Dot Gay May be on the Horizon

Move over .com and make way for .gay!

...or .love, .eco, .car, .health, .radio, .ski, etc. In fact, there's a large list of all the possibilities various groups already want to see when the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) completes its tasks to implement the new Top level Domains over on the .NXT Conference site. The custom domain will also mean cities and states can have their own top level domain like .nyc or .florida. We may also see brand ones like .coke (.canon and .unicef are already listed).

What's the catch, you may ask? Having your own top level domain like this will be coming with a hefty price tag. $185,000 plus a $25,000 annual fee according to the Washington Post. Pretty big catch! Luckily, the dotGAYalliance and dotGAY will be pushing to have the .gay extension included so we may see eventually sites like hotel.gay, sports.gay, or health.gay popping up.

Unfortunately, as has happened in the past with the Bush Administration stopping the .xxx extension, the Obama administration is quietly pushing to allow countries, including the US, to veto top level domains. That then leads to the trouble that having a central domain such as .gay (or any number of potentially controversial extensions like .abortion, .aids, etc) would allow countries who aren't friendly towards a particular subject to block any domain with that extension if it was approved by the ICANN.