Organizations now have a wider
choice when they register a domain for their respective websites. In a recent
move by the Internet regulating body ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers), Internet addressing currently dominated by .com, .org and
.net has been opened up to include a wider choice of top level domain
names.
What better way to bring this new
revolution in internet addressing under revised ICANN rules than for a highly
visible and widely followed religious organization to make the pioneering move
to adopt to the change. The Pope and the Vatican spearheads this revolution as
it recently bagged the high level domain name “.Catholic.”
Apart from being seen as a popular
and non-traditional head of more than 1.4 billion Catholics around the world,
the newly elected Pope Francis has made headlines by adopting the naming
revolution for the Vatican in bringing its religious presence in cyberspace.
This makes the Vatican the first organization to register the domain name under
the new rules and is expected to go live soon in English, Arabic, Chinese, and
Russian.
With the recent changes in ICANN
registration policies, the Vatican lost no time to register the domain name
rather than allow any secular organization or individual to use it for less
than pious purposes. It was the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social
Communications that successfully completed the domain name application
processing in 2012. ICANN has recently confirmed authorizing the Vatican to
have complete and exclusive control over the new domain address extension
.Catholic.
Contrary to recent media reports
that the .Catholic name would go live in October, Msgr. Tighe, secretary of the
council, said that websites using the .Catholic extension will still take some
time to activate as there are some “bureaucratic kinks to iron out”, technical
tests to run, contracts to sign, and clear guidelines to disseminate for
potential users of the domain name.
In addition, Msgr. Tighe clarified
that Catholic individuals and bloggers will not be allowed to use
".Catholic." The domain name extension will be confined to
organizations with formal canonical recognition such as parishes, dioceses,
religious orders, and Catholic institutions like schools, universities, and
hospitals.
More Liberal and Personalized
Internet Addressing
The Internet is now open to
thousands of top level domains that further personalize your website when you
register a domain. Current top level domain extensions like .com, .net, and
.co.uk have become quite saturated. ICANN senior advisor Sally Costerton said
that, “There are 111 million dot com names.” This creates difficulty in finding
sites you want to visit.
The new addressing scheme is
expected to create a higher level of personalization that makes finding the
site you want to visit easier. You can have .America, .London, .eco, .college,
.PS3 .Apple and .YourName, just to mention a few. Apart from .Catholic,
religious organizations can now register a domain name with extensions like
.Faith, .Bible, .Koran, .Hindu, and .Christmas, among others.
By the end of 2013, ICANN expects
more than 1,400 new domain names to roll out as part of its expansion plans to
bring around 100,000 new domain names over the next five years. This change is
the result of ICANN’s eight years of study and is considered the most
significant development since the World Wide Web became popular. To date, some
40 UK organizations have taken initiatives to register a domain for their
respective websites under the new rules and they are expected to go live
towards the end of 2013. Online users will soon find addresses ending with
.boots, .bbc, .itv, .barclays, .jaguar, .hsbc, .williamhill, and
.orientexpress, to mention some. Local government authorities are also bagging
extensions like .wales, .london, and .scot which are no longer available.
Not cheap
Applying for brand domain names cost
£115,625 and they will be closed and exclusive once purchased. However, broader
domain extensions such as .eco, .school, .music, .sport, or .fashion will be
open to everyone. In addition, enforcing the new rules come with stringent
accepted checks to regulate the application so that groups that may want to
register a domain name with extensions like .alqaeda are not allowed along with other
socially or politically offensive or derogatory extension names.
