New Web address endings could be start of turf wars

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New Web address endings could be start of turf wars
4/7/2009 2:30 PM
By Charisse Jones, USA TODAY


A sea change may be coming to cyberspace with Web addresses ending in anything from .a to .z. That has businesses increasingly worried they will have to spend millions to guard their brand names.

The familiar .com, .net, .org and 18 other suffixes officially "generic top-level domains" could be joined by a seemingly endless stream of new ones next year under a landmark change approved last summer by the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, the entity that oversees the Web's address system.


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EU optimistic over wider governance of Internet

Internet News Article | Reuters.com: "By Huw Jones

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission hopes a meeting next week will come up with an agreement to allow governments more direct influence over the domain name system that guides traffic around the Internet.

A U.N. report has put forward a more multi-national approach to running the Internet which serves a billion users worldwide, saying this would be more democratic and transparent, a view the 25-nation European Union shares.

Day-to-day handling of domain names is done by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based non-profit organization created by the U.S. Commerce Department.

ICANN's governments committee has only an advisory role."