The week long board meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN at Nairobi is heating up with the members unable to reach on consensus on whether or not to adopt new generic Top Level Domains (gTLD) in its internet practices. The major concerns surrounding the decision are the trademark protection and the high costs that the companies would have to incur for buying these domains.

The agenda of the meeting revolves around adopting new gTLD’s to include every word in any language. The idea is to make the internet more accessible by supporting more languages such as Arabic scripts and increasing the gTLD count to 21. However the move is being greatly criticized by the trademark holders and corporations fearing forced defensive domain-name buying that will result in high cots on both the company as well the user’s sides. ICANN’s application fee will be a nonrefundable $55,000 first with other fees based on whether disputes arise over gTLD applications.

“The issue is very simple and complicated at the same time — trademark holders have a responsibility to protect their brands, but again, it could end up being too expensive for them,” said Mike Silber, a member of the ICANN board from South Africa. Source

Also being discussed is that whether new gTLDs will lead to increased cases of Domain Name System abuse, leading to instability. “The DNS is under attack today more than ever before, the number and complexity of attacks have risen and ICANN relies on governments and other stakeholders to preserve the DNS,” said Rod Beckstrom, ICANN president and CEO. Source

He also pointed out the need of internet expansion in Africa quoting “Africa’s young generation is already embracing the internet, any way it can, And they want more. 77% of Kenyans want to spend more time online; 63% want more and better access to the internet.”

The board of the international body will announce the final decision on Friday.

Source: allafrica

Image credits: dn.se , urbanumbrella

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