The unbridled growth of the Internet has reshaped most of our lives, from the way we shop, research, speak and interact.  But, the sad fact remains; the Internet itself has grown fat and inefficient.  

Cyber-squatters, persons who purchase domain names not for use rather for resale on a secondary market with significant markups, have shaped the development of the Internet to the extent that 70 percent of all purchasers cannot obtain their desired domain names and more than 99% of all possible four-letter .com names already taken among the 80 million .com addresses registered worldwide.  Similarly striking, more than two thirds of all words in the Project Gutenberg online dictionary have been registered “.com” already.  In this sense, the near ubiquitous use of “.com” as the technological suffix of choice for our domain names limits access to reasonable domain names for the average person. 

Even this organization, AmericaSpeakOn.org, was initially seeking an alternate name; however, without access to that domain name, AmericaSpeakOn was born. This may not seem significant. Readers may suggest that if the first choice is not available, continue to the second, third, eighth, hundredth choice for a domain name and that it is just part of the cost of doing business.  But, consider that nearly half of all small businesses do not have websites in the context of a struggling global economic environment.  Consider that the vast majority of those businesses cannot get access to their relevant domain name.  Is there an economic argument against the notion that greater access to online commerce could stimulate the economy more than any politician could?

Given these concerns, where does the Internet go when “.com” has come and gone?  In order to understand where the Internet is going, it helps to understand it as it is.  .com , .org, .mil, .gov, .info, .net, .edu, and .uk are all top-level domains (TLDs), and there are many more, including domains for different countries (country-code  TLDs), Internet infrastructure, and generic TLDs.  Also, as a subset of generic TLDs, .edu, .gov, .int, and .mil are considered sponsored TLDs, as their use is managed by the sponsoring entity. This has value to users as a validation feature, and as a result, online users can trust that they are visiting the site of an accredited educational institution when they are on a website ending in “.edu.” 

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the organization responsible for the management and delegation of the management of different TLDs.  ICANN has committed itself to opening the Internet to new generic TLDs, thereby reshaping the Internet as we currently know it.  These names could potentially be themes, brands, interests, acronyms, or anything else an organization wants to craft as a TLD, and the management of that TLD could better serve to make cyber-squatting less relevant and phishing and other scams less effective.  The benefit to Internet users is tangible; it could create a better organized, safer, and more intuitive Internet with the opportunity to expand to meet the growing demand.

While the breadth of the Internet seems renewed by the potential of new TLDs, it is alarming to note that ICANN committed itself to opening of new TLDs years ago but to little avail thus far.  The sad truth is that the development of this program has been mired in a bureaucratic mess of drafting and commenting and re-drafting and re-commenting for years. Unfortunately, not much has changed of late, as the latest meeting of ICANN found the process stalled again by political posturing and bureaucracy.

You can read further about the application process here. And submit your opinions on opening the Internet to the application comment board at this email address: 3gtld-guide@icann.org

- The Philadelphians