ICANN participation

There was a workshop at the San Juan meeting which was concerned that the new gTLD policy agreed over several years through the ICANN process risked restricting freedom of expression.

Yes, why nota .service . Why not creating a gTLD for each kind of human or economic activities (especially economic).it is just a proposal.
a domain is not just a "promotional" domain or new fashion trends but maybe an information by itself. We are going for a semantic web where the important isn't the information but the knwoledge. so such meta information contained in domain name can be really useful. but we have to beware that such new addition needs a new definition of the management of gTLD.

It seems that Latin American Community movement for an own TLD get some momentum. Comparable to .eu and .asia it it suggested to create a similar string for the community. Proposal are welcome

Original message in Spanish language

Translation

Under the title "Broadening the Domain Name Space: Top Level Domains for Cities and Regions?" an IGF workshop on TLD for cities and regions is planned. Participants will be also represenatives of the leading city development organisations, Telecities and UNITAR. Speakers include some of the GeoTLD initiatives like .berlin (be .berlin), .paris, .nyc.

Link to cityTLD workshop

Some weeks ago Michael Leibrandt, the German GAC representative until end of 2006, has issued on the CPSR mailing list an article about his personal view on the new gTLDs, especially the GeoTLDs.

Werner Staub, Tom Lowenhaupt and me (Dirk Krischenowski) made comments to Michaels article here:

Michael Leibrandt on GeoTLDs - Article and Comments

What are new gTLDs?

The term "gTLD" stands for "generic top-level domain". A top-level domain is the term "after the dot" in an Internet domain name - the most famous of which is "com" as in dotcom. The "generic" part of gTLD refers to a particular category of TLD - those that *aren't* domains that are attached to a specific country such as .de for Germany, .uk for the United Kingdom, or .nl for the Netherlands.

ICANN caused some confusion among potential applicants for new gTLDs when stating that the timeline by which ICANN staff operates sees the application process "in the latter half of 2008". After all it has been a mere 6 weeks ago ICANN issued a press release (http://icann.org/announcements/announcement-10may07.htm) in which the date was announced to be in early 2008. No one seems to remember this press release, but it is still on the website.

The factions of the ruling Social Democrats (SPD) and Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) in the German Parliament have submitted the resolution "Advancement of the adress space in the Internet" (printed paper no. 16/4564; courtesy translation) to the plenary on March 7. In it, the federal government is called upon to support new developments in the Internet name space.