ICANN’s signed its name on the dotted line for the proposal to create new domain suffixes in the style of their last decision, .xxx. As CNET reports, there are only 22 GTLDs in existence today (.org, .edu and so on), but with this decision we could expect to see specific endings for companies, categories or self-promoting individuals. More »
ICANN, the de facto parent of domain names, has disregarded the advice of its Government Advisory Committee and approved the use of .XXX domains, which has caused turmoil among established adult entertainment brands over the cost of repurchasing domains. [Xbiz]
We didn’t doubt that they would, but the ICANN has officially approved non-Latin character domain names. The pleasant surprise is that the system and guidelines for these internationalised domain names (IDNs) look pretty solid, even if hiccups are expected. More »
The ICANN, the folks who set some guidelines that make the Internet go ’round, are in the final stages of passing a proposal to introduce non-Latin characters to web addresses. Finally, there’ll be some non-porn-based multiculturalism on the Internet. More »
ICANN has just made a decision that goes beyond allowing .xxx to be a top level domain; they’re allowing all words to be top level domains. That means you’re going to see domains like fuck.shit, shit.shit, shit.fuck, whatisthisshit.fuck, and so forth. What’s not allowed is domains that conflict with trademarks (.pepsi was the example), too similar to current top level domains, or names associated with countries or governments (juicy.turkey). Companies will also register their products and services, leading to really annoying domains like pleaseplayyour.ps3pleaseplease, or dontyouwantanother.ipod. Nice one, ICANN. Nice one. [USA Today]
Next week, in Rio, an international meeting will get underway concerning the Internet and its current status. The itinerary for the discussion includes spam, free speech and Internet access costs. However, it seems that American dominance in the governing of the Internet is more likely to be the unofficial topic for debate. More »
ICANN, the governing body of domain names, says it will test out web addresses using Arabic, Persian, Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Hebrew, Japanese, Tamil and both simplified and traditional Chinese. I guess this means that the inevitable collapse of all language into a bloated English hodgepodge is on hold. While it’s nice for people to get domain names they can actually read, it pisses me off, because I like navigating non-English sites by their forced use of Roman-alphabet tags. Ironically, as machine translation gets better, the use of more and more languages and alphabets on the web might not really detract from its universality. But I can’t help thinking there’s something scary in this decision, scary, that is, for monolingual America. [Yahoo/AFP] More »
