ICANN considers dumping obsolete TLDs

[mandy]

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers began accepting public comments this week on how best to revoke outdated suffixes, such as those assigned to countries that no longer exist. The Soviet Union's ".su" is the leading candidate for deletion. A few other domains have already disappeared, including East Germany's ".dd" and Zaire's ".zr" after the country became the Democratic Republic of the Congo (".cd")...

East Timor now uses ".tl," though about 150,000 sites remain under its older code, ".tp."

Also obsolete is Great Britain's ".gb," which produced no sites on Google. Britons typically use ".uk" for the United Kingdom...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/jRuU0dae...ixes.xhtml

[mandy]

A related article:

For centuries the trappings of nationhood have been flags, crests, mottos and crowns. Now they are joined by country-code top-level domains - nation-specific suffixes of web addresses like ".us" (United States) or ".fr" (France).

And, boy, are they complicated. Changing a nation's letterheads to reflect a new flag might seem a big job - but changing a TLD sounds like a nightmare.

Take the latest minutes from ICANN - the organisation that oversees the assignment of domain names and TLDs. The minutes concern the very complex problems associated with the collapse of Yugoslavia...

full article: http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technol...ation.html

[mandy]

A related article:

The international domain scene has seen some movement of late. The republics of Montenegro and Serbia will receive their own country code Top Level Domains ccTLD) .me and .rs; while the days of .yu are numbered. North Korea too will soon have its own country code domain .kp on the Internet. The appropriate decisions were reached by the board of directors of the Internet addressing agency ICANN last week..

full article: http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/96273

[jezebel]

.me should be popular with egotards