Web addresses to get more leeway

NEW YORK: Online addresses would soon look a lot more diversified as the organization that oversees web identities is expected to approve a proposal to create an unlimited number of so-called top-level domains -- the familiar suffixes like ".com" at the end of Web addresses.
    
Under the plan, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will allow organizations to apply for any top-level domain, a media report said on Thursday.
    
Businesses, for example, could use brand names such as ".ibm" or ".ebay" in their Web addresses. Cities could sign up for names like ".nyc" or ".berlin," the Wall Street Journal reported.
    
It will also be possible to apply to use more general terms, such as ".news" or ".sports," to define sites associated with groups or categories of information.
    
ICANN, a nonprofit group that acts as regulator for the Internet, expects the change to spur the creation of many more Web sites -- and to allow individuals and organizations to express their identities in useful new ways, the report said.
    
"This is the biggest change to the way people find each other on the Internet since its inception," Paul Twomey, ICANN's president and chief executive officer was quoted as saying.
    
Registering a new top-level domain will cost somewhere between USD 100,000 and USD 500,000, the group said.
    
When the current addressing structure for the Internet was first developed in the 1980s, few anticipated that the Web would grow into the global communications and commerce network it is today.
    
At the time, the Internet's overseers believed that a handful of categories -- ".com" for commercial sites, ".edu" for educational intuitions, and ".gov" for government -- were adequate, the journal said.
    
Today there are more than 160 million Web sites, about 70 million of which end in ".com." About another 80 million end in country-specific suffixes such as ".uk" or ".cn." These general categories don't reflect the Internet's myriad uses, said Twoney.
    
ICANN increased the pool of available top-level domains in 2001 and 2003, but limited the names it made available to a handful of suffixes that include ".aero" and ".mobi."
    
Twoney told the Journal that the new expansion is akin to the massive land grants the US government made in the 19th century.
    
"What we're effectively doing is opening up huge amounts of online real estate," he said.
    
ICANN is also making it possible to register domains using non-English characters -- such as Chinese or Arabic for example -- which has been a big issue in some parts of the world.
    
ICANN, the Journal said, has spent the last several years preparing for the change and has invested around USD 10 million in technology to accommodate the new addresses. If the proposal passes, organizations will be able to apply for new top-level domains starting around April 2009.
    
The first Web sites using the new names could be live later that year.