With the Internet boomings and domain-name disputes breaking out with the frequency of barroom brawls over biker babes, a group of Internet experts has approved seven new top-level domains.
The domains - .firm, .store, .web, .arts, .rec, .info, and .nom - will be available for registry in the third quarter of this year, Donald Heath, chair of the International Ad Hoc Committee, which authorized the new domains, said in a statement Tuesday.
The committee will also work with the World Intellectual Property Organization to establish international guidelines on arbitration and mediation in domain name disputes.
US Net activists have opposed the IAHC's new domain proposal and have promised to go to the Federal Communications Commission to fight it as an infringement of the open-access provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. They have also expressed concern that the new categories may lead to trademark infringement and could make it more difficult for Net users to communicate if a server does not recognize a name request.
The committee has yet to address issues such as consumer confusion regarding, say, the difference between www.wal-mart.com and www.wal-mart.store. Will Wal-Mart have to pay for multiple domain names to ensure that customers will find the retail giant? Conversely, will an individual be able to buy www.wal-mart.store once it becomes available?
"The current proposal as it stands is not stable," said Christopher Clough, spokesman for Network Solutions. "It does little to address concerns about existing trademarks."
The current top-level domains - .com, .net, and .org - cost US$100 every two years and are maintained by Network Solutions, a Virginia-based company, and the US National Science Foundation. However, Network Solutions' lucrative and exclusive cooperative agreement with the government ends in March 1998. The IAHC wants to open up domain-name registry to competition among 28 registrars and assign the Arthur Andersen accounting firm to oversee them. Under this proposal, companies will compete to register new top-level domain names.
The proposal is backed by the intellectual-property body, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, the Internet Society, the International Telecommunication Union, and the International Trademark Association. These and other Internet groups are expected to approve the proposal at a meeting later this month in Geneva.
