The Internet Can Can

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) ruled today in Paris that any organization, company, or entity can now apply for an individual domain ending.  

The decision, while creating room for hackers and other internet improprieties, provides a unique laboratory to monitor how organizations value their internet property. How this move will affect internet culture remains to be seen. The expected explosion of requests will be monitored by the ICANN while an unnamed third party arbiter will handle objections and disputes. Unfortunately ICANN's power to regulate remains woefully inadequate for such a task. Nor can governments be trusted to ensure transparency and cooperation in global electronic commerce. Internet freedom remains a fringe political issue but one of great importance. 

What exactly does this spell for the average surfer? More streamlined advertising is a foregone conclusion. With monitoring techniques growing more sophisticated and advertisers targeting users, ads tailored to personal surfing habits do not seem far off. To facilitate this search engines must refine their business plans and technological capabilities. In their quest to open up and personalize the internet the ICANN may have boxed in users to a new generation of surveillance.

The possibility of restricted web names and generic copyrighting will undoubtedly spew legal challenges and corporate interference. But one thing is certain. The internet will continue to spur innovation and cooperation. In the end it will be the user who defines how new domain names will be received. Just as difficult as it would have been twenty years ago to imagine Google as a verb, perhaps .com will soon be a quaint relic of the 00s in an era of unsurpassed ubiquity.