ReadWriteWeb

Today could be the point in history at which we look back and say, "that was the day the Internet fundamentally changed." Today is the day the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) opens up its new registry for generic Top Level Domains and it will have a profound affect on how people find and consume information on the Web. Will it be a gold rush? Is this the end of the ".com" era as we have come to know it?

A top level domain is a core part of how the Internet organizes and parses the names of websites. The most common, of course, is .com, but other TLDs are .net, .org and country domains like .CO or .UK. ICANN's new gTLDs will allow companies, governments and other organizations to register unique strings. For instance, are we about to enter the era of .pepsi? See below for everything you need to know about the new domain name system.

"The communications public policy effort that may affect all of us the most in 2012... will take place far from our shores," stated U.S. Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell, in a speech in Washington before a bar association two weeks ago. "As we sit here today, scores of countries, including China, Russia and India, are pushing hard for international regulation of Internet governance."

We talk a lot, almost ad nauseum, about the "free and open Internet." What we sometimes fail to take into account is that freedom has many... shall we say, facets, which cast different shades of light at different angles. From one angle, the story looks like this: The free Internet is threatened by the incursion of governments that would seek to suppress individual freedoms through the systematic restructuring of Web services, with the burden being placed on service providers to comply. But that's not coming from Comm. McDowell, or from the opponents of SOPA legislation. It's the new populist battle cry of Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister seeking once again to become President.

His vision was to internationalize the oversight body of the Internet naming system, to structure it less like a spider and more like a starfish. (A starfish, you see, can regrow lost limbs.) To some extent, the dashing security expert Rod Beckstrom has accomplished that as President and CEO of ICANN since mid-2009, most notably by removing the U.S. Dept. of Commerce from its direct oversight role over ICANN.

Come the end of his term next July, Beckstrom will leave the President and CEO role of ICANN, presumably to resume his career as a world-renowned security expert. But in the twilight period of his term he may have to fight at least two more significant battles, neither of which may conclude before his departure. First and foremost is ICANN's adoption of a controversial generic top-level domain (gTLD) plan for the domain name system - one which would give any applicant with $185,000 to spare (PDF available here) a new root domain of its own alongside .com, .net, and .org.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
has put to rest three years of speculation by giving final approval to generic Top-Level Domains that they think will be the future of site addresses and brand homes on the Web.

Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) are essentially specific destinations for brands. Companies will be able to buy their brand and attach it to a URL. So instead of seeing Pepsi.com, the soda manufacturer could have Pepsi.soda or something similar. It will not be cheap to get your own TLD, with an $185,000 application fee and $25,000 a year to run the registry. Yet, some Internet advocates are crying foul, saying that gTLDs will create new headaches in cybersquatting, trademark issues and excessive spam.

Following the recent government seizure of over 80 websites, there was a certain amount of finger-pointing aimed at ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - the nonprofit organization tasked with managing IP address spaces and managing top-level domains.

ICANN has just issued a statement, saying that it was not responsible for any part of the government actions. "As we have said many times, ICANN was not a party to those actions" by the U.S. Immigation and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), "nor was it a target of them."

With the news of Pirate Bay convictions upheld in Sweden, website seizures in the U.S., and now threats to "do something" about Wikileaks, it's no surprise that there are now calls for an alternative DNS, one outside the reach of governments and of ICANN.

The DNS, or Domain Name System, is one of the foundational elements of the Internet, responsible for translating the numbers in IP addresses to the more human-friendly names. And ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is a nonprofit organization tasked with managing both the IPv4 and IPv6 Internet Protocol address spaces, maintaining the registries of IP identifiers, and managing top-level domain names.

It's been five years now since ICANN, the not-for-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, first proposed a .xxx top-level domain for sexually explicit sites and the BBC reports today that the battle has finally ended with the agency's approval.

Starting today, countries can use Internet country code top-level domains that are independent of the Latin alphabet, according to Internet regulating body ICANN.

As it currently stands, a site in Saudi Arabia must use ".sa" as its root. Now it can use the Arabic equivalent and leave off translating. Egypt, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are the first to take advantage of this.

ICANN, the not-for-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers that has managed domain names on the Internet since 1998, just announced that it has reached a new deal with the US Department of Commerce that will allow it to operate as a more independent entity. Other governments and the private sector will now have a greater say in how domains will be managed. The Commerce Department will continue to hold a seat on ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee, but it's influence will now be on par with that of other members of the organization.

As proven by last month's Facebook Vanity URL rush, there's value in personal domain names. As an answer to brand protection across multiple networks, DandyID is launching ClaimMyName at around 3pm this afternoon. The site allows users to register their custom URLs across hundreds of social networking and social media sites for a fee. And the service certainly doesn't come cheap to individuals. The 20 domain starter pack costs $80 and the 300 domain pro pack is $699. Then again, when has security ever been sold at cut rate prices? Essentially this is a seemingly easy way for companies and individuals to mitigate risk; however, when there is no verification process to keep out squatters, the system can definitely backfire.