‘Dot-Coms’ May Be Sharing Web With ‘Dot-Kids’ or ‘Dot-XXX’

Tired of IncrediblyLongWebAddresses.com?

Relief may be coming soon. The group that oversees the Internet addressing system is poised to clear the way for several new Net suffixes to alleviate the burden on .com, .net and .org.

More than 10 million addresses have already been taken, making it almost impossible to get a simple online identity like SoccerFan.net or SmithFamily.org. The same is true for budding entrepreneurs hoping to launch easy-to-remember businesses like FreePizza.com.

The addition of new suffixes--perhaps .biz, .kids, .africa or .sex--would instantly and dramatically multiply the number of potential addresses for e-mail accounts and Web sites. Expanding the amount of cyber-real estate will be the first item on the agenda when the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers meets this week in Yokohama, Japan.

The Los Angeles-based group, known as ICANN, is expected to approve a proposal to introduce between two and 10 new suffixes. If all goes according to plan, the first crop of new suffixes--officially called generic top-level domains, or gTLDs--would be announced by Nov. 1 and become operational about one month later.

“Bring on the new TLDs!” said Ronald Polland, president of a Florida consulting firm and one of the dozens of Internet users who endorsed the plan on ICANN’s Web site (https://www.icann.org). “I predict that the general public will eventually get sick of seeing Dot.Coms altogether.”

But support for the plan isn’t unanimous. Some critics fault ICANN for its inclination to limit the number of new suffixes and would rather see a system that allowed anyone who wanted to organize a new suffix to give it a try.

Others believe it is premature to add suffixes. They say there are still plenty of good names left--estimates run as high as 150 million--especially when names based on non-English words are taken into account. Adding a host of suffixes also will benefit cyber-squatters and make it more difficult for companies to protect their trademarks.

“More TLDs will only add to the feeding frenzy as cyber-squatters rush to grab whatever they think they can sell later,” said Edison Blake, who posted comments on the ICANN Web site. “As a leader of a Web development team for a large corporation, I have had enough of these petty blackmail ‘entrepreneurs’ suggesting that if we don’t buy a name related to our products, it will be sold to some other bidder who may be out to do us harm.”

Adding so many suffixes at once makes trademark holders nervous. With opportunities for so many new addresses, cyber-squatters could have a field day registering addresses containing the names of companies or their products. Then the cyber-squatters could demand large ransoms to sell them back to the rightful trademark holders, some fear. One of the earliest victims was McDonald’s, which noticed in 1994 that “mcdonalds.com” had been registered by a reporter for Wired magazine. The reporter insisted the burger giant donate $3,600 to help a high school purchase computer equipment before he would hand over the address.

Even ICANN acknowledges some of the limitations of adding new suffixes. The cyber-squatting and trademark concerns are two of the reasons ICANN’s 19-member board of directors prefers to restrict the number of new suffixes, at least for now.

ICANN’s board members declined to discuss the suffix issue in advance of Sunday’s meeting. Louis Touton, the group’s vice president, secretary and general counsel, said it was more important for the Internet community as a whole to come to a consensus on the matter. If the directors approve, the next step will be to determine how many suffixes to add and which ones.

Boosting the number of potential addresses isn’t as important as increasing the number of useful addresses. Proponents of new suffixes argue that they could return some rationality to the Internet that has been lacking since the World Wide Web became a consumer phenomenon and sent demand for addresses spiraling.

Originally, generic top-level domains were restricted for specific uses. For instance, .com was meant to be used only by companies, .net was intended for network providers, and .edu was restricted to educational institutions. (Other TLDs include .org for organizations, .gov for the U.S. government, .int for international organizations and databases, and .mil for military.) In addition, more than 250 top-level domains were established for countries, so Internet users understood that an e-mail address ending in .jp belonged to someone in Japan.

But today, suffixes often provide little information about who owns an address. The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, for example, struck a deal with Pasadena-based DotTV to let customers from all over the world sign up for addresses ending in its catchy country code, .tv. Meanwhile, the definitions for .com, .net and .org were effectively abandoned in 1996 because there were simply too many applicants to screen.

ICANN has indicated that it would like the new suffixes to carry real meaning so they can help users find what they’re looking for on the vast Internet. For instance, some suffixes, such as .asia, could be dedicated to geographic areas, and other suffixes, such as .movie, could be restricted for certain industries. More suffixes could be added for noncommercial organizations (such as .museum and .union) and for personal uses (.family and .club). There is also strong interest in a suffix like .xxx or .sex for adult material.

If such a plan were adopted, Web surfers in 2005 would routinely call up sites such as www.United.air and www.FirstNational.bank, said David Maher, vice president of public policy for the Internet Society, a nonprofit group representing Net users.

Internet users who visited ICANN’s Web site have suggested suffixes such as .store, .shop, .info, .ref (for reference material), .art and even .moon. One contributor, Paul McCrory, suggested reserving a .kid suffix for safe, kid-friendly sites. Anyone using a .kid address would be required to have extra security on their site and contribute to a fund to police .kid sites, McCrory said.

Anne Gundelfinger, an attorney who is director of trademarks and brands for Intel Corp., favors a go-slow approach to adding suffixes.

She endorsed a plan to allow trademark holders to register their own names first before making them available to others, including would-be cyber-squatters.

The concern about protecting trademarks is overblown, said Maher, who also is a patent and trademark attorney. ICANN’s new uniform dispute resolution policy, along with new U.S. laws against cyber-squatting, has taken care of the bulk of the problem, he said.

“What we have now is an artificial shortage [of addresses] that was created as a historical accident,” Maher said. From a technical standpoint, “you can have as many names as you want.”

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Times staff writer Karen Kaplan can be reached at karen.kaplan@latimes.com.