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SUNDAY € November 5, 2000 

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Moving beyond '.com'
Expanded domains: A vote this month
could open up vast areas of real estate for
Web addresses.
Marilyn Geewax - Cox Washington Bureau
Sunday, November 5, 2000

Washington --- Click on the right one. The Internet's role in
commerce, communication and research has become so vital that
changing the system of Web site names requires: 

A) An act of Congress. 

B) An executive order from the president. 

C) A voice vote by a small group of virtually unknown people
meeting at a Marriott hotel. 

The answer is C, the group is called
ICANN --- the Internet Corp. for
Assigned Names and Numbers --- and the
vote comes this month in Marina del Rey,
Calif. When it's over, the Internet may
be a different place, with new names
that open up vast areas of real estate
in cyberspace.

Some Internet users desperately want to
expand the list of seven "top-level
domain names" that give Web sites a home
online. They are sick of overcrowding in
the popular ".com" domain and want more
choices.

Others fear any changes would be
confusing.

But by early next year, you may be able
to visit ".xxx" --- a red-light district
for pornography --- or ".kids" --- a
safe playground for children. The scores
of other names that have been requested
include ".travel" ".health" ".union" and
".mall."

Many predict a handful of new top-level
domain names will be approved by the 19
board members of ICANN when they meet
Nov. 13-16.

The U.S. Department of Commerce will
continue to have final authority over
major ICANN decisions for another year,
but the board's vote is expected to set
the course for more domains, which could
begin to appear on the Web by early next
year.

And like the homesteaders who raced out
in the 1860s to fill the West's
unoccupied lands, entrepreneurs are
vying to stake their claims. Forty-four
companies paid ICANN $50,000 apiece to
apply for the right to create a
top-level domain name and collect fees
from anyone registering a Web site
there.

For example, Diebold Inc., the
Ohio-based maker of automated teller
machines, is seeking permission to
create ".cash." But Diebold wants to do
more than just collect fees from banks
locating Web sites under that name, said
Gene Marsh, senior manager of services
development.

By controlling ".cash," Diebold would
give bankers one more reason to contact
the company and possibly learn more
about its other services, he said.
"We're creating a potential new
marketplace and inviting the world to
come and play in it," he said.

Like the other applicants, Marsh will be
in Marina del Rey, arguing for his
proposed domain name.

The effort to win ICANN's approval
already has led to "some pretty
aggressive lobbying," ICANN President
and CEO Michael Roberts said. When the
board weighs the proposals, he expects
"a food fight."

The demand for new space is intense
because the Internet has grown so
wildly. In 1994, very few companies had
a presence on the Internet. Today, more
than 24 million Web sites are registered
in the ".com" ".org" and ".net" domains.
Within three years, 160 million sites
are expected to be registered.

Having so many Web site names creates
crowding problems because on the
Internet, one's name is also one's
address. For example, Amazon.com is a
company's name. And when customers
decide to visit that merchant's Web
site, they type in the address
www.amazon.com.

This address system exists because the
people who created the Internet ---
mostly employees of universities and the
federal government --- wanted to make it
easy to use. Instead of adopting
complicated codes for addresses, they
developed a system based on
easy-to-remember names.

To keep track of names, the U.S.
government in 1994 awarded an exclusive
contract for registering commercial
online sites to Network Solutions Inc.,
a company based in Herndon, Va.

Initially, the company did little
business. But when the Internet took off
in 1995, Network Solutions found itself
sitting on a gold mine as it registered
one name after another. Soon, demand
grew for the government to introduce
competition into the registration
business.

That led the Clinton administration to
create ICANN two years ago, with the
mission of assembling an international
board to administer the naming system,
create competition in the registration
process and resolve disputes over
trademarks. Since then, ICANN has
cleared scores of rivals for Network
Solutions, now a subsidiary of VeriSign
Inc.

ICANN's biggest task now is to add to
the original seven top-level domain
names --- ".com," ".org," ".net,"
".gov," ".edu," ".mil" and ".int." The
system also uses two-letter country
codes, such as ".uk" for the United
Kingdom and ".fr" for France.

Some people think the system should stay
as it is, with all commercial businesses
piling into ".com." But that policy is
creating problems for businesses around
the globe.

For example, imagine there is a river
tour guide company in Brazil called
"Amazon." The owners might want to
attract customers with a Web page at
www.amazon.com. But that address is
occupied. The river guides would
probably be happy to place their Web
site at www.amazon.travel if ICANN would
allow it. But that might infuriate
Amazon.com investors, who fear
infringement on their valuable
trademark.

Whether or not well-established Web
players like it, the demand for new
top-level domains is so great that
people already are finding ways to
create new space. For example, one
California company, dotTV Corp., has
agreed to pay $50 million to Tuvalu, a
tiny island group in the South Pacific,
for rights to Web addresses ending in
that country's code, ".tv." So far,
dotTV has sold more than 100,000 ".tv"
domain names.

ICANN's Roberts said such use of country
codes could be regarded as "unethical."
But expansion proponents say the effort
to open up cyberspace shouldn't be
thwarted.

James Love, director of the Consumer
Project on Technology, a nonprofit group
started by consumer advocate Ralph
Nader, said severely limiting top-level
domains is unfair to small businesses
and individuals. "When you try to put
everything into '.com' and '.org,' you
quickly run out of places," he said.
"There just aren't that many words in
the dictionary."

Paul Garrin, founder and CEO of
Name.Space Inc., a New York company
seeking numerous top-level domain names,
said that if ICANN creates only a
handful of new names, consumers and many
businesses will take their complaints to
Washington to try to overturn the
decision. Because ICANN was created by
the Commerce Department, Garrin said,
the federal government could strip it of
its power.

More space on the Internet "is what the
customers want," he said.

More on the Web: 

ICANN, www.icann.org 

Watchdog site, www.icannwatch.org 

Consumer Project on Technology, www.cptech.org 

AN OUTBREAK OF '.ORG'
....Total number of Internet sites
registered within the top-level domain
names of ''.com,'' ''.net'' and
''.org.''
December 1992....................7,000
December 1993.................. 14,000
December 1994.................. 38,000
December 1995..................177,000
December 1996..................627,000
December 1997................1,541,000
December 1998................3,362,000
December 1999................9 million
2000......................24.2 million
Source: Network Solutions, a subsidiary of VeriSign Inc.

FROM '.ADS' TO '.XXX'
Here are some of the new names for
top-level Internet domains under
consideration by the Internet Corp. for
Assigned Names and Numbers: .ads, .air,
.biz, .cash, .co-op, .event, .fin,
.find, .firm, .health, .info, .kids,
.law, .mall, .post, .tel, .travel,
.union, .web, .xxx

FAMILAIR PLACES
Here are the existing top-level domain names, the entities that generally use them and an example:
.com --- commercial enterprises (www.amazon.com)
.gov --- federal government sites (www.whitehouse.gov)
.org --- nonprofit organizations (www.naacp.org)
.edu --- four-year accredited institutions of higher education (www.harvard.edu)
.net --- networking companies (www.earthlink.net)
.mil --- military sites (www.navy.mil)
.int --- international treaty organizations (www.nato.int)

A WORD ON SPONSORS
Ten proposed top-level domain names and their sponsors:
.air --- International Air Transport Association, a trade group.
.cash --- Diebold Inc., maker of automated teller machines.
.co-op --- National Cooperative Business Association, a trade group.
.geo --- SRI International, a non-profit research group.
.health --- World Health Organization, a United Nations agency.
.kids --- Name.Space Inc., domain name registration firm.
.mobile --- Nokia Corp., cellular phone maker.
.post --- Universal Postal Union, a United Nations agency.
.union --- International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, a group of unions.
.xxx --- Abacus America Inc., an Internet services company.
Source: ICANN

ICANN AT A GLANCE
Name: Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers
What: A nonprofit organization founded in 1998, based in California.
Mission: To manage the Internet's root servers; settle trademark and name disputes; oversee
registration of addresses.
Funding: Annual budget of about $5
million comes from fees paid by
companies and countries that have
registered names.

ICANN'S NEW BOARD
The first public election to select five
ICANN board members was held in October.
Casting their ballots
online, about 34,000 people voted globally. The winners were:
For North America: Karl Auerbach, a researcher at Cisco Systems Inc.
For Latin America/Caribbean: Ivan Moura Campos, CEO of Akwan Information Technologies in Brazil.
For Europe: Andy Mueller-Maguhn, a self-employed journalist and consultant in Germany.
For Asia/Pacific: Masanobu Katoh, an employee of Fujitsu Ltd. in Japan.
For Africa: Nii Quaynor, an employee of Network Computer Systems in Ghana.