Singapore was the host city for a meeting of ICANN’s (International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) latest regulations meeting. ICANN is the international body that oversees and regulates the internet.
The group voted on Monday to relax rules on website naming conventions, which could trigger another dot-com gold rush in domain naming.
Rod Beckstrom, president and CEO of ICANN said, “ICANN has opened the Internet’s naming system to unleash the global human imagination. We hope this allows the domain name system to better serve all of mankind.”
There have been many requests for new TLD’s (top level domains) such as: .kids, .shop, .nyc, .nola and .xxx for pornography sites.
The group said that they will start accepting applications for the new TLD’s in January, 2012.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is responsible for managing and coordinating the Domain Name System (DNS) to ensure that every address is unique and that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses. It does this by overseeing the distribution of unique IP addresses and domain names. It also ensures that each domain name maps to the correct IP address.
ICANN is also responsible for accrediting the domain name registrars. “Accredit” means to identify and set minimum standards for the performance of registration functions, to recognize persons or entities meeting those standards, and to enter into an accreditation agreement that sets forth the rules and procedures applicable to the provision of Registrar Services.
