The Age of .anything Goes

The internet is about to undergo a major transformation.

THE MARK: For our readers who may not know, can you explain the role of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in the internet world?

PETER DENGATE THRUSH: ICANN was formed by the global internet community to co-ordinate the allocation of management of the most important resources of the internet – the underlying infrastructure of the internet, which is composed of the domain names, the domain-name system, and the IP addresses (where to find those domains on the internet).

THE MARK: Can you tell me about the new plan that ICANN recently unveiled?

DENGATE THRUSH: Most people are familiar with top-level domains. That’s the part at the end of the domain name – the “.com” part (or the “.biz,” “.org,” or “.net” part). There are 23 of those, and they have been built up over a long period of time. What we are doing is creating a plan by which anyone who wants to run a registry that will manage a particular name can apply for approval. As a result of that, we expect to see people wanting to run “.pizza,” or “.movie,” or “.shoes,” or “.shopping,” or “.anything.” We hope that, this way, the internet community will get the names it wants, and trademark owners, for example, will be able to put their trademark or brand in the top-level domain. So we expect to see “.mcdonalds,” or “.nike,” or “.cnn,” depending on how they want to use it.

THE MARK: Is it true that the cost of buying one of these top-level domain names is $185,000?

DENGATE THRUSH: It’s buying a registry, and, if you want to run a registry, you need to compete with “.com.” You have to apply for permission to run the registry, and you have to show us that you can run it, and how that registry is going to operate. A registry is basically a very big operational database that is capable of holding up to hundreds of millions of domain names. So you’re not buying one domain name; you’re buying the right to run a registry, which could contain hundreds of millions of domain names. So the fee for that application is $185,000, which is a relatively small fee compared to the actual cost of setting up a domain-name system that can handle all those names.

What we are actually talking about here is buying a second-level domain name, as opposed to a top-level domain name. In other words, you’re not talking about buying “toronto.com” – you’re talking about buying the “.toronto” end of the domain name. And, once you own that, you can sell millions of second-level domain names to others, and compete with “.com,” and “.org,” and “.biz” – or any of the other ones.

THE MARK: And who is this available to?

DENGATE THRUSH: Technically, anybody – but there are six different evaluations that you have to go through to show that you’re not a criminal, and that you have not been involved in any criminal or fraudulent activities. That’s something that the governments of the world were quite keen for us to introduce into the rules. They don’t want the new system to be used by fraudsters, and so we are happy to include those restrictions.

If you want to buy a registry, you also have to prove that you’ve got the money and fund system to make sure the registrants – all those people, perhaps millions, who have bought domain names from you – aren’t left high and dry if you go broke. There are provisions in place to make sure you have a way to transfer those registrants to someone who can look after them in the event that something goes wrong. So it’s a relatively major business undertaking – it’s a plan to run a multimillion-name industry.