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Agence France-Presse
Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 1:30 AM PT
PARIS--The internet looked set Monday for one of the biggest shakeups in its brief history if
the web's regulator votes this week as expected to allow new domain names such as .love or .paris.
The vote by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which began its
annual general meeting Monday in Paris, would open up millions of new variations for web addresses.
"Apart from the .com, .net or .org, the 1.3 billion web users will be able from early 2009 to acquire
generic addresses by lodging common words such as .love, .hate or .city or proper names," ICANN president
Paul Twomey told French newspaper Les Echos.
With the stock of available web addresses under the current IPv4 protocol set to run out by 2011,
ICANN has been under pressure to find a solution for burgeoning demand.
Under the proposed new regime, domain names will also be able to be lodged in
languages such as Arabic or Mandarin Chinese.
"We have tested 15 languages with non-Latin alphabets so that they can work with web
browsers from Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple," said Twomey.
Websites are now largely limited to domains that end in .com or .country, but the
ICANN proposal would enable firms to buy new generic domains ending in whatever they want.
The popular online trading site eBay is one of the many companies that wants to have its own domain name.
Broad product groups such as .bank or .car are also likely contenders.
Cities could benefit too from this liberalization, with the German capital hoping for .berlin or New York for .nyc.
Some cities or regions have been bending the rules already to get the domain they want. The city of Los Angeles has
for example signed a deal with the southeast Asian state Laos to use its .la domain.
In theory, an infinite number of new domain names could be born, which would prove a boon for ICANN
because it would receive payment for each one.
But in reality advanced technical skills and a fat wallet would be needed to set up a new name.
Tens of thousands of dollars would be required, noted Loic Damilaville, head of the AFNIC
association of French domain names.
ICANN is also at this week's meeting, which has gathered more than 1,500 delegates from
dozens of countries, backing a new address system, IPv6, which would add billions of new internet addresses.
A non-profit organization based in southern California, ICANN oversees the assignment of
domain names and internet protocol addresses that help computers communicate.
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