After more than six years of consultation and negotiation regarding the New Top-Level Domain Program, the ICANN Board this week approved the program to the pleasure of many within the Internet community.
For this, we say thank you to ICANN on a job well done!
The New Top-Level Domain (TLD) Program has been controversial at times and has fuelled many passionate debates within the Internet community. However, it is important to remember that the implementation of new TLDs is written into ICANN's founding mandate. It is also important to appreciate the level of research, planning, consultation, discussion and compromise that has gone into getting to this point.
The ICANN community needs to understand that a change as big as new TLDs requires some degree of 'a leap of faith'. Nothing can ever be 100 per cent guaranteed and I can't promise you that the new Top-Level Domain program is perfect. But what we can be comforted by is the fact that the years of consultation, discussion and compromise that has gone into this process means the leap is more a small step — a carefully calculated step.
What I can guarantee is that ICANN will continue to work extremely hard to listen to any concerns and take all appropriate feedback from now until the launch of the program, and after. This is based on the phenomenal amount of work ICANN has put into getting to this point.
A learning of this entire process has been the fundamental necessity of 'not pleasing all of the people, all of the time'. The multi-stakeholder model, by definition, is just that. The only possible result with multiple stakeholders, who have a multitude of viewpoints and concerns, is 'not pleasing all of the people, all of the time'. The focus must be on achieving a quality result with the understanding that you can never make everyone happy.
What cannot be denied is the extraordinary level of work the ICANN Community, Board, staff and the GAC has put into trying to achieve the best possible outcome. All these stakeholders have done a tremendous job and deserve due recognition.
Thank you ICANN
By Krista Papac, Chief Strategy Officer, AusRegistry International. Krista Papac is based in California at AusRegistry International's US office. She provides advice on all domain name industry policy matters as AusRegistry International's Chief Strategy Officer.
Related topics: DNS, Domain Names, Registry Services, ICANN, Internet Governance, Top-Level Domains
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You seem to be confusing "Internet community" with the "domain registration industry". Those outside of that industry seem to be much less enthusiastic about the New TLD Program.
Exactly ^^
Where is the demand from the Internet constituency for all those extensions ?
Historically new extensions have been shunned and not used much.
The internet community had been consulted in 1985 about the introduction of .com and the other gTLDs, and they at the time believed that everything should have wedged up underneath the ccTLDs.
Without that innovation, we'd maybe be using facebook.sanfrancisco.ca.us or google.mountainview.ca.us
The internet community had been consulted in 1985 about the introduction of .com and the other gTLDs, and they at the time believed that everything should have wedged up underneath the ccTLDs.
Really? They must have been very advanced for the time!
Do you have a link to those discussions Jothan?
When I first encountered the original domains in the mid 1980s (as a student of Carnegie Mellon, which switched its network node names from CMU-somethingorother to somethingorother.cmu.edu), my first thought was that the most gaping shortfall was the lack of a top-level domain for individual computer hobbyists; I would have suggested .HOB. I never dreamed that any non-geek, non-institutional entities would ever want or need a domain, though.