Internet Corp For Assigned Names And Numbers

In addition to the likes of .com and .net, the Internet might soon have Web addresses ending in .fun, .cars and .prettymuchanythingyouwant. Heralding the most dramatic expansion of virtual real estate in 40 years, the international group controlling Internet addresses decided Thursday to let anyone apply to be in charge of new last names for the Web. The Internet Corp.

Adult content won't get its own dot-xxx address on the World Wide Web because it would force the organization that manages Internet addresses to regulate content. The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names & Numbers, or ICANN, rejected the dot-xxx designation by a 9-5 vote in response to government concerns about offensive content. The action marks the second time in less than a year that ICANN has rejected a proposal from ICM Registry of Jupiter, Fla.

The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers has invited public comment on procedures for creating domain names, the first expansion for general use since 2000. Names added since then have been limited to specific regions or industries. Domain names are key for helping computers find websites and route e-mail. There are currently about 250 domain name suffixes, most of them for specific countries, such as ".fr" for France. General-use names include ".com" and ".net."

The federal government appeared unlikely to relinquish oversight of the system for assigning and managing website domain names after a Commerce Department hearing Wednesday raised broad concerns about giving an obscure Marina del Rey nonprofit unsupervised control. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers was created in 1998 to run the domain name system under the supervision of the Commerce Department. Domain names are the addresses ending in .com, .

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that it would extend its oversight of the Marina del Rey- based organization that handles Internet domain name policies, while finding ways to improve the group's accountability and transparency. John Kneuer, the department's acting assistant secretary for communications and information, said the government's agreement with the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers was working and should continue.

The Commerce Department promised Friday to take more of a hands-off approach to the Internet as it extended for three years its oversight of a Marina del Rey organization that handles network addressing issues. Internet registrars, some foreign governments and other critics of the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) have complained about the U.S. oversight role, saying the group sometimes makes decisions that don't reflect the Internet community at large.

It sounds almost silly to say it, but the Internet is going global. Of course, it's already global. But the underlying technology that makes the Internet run was developed by the Department of Defense 40 years ago, and the federal government continued to have an outsized voice in how the Internet was run. Eleven years ago, as the Internet took off, the U.S. turned over some of its governance to an obscure nonprofit group, the Internet Corp....

The United States will keep control of the domain-name system that guides Internet traffic under an international agreement, resolving a dispute that threatened to fracture the global computer network. Negotiators at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society said they had agreed to set up a forum to discuss spam e-mail and other Internet issues and explore ways to narrow the technology gap between rich and poor countries.

Internet infrastructure company VeriSign Inc. sued a domain-name oversight body Thursday, saying it overstepped its authority when it prevented VeriSign from introducing new Web-address services. The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers has no authority to prevent VeriSign from rolling out a search engine for users who mistype Internet addressees, VeriSign said, as well as another feature that allows users to sign up for a waiting list for desirable domain names.

The firm that serves as the Internet's traffic cop failed to support its antitrust lawsuit against an oversight body and must refile the claim, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled Tuesday. U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz gave VeriSign Inc. until June 7 to bolster and refile its case against the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, the organization designated by the U.S. government to oversee Internet domain names.