ICANN Debates Domain Extensions

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is considering ten wide-ranging proposals for new domain name extensions that would be restricted to particular industries or groups.

The proposals for specialized top-level domains were submitted earlier this month. ICANN is expected to announce its selections later this year.

New Ideas

Among the proposed name extensions that could appeal to U.S. corporations are:

• .jobs, a domain for companies to post job listings and other human resources-related information, which was proposed by The Society for Human Resource Management;
• .travel, a domain for the global travel industry that was proposed by Tralliance, a directory provider to the tourism industry;
• .mail, a proposal from Spamhaus to create a spam-free domain system for corporations and individuals;
• .mobi, a domain proposed by Nokia, Vodafone, and Microsoft that would feature content and services optimized for mobile devices;
• .tel, which would provide a way for companies to register their telephone numbers as domain names.

Getting Specific

In other bids, the international postal community has proposed .post, an extension that would be used to register postal services and post offices using the same abbreviations already used by the postal industry.

The cultural community surrounding the Catalan language proposed its own registry, which would be dubbed .cat. Also, a Canadian group has proposed .xxx for pornographic content.

An independent panel will review the proposals beginning in May.

ICANN currently authorizes three specialized top-level domains: .aero for the aviation industry, .coop for cooperative businesses, and .museum for museums.