New gTLDs: Answers to Key Questions

Two Thousand and Eleven will be remembered as the year in which historic decisions were made regarding the future and further expansion of the Internet.

Over the past few years, many people, companies and organizations have participated in a policy development process organized by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) which will eventually result in a complete liberalization of the Domain Name System (“DNS”). The DNS is one of the Internet’s core infrastructures, used by many in order to provide or obtain access to commonly used resources such as websites and email.

The impact of this liberalization effort, which is referred to as the New gTLD Program, is not to be underestimated. It may have a significant effect on how one of the world’s most critical resources, the Internet, is used in the future.

http://www.crowell.com/files/crowell-moring-new-gtlds-answers-to-key-questions.pdf