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Tim Berners-Lee: We Don't Need Arbitrary New Tlds


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World Wide Web Consortium Director Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Government, scientific research, and mapping data has already become more openly available, says World Wide Web Consortium Director Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Credit: Scrape TV

World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee is criticizing the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' (ICANN's) plan to create arbitrary new top-level domains (TLDs).

He does not support the plan because he believes the new TLDs are unnecessary, and because he says the domain system needs stability.  "We don't need new arbitrary new TLDs," Berners-Lee says.  

He notes there already are a number of TLDs to choose from, and says the number of available TLDs can be increased by 26 times by simply adding one character to the end of existing domain names. Berners-Lee also believes that trademark holders should not be forced to register their brands as one of the new domains.

He says new domains only should be created if they are "socially different," such as .org was when it was created. According to Berners-Lee, .org is valuable because it helps Web surfers know that domain names ending in that extension belong to nonprofit organizations.

From Wired.co.uk 
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Abstracts Copyright © 2012 Information Inc. External Link, Bethesda, Maryland, USA 


 

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