Seven new domain name extensions

The new names are as follows:

• .biz (businesses)
• .name (individuals)
• .museum (museums)
• .pro (professionals)
• .aero (aviation)
• .coop (co-operatives)
• .info (general)

These add to the existing seven gTLDs which are:

• .com (commercial)
• .org (organisation)
• .net (network)
• .edu (reserved for US educational institutions)
• .gov (reserved for the US Government)
• .mil (reserved for the US military)
• .int (used for registering organisations established by international treaties)

There are also country-code top level domains for each nation, such as .uk for the UK and .de for Germany. In addition, the European Commission recently announced that a top level .eu domain will be introduced in the middle of 2001 open to businesses and organisations in each of the 15 member states of the European Union.

Applications to control the suffixes .web, .xxx, .sex, .kids and .geo were among the 37 out of 44 proposals rejected by ICANN.

The approved names were put forward by businesses wanting to control their registration and distribution. Each applicant paid a $50,000 deposit to ICANN. The successful applicants, chosen for their proposals, business plans and technical expertise, will each have the means of controlling the database that records registrations, a potentially lucrative monopoly.

It is possible that the names will be available for registration from the beginning of next year, although the predicted date for all registrars to be operating is June 2001.

The purpose of their introduction is to reduce the fierce competition for domain names. There are now around 20 million .com names alone. However, introducing the names raises new opportunities for cybersquatters, those who register and use domain names in bad faith. Consequently, there are new pressures on legitimate businesses wanting to protect their trade marks. The full detail of how the new names will be distributed by the successful applicants is not yet publicly known, although there have been appeals from some companies to give a right of first refusal to trade mark owners before accepting applications from others.

A consortium of 29 existing registrars will control .info. The consortium failed to convince ICANN to introduce .web as a gTLD. The companies had taken “tens of thousands” of pre-registrations for domain names in anticipation of the new suffix. NeuStar Inc. based in Washington DC has won control of the new .biz name, which many suggest will become the most popular of the new names.

One development that could affect the domain name system as a whole is the introduction of "Keywords" announced by US company RealNames.