ICANN Approves New Dot Endings

The organization that oversees Internet addresses cleared the way this week for domain names ending in “.museum,” “.coop,” and “.aero” but postponed action on “.pro.”

Contracts for “.biz,” “.info” and “.name” were approved earlier by the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit organization selected by the U.S. government to handle address policies.

As ICANN concluded four days of quarterly meetings, the board authorized its staff to finalize contracts to run suffixes for museums, business cooperatives and the aviation industry.

But with “.pro,” the suffix for professionals, ICANN officials said a final agreement was delayed by disagreements between companies in the joint venture that plans to run “.pro.”

ICANN general counsel Louis Touton would not give details other than to say the dispute has been resolved. On its Web site, ICANN said the proposed “.pro” operator wanted to reduce its level of financial commitments.