ICANN: Give Us .sex!

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) votes today on expanding domain name endings from .org, .net, .com, and a few others to include any combination of letters and numbers. Computerworld explains:

If ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, relaxes those rules, then companies will be able to buy generic top-level domain names ending in whatever they want…That means, for example, that eBay Inc. could add its company name to the end of its URL and become eBay.ebay and Microsoft Corp. could become Microsoft.microsoft…

According to the report, when asked about the possibility of an .xxx domain name, [ICANN CEO Paul Twomey] said the new system would be "open to anyone."

I hope that the forward thinking members of ICANN convince their squeamish peers to open up domain restrictions for the good of the world. Editor Jesse Walker listed the many advantages of myriad domain names in a 2001 reason article:

Surfing would be easier, with shorter addresses to remember; cybersquatting would be less of a problem, since it would be harder to buy up all the possible permutations of a person's or company's name; and domains themselves would be cheaper.

UPDATE: The ICANN conference is over, and I'm on the prowl for resolutions and whatnot. What I found thus far suggests that the attendees implemented (or are implementing) a system for the creation of new top-level domains (TLD)—.org, .net, .sex, etc., etc.