Today could be the start of an overhaul for the net as we know it. ICANN, a sort of regulator for the net, is voting today to decide if the strict rules on 'top level' domain names, such as .com or .uk, can be relaxed. If this goes ahead it could allow companies and the general public to personalise their domain names - potentially allowing addresses such as bigmouthmedia.bmm, for example.This has elicited a 50/50 response from the public on the have your say section on the BBC with some claiming that it could open up pathways for more unsuspecting users to be taken advantage of. Others give the idea thumbs up, pointing out that internationalising domain names allows for non-ASCII characters and so could be written in scripts for Asian and Arabic languages.
With top level domains currently limited to individual countries, commerce and institutional organisations, opening these up will cause a boom in the creation of domain names with the possibility of hundreds of new names being created by the end of the year. ICANN says that any string of letters could be registered as a domain but there will be an independent arbitration process available for people with grounds for objection to them. The one domain being talked about the most so far is '.xxx' which was rejected by ICANN last year on grounds that it could put the agency into the position of a content regulator. Again, comments from the general internet public have pointed out that this would make certain sites easier to avoid if users wished to avoid certain content.
Another point that has crossed a few minds is that the change could result in some messy internet addresses. Last year, bigmouthmedia wrote an article about the process of choosing a good domain name but will creators of these new domains take this kind of advice into account?
Dr Paul Twomey, chief executive of ICANN had this to say to the BBC:
"The impact of this will be different in different parts of the world. But it will allow groups, communities and business to express their identities online.
"Like the United States in the 19th Century, we are in the process of opening up new real estate, new land, and people will go out and claim parts of that land and use it for various reasons they have.
"It's a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the internet."
He also stated that ICANN is still working on how much the application fee to register a domain name will be, although it is expected to be at least several thousand dollars, which could put off any attempts to register domains without a business plan or the technical capacity to back them up. Dr Twomey goes on to say that "If there is a dispute, we will try and get the parties together to work it out. But if that fails there will be an auction and the domain will go to the highest bidder."
While this is a very interesting move, it is one that could possibly go either way. We will have to wait on the sidelines to see if this causes chaos or harmony in the online world.
