MARINA DEL REY, CALIFORNIA - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is seeking public input on its development of a new process for creating, approving and adding new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) like .com and .org to the Internet.
“This is all about choice. We want the diversity of the world’s people, geography and business to be able to be represented in the domain name system,” President and CEO of ICANN, Dr Paul Twomey, said.
“That is why it’s so important for people to participate in the development of a new gTLD process. We will get input from businesses, governments and the public at large in the coming months and at the ICANN meeting in Puerto Rico, June 25-29, 2007,” he added.
According to a press release by ICANN, the new process will lay out how gTLDs are proposed and approved, and should allow for a much wider variety of them to be added in a timely, predictable and efficient manner.
ICANN expects that with the public input, the system for approving new gTLDs should be completed by the end of the year, and applications for new top-level domains could be accepted starting in early 2008.
“If the new approval process comes online as planned, the global Internet could see new top-level domains added and available between June and August 2008,” Twomey pointed out.
Development of the new gTLD process began in December 2005. ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) has guided the policy development process and its work will be used as the basis for discussion on creating a new approval process.