The Changing Internet Landscape: ICANN Announces New Domain Names
 
January 10, 2001
 

In what will be the first change to Internet addressing in over a decade, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the non-profit corporation charged with responsibility for administering Internet domain names and addresses, recently approved seven new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) - the terms after the dot. The seven new dots - .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, and .pro - are intended to alleviate some of the crowding in the current .com, .net, and .org domains.

This past summer, ICANN solicited proposals for new gTLDs. It received nearly 50 responses from businesses and other groups that seek to administer the databases or “registries” for the new domains. Although there is a broad agreement in the Internet community on the need for new domain names, there has been considerably less consensus about which gTLDs should be added and how they should be implemented.

The addition of new domains raises fundamental questions about the nature of the Internet. Some Internet constituencies have advocated for a domain name system that would classify Web sites by their owner or their content, which was the system in place in the early days of the Internet. When the Internet was first created, domain names were assigned based upon the nature of the applicants: .com was assigned to commercial enterprises, .org to non-profit organizations, and .net to networks. As commercial activity on the Internet exploded, these restrictions fell by the wayside, at least for these domains (they are still enforced for other domains, such as .edu for educational institutions).

Many applicants proposed new gTLDs that would effectively reinstate this early policy, such as .film or .sex, thereby allowing users to find - or avoid - them more easily. Others, such as .web, drew no content-based distinctions but were intended simply as an alternatives to the .com catch-all category, expanding the number of available names for Web sites.

ICANN decided to proceed slowly, adding seven new domains that include some from both of these categories. The .info domain will be available without restriction. The .biz domain will be open to all businesses, and the .name domain to all individuals. The .aero domain, by contrast, will be restricted to the air transport industry. The .museum and .coop domains will be reserved for museums and cooperative associations, respectively. Finally, .pro will be restricted to use by professionals, such as engineers, accountants, and lawyers.

It is still too early to predict how these restrictions will be implemented, or, perhaps more importantly, whether the Internet’s constituencies will embrace these new domain names. ICANN is currently negotiating contracts with the groups that were selected to operate the new domains. They are not expected to be available until the second quarter of 2001.

If recent history is any guide, we can expect to see a new “land rush” for domain names - where the first persons to the registry will be able to stake the best claims to the best new domain names. Some see this as an exciting opportunity and a leveling of the Internet playing field, but others are concerned about the expanded opportunities for cybersquatting - the registration of trademarks as domain names with the intent of selling such domain names to the owners of the trademarks. This concern is alleviated to a significant extent by ICANN’s Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy and the recent federal Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. These measures are ill-suited, however, to resolving the conflicts that will arise between legitimate users of the new domain names and existing domain name holders or trademark owners.

Some trademark owners have proposed a “sunrise period” during the implementation of the new gTLDs into the Internet. Under this approach, owners of registered trademarks would have an opportunity to pre-register their marks in the new domains before registration is opened to the public in general. This proposal has been criticized from all sides. One the one hand, it fails to recognize the possibility of conflicts between registered trademarks that are used in different channels of trade, such as Jeep Wrangler and Wrangler jeans. Owners of unregistered trademarks and existing domain names complain that they, too, should have the right to pre-register their names. Allowing such widespread pre-registration, however, effectively undermines ICANN’s goal of expanding the number of available domain names.

At least in part for these reasons, ICANN has not yet adopted any pre-registration system. Trademark owners and holders of existing domain names will therefore need to protect their interests by moving quickly to register their marks and names, and to step up their policing efforts. Unfortunately, as the number of gTLDs expands, the costs of such policing efforts are likely to increase. The continuing evolution of the Internet makes it all the more important for rights holders to develop strategies to protect their interests with the resources that they may have available for these purposes. Without such a plan, businesses may find that development on the Web has passed them by.