By Andy Sullivan
Washington - A new batch of proposed Internet domains could make it easier to fight spam and filter out smut, but the head of the regulatory body that will usher them sees even broader possibilities.
"Maybe it's the Klingons, where the Klingon association plays a role in keeping the identity of Klingons," said ICANN President Paul Twomey in an interview.
Star Trek fans shouldn't expect to visit www.yahoo.klingon anytime soon, but Internet users could soon pull up .mobi sites on their mobile phones, or set their Internet browsers to screen out sexually explicit material identified by .xxx.
Anybody with R50 to spare can reserve a domain name ending in .com or .info, but the 10 new domains being considered by ICANN are designed for specific purposes.
Continues Below ↓
ICANN expects to decide which ones make the cut by September 30.
Twomey said he expected the evaluation process to go more smoothly than a previous round in 2000 when participants said they had little idea why proposals were accepted or rejected.
"The big thing here will be hopefully people will feel they're evaluated against objective criteria," he said.
Independent evaluators will assess a variety of factors, from the perceived need the domain will fill to whether sponsoring organisations have the technical ability to run a registry that could contain millions of names, he said.
Operators like those hypothetical Klingons don't necessarily need to demonstrate that they will turn a profit as long as they have a solid business plan, he said.
The 10 proposals submitted to ICANN cover a wide range, backed by a mix of nonprofit organizations and technology companies like VeriSign.
The .jobs domain would allow companies to list available jobs at websites like www.companyname.jobs, rather than using a more complicated address like companyname.com/jobs.
Continues...
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
