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ARCHIVE FEATURE ARTICLE (ie. old info)
Analysis: The New Top Level Domains : A
First View
The
judges confer briefly. The voices in the audience die down to a low murmer, and then to
silence. A white envelope is held up, and reverently opened. "And the winners
are..."
".firm : for businesses, or firms
.store : for businesses offering goods to purchase
.web: for entities emphasizing activities related to the WWW
.arts : for entities emphasizing cultural and entertainment activities
.rec : for entities emphasizing recreation/entertainment activities
.info : for entities providing information services
.nom : for those wishing individual or personal nomenclature"
Excerpted from IAHC press release,
February 4th 1997
No sex please, we're... disappointed?
One
clear omission from the list above is any kind of provision for the thousands of sex sites
that have sprung up around the Internet. This is a really wasted opportunity, in my
opinion, as creating a .sex or .xxx top level domain and forcing companies purveying
on-line sex to register under it would accomplish two very valid things:-
- It would "legalize" sex on the Internet. The
Internet is still reported by the popular press as being the cyber-equivalent of a group
of boys gathered behind the school bike shed, passing each other "dirty"
magazines concealed in brown paper. There is nothing wrong with sex in its place, and a
new top level domain would have helped to bring sex on the Internet out of the virtual
closet.
- It would have ensured that it is no longer possible to just
"trip over" sex on the net. It is incredibly easy to find sex on the Internet
via a search engine, even when looking for something else. Search engines could have
filtered out the .sex or .xxx top domains, and allowed separate searching of those
domains.
Apart from
that, the choice seems to be a very safe, bland, fairly uninspiring one. A key point about
the new TLDs is that, with one notable exception, none of the TLDs are available for
domain name registration. That exception is .web, as a company already registers .web
domains. However, there is no guarantee that they will be chosen as one of the 28 new
domain name registrars, so if you want to jump the gun you should consider it a GAMBLE!
To gamble on
a .web address, go to www.webtld.com [I am accepting serious bids for world-wide.web; I
snapped that one up months ago!]
More news on
these developments as soon as it becomes available.
They shall not go quietly into the night...
If
you are the type of person who slows down when passing traffic accidents to get a
better look, the following list may appeal to you as a testament to the valient
organizations that tried and failed to get their top-level domains accepted. The other
dozen or so organizations listed by AlterNIC as alternative top domain providers have
already vanished into obscurity.
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Introduction