A New Challenge for Web Freedom

[Commentary] The Internet is celebrated as a machine that runs by itself, but this is not quite accurate. The Web does have oversight, just not by any multinational organization, national government or regulator. It's run by a small, private, nonprofit institution that is rarely in the news. This week will be an exception. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, known by the acronym Icann, is accepting applications for an infinite number of new Web addresses, known as top-level domain names. In addition to the existing two dozen suffixes, such as .com, .org and .net, Icann will let people apply, for a fee of $185,000, to create whatever suffixes they like, which will be reviewed and go live next year. Expect .hitachi and .paris, for example. Icann is also adding local-language Web names in non-Latin characters such as Chinese and Cyrillic.

Esther Dyson, a technology investor who was the founding chairman of Icann between 1998 and 2000, has led criticism of these new domains, which she says will confuse users and create new expenses for companies. She's right that the immediate beneficiaries will be trademark lawyers fighting over brands and Internet registries and registrars that will add revenue with new domains.