In June 2009 there was an ICANN meeting in Sydney and one of the items to be discussed there was the idea of adding more than 500 new gTLD’s to the already 21 that we have. This is a going to create great changes in the Internet domain name system. ICANN has put out an Applicant Guidebook for everyone who is wanting to apply for one of these new domain name extensions. In this guidebook all the rules and procedures are outlined. ICANN is currently running a comment forum of sorts based on the guidebook to get the general populations feedback.
It may take up to two years for us to see these domain name extensions in action. Right now ICANN is looking at issues such as trademark protection, security, stability, malicious conduct, demand and economic analysis. All of these issues were brought to light in February of this year. At the end of October over 1,200 people from 111 countries attended a meeting in Seoul to discuss these issues. One topic that was discussed in depth was the importance of a managed IP address system. For more information on what was discussed in the Seoul meeting please visit the briefing notes.
A monumental thing happened last week as they introduced and released a limited number of International Domain Names to be added to the root system. This is phenomenal because as early as the end of the year domain name holders who speak something other than a Western language can have a domain name that is entirely in their own language. On November 16th the “fast track” will open. This will allow people all over the world to apply for what they want.
A large part of the meeting went to more discussions on the overarching issues that were brought up in February as well as the dates for the whole list of gTLD’s. There was pressure placed on ICANN for the dates to prove to the public that they were really serious. Some common ground was found and they opened up the Applicant Guidebook comment page.
