How Saudi Arabia was able to kill .gay, and other domain stories
ICANN’s most politically contentious area of control is really cosmetic: it controls top-level domains, the postfixes on URLs. Because governments sit on its advisory committees, these domains are politically influenced. For example, Saudi Arabia was able to get .gay rejected.
Perhaps the general internet user should have an ombudsman on that council, too. Tech reporters are passing around a 2008 memo that suggests that controlling tendency might go too far at times, entertaining the possibility of allowing domains with the same names as common file types.
I briefly pondered a future where ICANN takes an active role in policing internet security
— sarah jeong (@sarahjeong) October 22, 2016
Extremely briefly https://t.co/v3FyithLPU
The evidence is strong that “user confusion” would indeed result from URLs that look like filenames. The only case like this in operation is .zip, and it’s the internet’s shadiest neighborhood.