Prometheus 6

.confusion: ICANN opens up Pandora's Box of new TLDs
By Jacqui Cheng | Published: June 26, 2008 - 12:11PM CT

By next spring, businesses and other organizations will be able to apply for any top-level domain they can possibly think of, like arstechnica.awesome or google.thegoogle. Joking aside, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted today in Paris on a measure that significantly expands the scope of generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs), allowing organizations to apply for almost any domain suffix they can dream up.

Up until now, the rules for TLDs are rather strict and tightly regulated. Beyond the typical .com, .net, and .org, there are only a handful of others TLDs that IP addresses can be registered under, including .tv, .biz, .mobi, and .us. Thanks to today's unanimous vote, however, the list of possible options will skyrocket. "What we're effectively doing is opening up huge amounts of online real estate," ICANN president and CEO Paul Twomey told the Wall Street Journal before the vote took place.

Not every zany TLD will be immediately available to anyone who want to register a domain, however. Businesses must apply to register the TLD first, then go through a review process to ensure that it isn't offensive and doesn't infringe on anyone's intellectual property. If approved, registering the TLD will cost anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000, ICANN says, and the business or organization must prove that they are either capable of managing the TLD or can reach a deal with a company that will. This is no small beans—unless you're planning to fork over up to half a million dollars and put in the labor to manage everything that appears under the TLD, this task is probably best left to large organizations and governmental entities. The organization registering the TLD will also be responsible for determining whether it will be restricted to certain types of sites or open to the public.