A technology company in Amsterdam has revived the debate about whether the ubiquity of the .com domain makes sense for the Web, or whether a wide array of other options would be better suited for countries, companies, and individuals.
The firm, UnifiedRoot, offers a broad selection of domain suffixes, unlike the short list of suffixes that are currently approved for use by ICANN.
Although other alternative root providers offer unique suffixes like .law, UnifiedRoot claims it is unique in proffering an almost unlimited number of suffixes, with a plan to offer domain names in any character set.
Service Station
Not long after UnifiedRoot began to offer its service  , the company saw thousands of registrations through its service.
Once a name is registered, companies can invent additional Web addresses in front of their top-level domain, making the enterprise 's name into a suffix. For example, Boston's Logan airport could create pages like flightschedule.logan and parkinginfo.logan.
The creation of the service is likely to bring up issues related to domain-name creation, which has been under the control of ICANN. Critics have argued that alternative-root firms like UnifiedRoot create confusion because they do not necessarily adhere to standard domain-routing rules, which means that not every computer can recognize the alternate domains.
But others have noted that the existence of these root services provides a viable alternative to ICANN, which has been reluctant to add significantly to the current list of domain suffixes.
Dot Everything
"Right now, a number of issues about domain names, architectures, and free speech have left much to be decided," said Michael Froomkin, a founding editor of ICANNWatch.org, and professor at the University of Miami School of Law, specializing in Internet law.
Domain names, in particular, have been a thorny issue as different governments and corporate entities have pushed for particular domains like .travel and .mobi, and have had to navigate ICANN's process to have their arguments heard.
"In some ways, it's frustrating to many countries that have their own ideas about where they want to see the Internet go from this point," he added.
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