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Vast, new tracts of the Internet are up for sale as of today. Forget dot com or dot org. For a registration fee of $185,000, you, too, can apply to register a new suffix, like dot travel, or dot music or maybe a brand name - dot NPR.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, known as ICANN, plans to sell new domain categories, despite opposition from regulators and advertisers. NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: If you think of the Internet as virtual land, new continents are now on the block. Currently, there are 22 generic domains, like dot net or dot gov. Under this new program, as many as a thousand new ones could come to market every year. Applicants must qualify, and pass ICANN's various criminal and other background checks. Rod Beckstrom is CEO of ICANN.
ROD BECKSTROM: We're not sure what percentage of the applications will be successful because that will depend on the qualifications of the applications. And we haven't seen them yet. But I would suspect a pretty high ratio of successful applications.
NOGUCHI: Beckstrom says this move will make the Web more global - allowing, for example, other cultures and countries to use non-Roman character systems in the suffix.
BECKSTROM: They should have that right. And who are we to tell them no, you don't have the right to have Chinese characters in top-level domains?
NOGUCHI: In May, ICANN will publish a list of all the proposed domains. One can imagine dot food or dot hotels making that list - although, for example, dot Nabisco or dot Marriott could also appear. Opponents will get 60 days to file objections.
As for finding your way around the new and expanded Internet, Beckstrom says he doesn't expect this to add to the complexity.
BECKSTROM: If you're able to go directly to the company name, at dot company name or dot brand, then you will know that you're at that site. So there's actually an argument that in some ways, this new program could add more clarity, more quality and security to certain aspects of the Internet.
NOGUCHI: Beckstrom says ICANN deliberated this move for six years, and will take steps to protect brand names. Besides, he says, there is demand for these new domains.
JON LEIBOWITZ: My sense is that a lot of this demand is just absolutely artificial and, you know, largely imagined by the ICANN board.
NOGUCHI: That is the dissenting voice of Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.
LEIBOWITZ: We're an agency that's required to protect consumers. And from our perspective, this is a potential disaster. And we have an obligation, we feel, to speak out.
NOGUCHI: Last month, the FTC sent ICANN a long letter detailing its concerns, including the potential for an exponential increase in phishing and other fraudulent, Web-based scams. But as a non-governmental, global nonprofit, ICANN does not fall under the legal jurisdiction of the FTC - or any other government agency.
Leibowitz says he is not assured by ICANN's pledge to self-police, or its promises to protect companies from brand-infringement. The group's existing database of website owners, Leibowitz says, already poses problems to law enforcement.
LEIBOWITZ: Web sites registered to God, to Mickey Mouse, to Bill Clinton. And of course, if you're a scammer - if you're in the business of ripping off consumers - why would you give accurate information?
NOGUCHI: Douglas Wood is general counsel of the Association of National Advertisers. He says if the launch of the dot triple-X domain last year is any guide, companies will be forced to spend more money buying sites defensively, just so no one else uses them.
DOUGLAS WOOD: All that money is just wasted money because it's money thrown away to property rights that will never be used, never add to competition, never add to innovation - never do any of the things that ICANN is touting will be the great benefits of all these new, top-level domains.
NOGUCHI: Wood says companies will have little recourse but to sue. But ICANN won't be able to undo the damage.
WOOD: How are they going to compensate all the brands and the consumers who have been harmed because they went, pell-mell, into a new system that had control that didn't, in fact, work?
NOGUCHI: For now, ICANN is just taking applications. The first of these new domain names are expected to pop up in browsers early next year.
Yuki Noguchi, NPR News, Washington.