers from critics who said ICANN unfairly favors large corporate interests over individual Internet users.

"Dot-com is almost out of gas," said Ken Hansen of NeuStar Inc., which joined in the winning bid for .biz. "It's time to refill the tank so good names are available for users and businesses."

Thursday's decision capped a half-decade of discussion about how to relieve demand for addresses ending in .com. With some 20 million .com names registered worldwide, easy-to-remember addresses have been all but used up.

ICANN must now negotiate contracts with companies or groups that made the winning proposals. That should occur by year's end, and getting the databases running could take a few more months.

More suffixes are expected, although ICANN skirted such questions as when and how.

"We haven't discussed anything," said Vinton Cerf, who was elected chairman of ICANN after the meeting. "This is unexplored territory."

First, Cerf said, the board must be convinced the new suffixes do not introduce side effects.

The new suffixes could also begin a new Internet land rush, with speculators and trademark holders competing to claim the best names first.

ICANN has been embroiled in controversy since it was created in 1998 by the United States government to oversee the domain name system. About half of the board members were chosen on ICANN's inception, with the other half chosen by constituencies within ICANN.

ICANN president Michael M. Roberts, left, and vice-president Louis Touton talk together during the conference

That has led to accusations of nepotism, and over-representation by corporate and big business interests instead of regular Internet users, especially outside of the United States, and calls for ICANN's abolishment.

To assuage critics, ICANN earlier this year held a direct election via the Internet for five new board members, who did not start their terms until after the board meeting.

But it is also considering limiting further direct elections of board members, which prompted some ICANN attendees to wear buttons saying "Help Stamp Out ICANN Board Squatting".

In choosing new domains to add and the companies to run them, the board said it was looking for diversity in company size, and region, strength of their business plan, and their technical proficiency to handle this.

"Competing with .com requires technical ability. You need to emphasize this, or competition can't exist," said Jun Murai, a member of ICANN's board.

But some complained that with the emphasis on the financial fitness of the applicants, ICANN was looking more like a venture capitalist rather than a nonprofit corporation.

"ICANN has become a large gatekeeper deciding who has the right to print money on the Internet," said Karl Auerbach, a long-time critic of ICANN who favors adding up to 10,000 new domain name suffixes per year. Auerbach is an incoming ICANN board member who did not participate in the selection process.

For this week's meeting, companies or groups proposing new suffixes paid a nonrefundable $50,000 fee for the chance to become record keepers for the new names.

As registry operators, they would be able to charge a few dollars per name registered, an amount that could add up to millions of dollars for the most popular suffixes.

Desiring to steer clear of content regulation, the board rejected .kids for children, .xxx for adults and .health for prescreened health sites. They also dismissed .tel for telephone numbers and .yp for yellow page directories.

An unexpected omission from the board's group was the .geo domain name, which would've created a huge Web-accessible database of businesses and monuments based on location.

In all, there were 47 applications for new suffixes.

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.

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ICANN
NeuStar, Inc.

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