BUSINESS: Who Will Control the .GAY Domain?

The Washington Post reports on this week's ".nxt" conference in San Francisco, a three-day affair featuring seminars on ICANN's complicated application guideline at which applicants for the next round of available domain suffixes will converge. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is the non-profit which decides who gets to control those suffixes.

It's certainly not without controversy: Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, a grass-roots firm in Los Angeles, alleges that the new domains are designed purely to make money for ICANN and the companies that control the domains. The new Web addresses, he added, will only mean more aggravation for trademark holders and confusion for the average Internet user.

Peter Dengate Thrush, chair of the ICANN board of directors, argued that the high application fee is based on the nonprofit's bet that it's going to get sued, and to protect against cybersquatters or other organizations ill equipped to manage an entire domain of hundreds, if not thousands of Web sites. "Our job is to protect competition and give extra choices for consumers and entrepreneurs," Thrush said.

So far there are two listed applicants ("The price tag to apply is $185,000, a cost that ensures only well-financed organizations operate the domains and cuts out many smaller grass-roots organizations, developing countries or dreamers, according to critics.") for the .gay suffix.