Read this in the FT this morning and it's also up on their web page now:
Whether this is open to the public or not is a different question - but it is easy to register a company anyway so it isn't that big a deal for the public if they can just walk down to the Company Registration Office, lol.
Pretty incredible - I think this could be really good, but also really bad. It could ruin websites - think about owning "battlefield.two" or "ea.sucks" if you really like.Is this the end of dotcom? At a meeting this week in Paris, regulators voted to allow companies to buy their own "top-level domains". TLDs are the last segment of an internet domain name (for example, the "com" in FT.com). At the mo-ment, businesses must choose the suffix for their website address from a list based on what kind of organisation they are, and where they are. But no longer. Rightly, websites will soon be able to choose their own TLD.
Many of these new addresses will be quite predictable (like drink. pepsi, eat.mcdonalds or hillary. clinton2012). But the sky will be the limit (unless, of course, you buy ".outerspace"). Businesses can set up any domain they want. A prize should go to the first to offer a haiku as a web address.
However, this change is not without perils. It might have a detrimental impact on international development. Tuvalu receives $4m a year from licensing the rights to its country domain name, ".tv". The Federated States of Micronesia (".fm"), Djibouti (".dj") and Tonga (".to") are also likely to suffer.
There are also concerns about the world we will be leaving to our children. One director of the regulatory body, perhaps traumatised by not getting his first choice e-mail address, sounded a rather apocalyptic note: "I certainly don't want future generations to look back at us with disdain for not being good stewards of this limited TLD resource."
The regulators also decided that domain names will be allowed in non-Roman alphabets. This abolishes an artificial constraint that has proved especially frustrating in Russia and China. Could there be a greater service than allowing Russian and Chinese citizens to find under-the-counter drugs, pornography and Nigerian financial opportunities in their own language?
Yet the changes might not have much impact. New domains, such as ".biz", came in a few years ago - and when did you last visit any? Financial.Times may seem a tempting address, but don't edit your FT.com bookmark just yet.
Whether this is open to the public or not is a different question - but it is easy to register a company anyway so it isn't that big a deal for the public if they can just walk down to the Company Registration Office, lol.
Last edited by kylef (2008-06-28 08:41:13)