I first heard of ICANN's universal acceptance of generic top level domain's (gtld's) from an instructor at a computer school I'm attending, which school promises to help me obtain my MSCE.  While the instructor was correct about ICANN offering to allow all manner of new gtld's, and the information was gratefully received, he incorrectly indicated that the process would be much as that where you purchase a domain name under the existing registry system.  NO!!!  At best, the instructor was misinformed and at worst, that kind of mis-information might cost you your reputation and would waste your time as well.



As the video indicates, the process of proposing a new generic top-level domain (gtld) is neither a simple, cheap nor quick process.  As an example, the .XXX gtld was proposed back in the year 2000.  That gtld proposal has just of recent (March, 31 2011) come to fruition.  Even so, the "land rush" will not kick off until October 4, 2011. That whole process took just under eleven (11) years, just from the official proposal to ICANN, until "Sunrise".  There are however, organizations such as Open Registry and Afilias who will assist in the process, supplying the necessary technical expertise, for an additional price.

There's more.  Just to become a registrar, that is to become authorized to register domains on behalf of existing registries, is a similarly difficult and costly process wherein you must demonstrate that you have the capital, and physical and technical resources to become a registrar.  I would expect the process to become a registry significantly more involved and costly. At the time of this writing, there are 308 top level domains of all varieties, including special purpose (.ARPA), generic (.COM, .ORG, etc.) and country code domains (.US, .ME, etc.).

The concept of universal approval of gtld's is further fraught with complications both from ICANN and the industry at large.  Cases in point, June, 29, 2011, Matt Cutts of Google announced that it will remove all sites using .CO.CC domains from its index, over what some termed "security" concerns.  What the Google policy amounted to was that the domain registry "will let anyone register a site on that domain" and that, in Google's view, the .CO.CC Web sites tended to be "SPAMmy", that is they were what Google sees as "Web SPAM" ¹. So if you purchased a .CO.CC domain, few people will be able to find you, given the popularity of the Google.com search engine.

Additionally, a top level domain can be revoked, as is apparent in the case of the poorly chosen .UM domain.

I don't personally see this as a distinct departure from previous ICANN policiy, though I personally don't follow ICANN policy from day-to-day and from tld-to-tld.  What I do see this as, is a popularity campaign for ICANN, who is rumored to be considering ceding it's control over the Internet to the United Nations.  Concurrently, various citizens groups are purposing private membership intranets, which may interface to the larger Internet without actually ceding control to the FCC or the the United Nations.  In such case, ICANN's move, indeed, the Internet itself, would have decreasing interest for private intranet companies.

I've attempted to provide supporting documentation for the comments I've submitted herein, for your individual evaluation.  I'm very concerned that the whole runaway certification market is producing a generation of ill-informed "experts", whose certification is in the management and operation of particular software or of devices, rather than in any industry standards.  I'm finding each certifying manufacturer is defining those standards in terms of their own product, rather than providing industry references.  Assertions such as "knowledge of current or previous industry standards aren't relevant" or that "nothing like XP existed before XP" are patently false and I would encourage people to dismiss such assertions and those who make them as well.

¹ "SPAM" originally was a reference to the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003 or simply CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Title 15 of the United States Code, Chapter 103, Section 7701 -- Controlling The Assault Of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing).  The act was passed by the 108th Congress and apparently not successfully challenged on 1st Amendment grounds as yet.  Wikipedia, Google and others have taken the term, and variations of the term, to mean whatever they define it as.