Meet the new dots in town

ICANN adds to list of dot-com, org and net The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has selected seven new top level domains, or TLDs, to join the current crop of dot-com, dot-org and dot-net.

The new TLDs will be dot-aero, dot-biz, dot-coop, dot-info, dot-museum, dot-name and dot-pro.

The TLDs contain a mix that is both for general use - such as dot-info - or restricted use - such as dot-pro, which is limited to professionals' business Web sites.

The significance of this announcement that these TLDs' registries - the authoritative databases that map a name within a TDL to its IP address - now will be spread among the seven organizations whose TLDs were chosen. Previously, Network Solutions Inc. was the sole registry operator.

Encouraging such competition was one of ICANN's stated goals for adding new TLDs. Other reasons were to increase the raw number of available TLDs and to improve the utility of the entire system.

The additions should address the issue of utility, said Sloan Gaon, director of business development for Register.com, which joined Baltimore Technologies and London-based Virtual Internet in submitting the winning bid to operate the dot-pro registry under the name RegistryPro.

However, additions such as dot-pro do not satisfy all observers. While David Farber, a professor of Telecommunications at the University of Virginia, was pleased ICANN added new TLDs, he believes many of the additions serve business, not the general public.

These differing opinions reflect many of the disagreements surrounding ICANN and administration of the Internet, with businesses wanting their names and intellectual property protected and watchdog groups pressing for an unrestricted conduit of information.