LOS ANGELES — Comments on the proposed .adult, .sex and .porn top-level domains keep piling up on ICANN’s gTLD forum.
At post time, about 13 percent (776 of 6,151) of the comments on the ICANN Application Comments forum are directed at the three proposed gTLDs. ICANN started up the forum in early July and could green light some gTLDs as early as June 2013.
ICM Registry, which operates .XXX, has applied for .adult, .sex and .porn; Internet Marketing Solutions Ltd., meanwhile, has only applied for .sex. [...]
Published on Jun 14, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish : In one of the biggest changes to the internet since its inception, web domains can now be registered in any language and script.
That is, if you can afford the hefty fees, which can reach an estimated $25,000 per year.So far, internet giant Google has put in requests for dozens of names, but social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have yet to make a move.
ICANN reveals who's going after new top-level-domains in a move that could shake up how we enter Web addresses. Nominees range from .book and .music to .lol and .wow.
June 13, 2012 | Get ready to be a bit more confused about Web site addresses.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Named and Numbers today revealed which generic top-level-domains that companies and organizations have applied for, a major step in the six-year-long process to expand the domain name system to create more competition in a world dominated by dot-com names. For consumers, it means a new way of typing in URL, moving beyond the standard .com or .url addresses.
"It's a historic day for the Internet," said ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom. "The internet is about to change forever."
For the first time, brands can have their own TLDs, also known as "strings." And many are. Among the brands that have secured their domain extensions are .Google, which we know about, but also Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and Dell. Others include Sony, Nokia, Netflix, Oracle, Cisco, Yahoo, and AOL.
Others are gunning not for their own names, but to land the contract to run and manage the .TLD, the way that Verisign runs .com.
Google was particularly aggressive in applying for TLDs. In addition to .Google, it applied to nab .android, .chrome, .cloud, .lol, .vip, and .wow. Amazon likewise had multiple applications beyond its own name, including .book, .fire., .music, and .free. Microsoft has applied to cover several of its brands, including .azure, .hotmail, .skydrive, and .skype. Symantec also applied for .cloud, alongside .protection and .antivirus.
Domains such as .home, .free, and .movie were among the names with multiple applicants. ICANN officials said they encourage different parties to work together and partner on domain names, saying it would give priority to community-based TLD applications.
A couple of eyebrow-raising TLDs include .sex, .porn, and .sucks. ICANN said it has taken measures to protect companies and brands from being exploited under these domains. The group added that it has the right to take back TLDs if a party has shown it is abusing the domain.
Tech companies aren't the only ones getting in on the TLD action. Consumer brands include American Express, Johnson & Johnson, Wal-Mart, and AllState, which have all applied for multiple domains.
Because the Internet originated in the Western hemisphere, naming protocols for web domains and email addresses historically did not work with any characters except those in the Latin alphabet. More than half of all Internet users do not read English or other Roman scripts such as Spanish. For these millions of Internet users – and a billion more to come -- Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) represent their first chance to navigate the web using familiar, local languages and scripts. Today, with the new gTLD program, almost any word in any language can be a TLD. This video, shot at the ICANN meeting in Seoul, October 2009, honors the years of effort invested in leading up to the milestone date of November 16, 2009, when ICANN began accepting requests from around the world for domain name extensions made up of non-Roman characters.
ICANN's chief security officer said Friday that the issue that forced the organization to shut down its generic TLD application process was a bug, but not a hack.
In a staged video interview between Brad White, ICANN's director of global media affairs, and ICANN chief security officer Jeff Moss, Moss said there was no evidence of any malicious activity.
After analyzing all of the logs and looking for other indicators of malicious activity, "we didn't find anything," Moss said, that indicated it was a hack.
"We're very confident we understand what caused the issue, and we've corrected the issue," Moss said. Now, ICANN is poring through its logs, trying to identify who might have been affected, who might have viewed the information, and when.
Every applicant will be notified of their status, whether they were affected or not, Moss said.
On April 18, ICANN said that the issue arose when an applicant file was deleted. In certain cases, that allowed the file name of another uploaded by a different user to be exposed. "Certain data was being revealed to users, who were not seeking the data - it would just show up on their screen," Moss said Friday.
The number of file names or users affected is known, but it's "definitely a minority," Moss said. ICANN won't reveal the number at this time. Although the glitch was spotted on March 19, there was no way of knowing that it was a bug at that time, he said.
At issue is ICANN's plan to open up new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). At this point, there are 22 gTLDs, including .com, .org, and .net. In June, however, ICANN approved a plan that would allow people to apply for new gTLDs, like .pcmag, for example.
ICANN has been accepting gTLD applications via its TLD Application System (TAS) since Jan. 12 and was scheduled to close up shop on April 12, but the glitch prompted a temporary shutdown.
Why did ICANN take the system offline? It was the safest thing to do, Moss said.
"So without knowing if it was a security incident, without knowing if it was a data corruption problem, the safest thing to do was to take it offline," Moss explained. "The problems, had we kept it running only to find out it was a bigger problem down the road, would have been catastrophic."
The registration rules for .CO domains were significantly relaxed at the end of 2009. Now virtually anyone in the world can apply for .CO domain names without local presence in Columbia.
Widely accepted as the short term for 'company', 'corporation', .CO represents a unique opportunity on internet for businesses and individuals. Simply put, .CO is global, recognizable and memorable, and therefore highly desirable in this competitive business environment.
.CO launch starts from 1 April, involving a multi-phase plan to ensure for the stable and orderly distribution of domains. The Launch has three core stages:
