Internet Oversight Board OKs New Domains

NEW YORK - The Internet's key oversight body approved two new Web suffixes Friday — ".jobs" for employment sites and ".travel" for the tourism industry — resuming its cautious expansion of the global address book.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said the two so-called sponsored domains could go live early next year, joining ".aero", ".museum" and ".coop" among the specialty endings approved since 2000.

The ".jobs" suffix is backed by the job-listing industry and is intended to give employers a standard address for postings — ".ibm.jobs", for instance — while ".travel" would be limited to verified tourism businesses and destinations.

Conspicuously absent from Friday's action was ".xxx", the proposed red-light district for the Web. ICANN's board put the adult domain on hold last month after the U.S. Commerce Department and several foreign governments objected — a rare intervention that critics say undercuts the agency's claim to independence.

"The ".xxx" file has become a political file," said one ICANN watcher. "The technical questions were settled months ago."

Friday's approvals come as ICANN faces a wider fight over its own future. At the U.N. World Summit on the information society in November, several countries plan to argue that Internet addressing should move under international control rather than remain with a U.S.-chartered nonprofit.

ICANN says new suffixes proceed slowly by design — each requires a sponsoring organization to police eligibility. General-purpose endings like ".com" remain untouched and dwarf the sponsored domains in use.

The agency's contract with the Commerce Department runs through next year, with renewal talks expected to surface the same sovereignty questions now hanging over ".xxx".