THE MARK: For our readers who may not know, can you explain the role of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in the internet world?
PETER DENGATE THRUSH: ICANN was formed by the global internet community to co-ordinate the allocation of management of the most important resources of the internet – the underlying infrastructure of the internet, which is composed of the domain names, the domain-name system, and the IP addresses (where to find those domains on the internet).
THE MARK: Can you tell me about the new plan that ICANN recently unveiled?
DENGATE THRUSH: Most people are familiar with top-level domains. That’s the part at the end of the domain name – the “.com” part (or the “.biz,” “.org,” or “.net” part). There are 23 of those, and they have been built up over a long period of time. What we are doing is creating a plan by which anyone who wants to run a registry that will manage a particular name can apply for approval. As a result of that, we expect to see people wanting to run “.pizza,” or “.movie,” or “.shoes,” or “.shopping,” or “.anything.” We hope that, this way, the internet community will get the names it wants, and trademark owners, for example, will be able to put their trademark or brand in the top-level domain. So we expect to see “.mcdonalds,” or “.nike,” or “.cnn,” depending on how they want to use it.
THE MARK: Is it true that the cost of buying one of these top-level domain names is $185,000?
DENGATE THRUSH: It’s buying a registry, and, if you want to run a registry, you need to compete with “.com.” You have to apply for permission to run the registry, and you have to show us that you can run it, and how that registry is going to operate. A registry is basically a very big operational database that is capable of holding up to hundreds of millions of domain names. So you’re not buying one domain name; you’re buying the right to run a registry, which could contain hundreds of millions of domain names. So the fee for that application is $185,000, which is a relatively small fee compared to the actual cost of setting up a domain-name system that can handle all those names.
What we are actually talking about here is buying a second-level domain name, as opposed to a top-level domain name. In other words, you’re not talking about buying “toronto.com” – you’re talking about buying the “.toronto” end of the domain name. And, once you own that, you can sell millions of second-level domain names to others, and compete with “.com,” and “.org,” and “.biz” – or any of the other ones.
THE MARK: And who is this available to?
DENGATE THRUSH: Technically, anybody – but there are six different evaluations that you have to go through to show that you’re not a criminal, and that you have not been involved in any criminal or fraudulent activities. That’s something that the governments of the world were quite keen for us to introduce into the rules. They don’t want the new system to be used by fraudsters, and so we are happy to include those restrictions.
If you want to buy a registry, you also have to prove that you’ve got the money and fund system to make sure the registrants – all those people, perhaps millions, who have bought domain names from you – aren’t left high and dry if you go broke. There are provisions in place to make sure you have a way to transfer those registrants to someone who can look after them in the event that something goes wrong. So it’s a relatively major business undertaking – it’s a plan to run a multimillion-name industry.
THE MARK: There are still a lot of concerns that this is going to open the door to fraud. How are you going to make sure that doesn’t happen?
DENGATE THRUSH: Fraud occurs where domain names are popular and people are being duped. There is no indication that this new plan is going to change any of that. This is a matter of the legal system and the police, and we’re working with Interpol and other police organizations to keep the systems as secure as possible.
THE MARK: What does all this mean for the future of the internet?
DENGATE THRUSH: It’s going to change the look of it. When a bus drives past with an advertisement on the side of it, instead of it being “.com,” “.org,” or “.biz,” it may well be in Chinese, because part of this program involves what we call “internationalized domain names.” Until now, it has all been written in English because of the origins of the technology, but now we can do the whole thing in Chinese or Arabic. This, of course, is tremendous for the people who speak those languages, and their whole culture will be much better-reflected in such domain names, as they won’t need to have English words in them.
Brand owners will also be able to control the way their brands are used. So, for example, if you take a well-known trademark like McDonalds, instead of it being “mcdonalds.com,” where you have to abide by the “.com” rules, and pay “.com” for the domain name, it will be “.mcdonalds.” This will give brand owners far more control, and there will be a great deal of strengthening trademark-wise.
THE MARK: When are we going to start seeing changes on the internet?
DENGATE THRUSH: These are relatively major changes to the live, running internet. We can’t do this casually or carelessly. There will be quite a long period of investigation to make sure that the people we have are appropriate; that they’ve got financial resources, a good business plan, and so on; that the mechanisms are safe; and that the registry will meet the technical standards. We’ve got to spend much of 2011 running a marketing campaign and a communications program to explain how this is going to work, and to make sure that everyone has a chance to take advantage of this. Then we’ll be spending much of 2012 receiving applications and examining them. About 18 months from now, you should start to see the first of the “.anythings.”
THE MARK: What one thing would you like our readers to take away from this?
DENGATE THRUSH: I’d like them to think of the business opportunities that are coming with this. There are going to be lots of opportunities for new people to run new registries – to be the registry operator for “.newspaper,” or whatever people want. And, within the registry, there will be even more opportunities for people to be registrars. So there is a tremendous amount of business opportunity about to come in through the internet.
There are no comments yet