The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) just decided, in a unanimous vote, to make all of our daily lives vastly more complicated.Soon any company, country, organization, and presumably, any fraudulent spam empire, will be able to apply for whatever Web address extension they..
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) just decided, in a unanimous vote, to make all of our daily lives vastly more complicated.
Soon any company, country, organization, and presumably, any fraudulent spam empire, will be able to apply for whatever Web address extension they fancy. Obviously, Icann intends for these new extensions to be practical and straightforward (city names, brands, general nouns). But honestly, how could this not go terribly awry? We already get miffed when someone rolls in with a .us or a .biz ... can you imagine when we have to start accounting for, say, .merkin or .knish?
Icann's chairman, Peter Dengate Thrush, is preposterously optimistic about the plan: "Indigenous communities might come forward to protect aspects of their language and culture," he said. And, "We may see a .smith so that all the Smiths in the world will have a place."
Sorry? What are your reasons for opening the flood gates to infinite new Web address extensions? The preservation of indigenous communities and creating a cyberspace-based kinship bond among strangers? Hate to burst your dot-com bubble here, but this may not be the best way to affect that kind of change. It is, however, the best way for us to forget all the urls we need to remember.
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