A question about domain names?

That would be ICANN

There are proposals all the time to expand what is known as the Top-Level Domains (TLDs). In fact anyone can submit a proposal for a new TLD in a process that is open until the 15th May 2011. Good Luck!

I think the org represents an organisation, com a company/commercial, co.uk a company within the UK, etc, etc; I think they’re just abbreviated to show what they mean and also how they rely on the Internet.

@lookingglassx3 Yes. Of course.

My question is: say I want to promote my new candy – let’s call it yummy yums. Why can’t I have a domain called www.yummyyums.candy

Who decided that all of them would end in dot com or dot org?

Who is in charge of the www?

The ICANN offers TLD’s for categories of institutions (.com, .org, .gov, .edu, .mil, etc.) and countries (.us, .ca, .uk, .de, etc.) but does not intend to allow every imaginable possibility. One of the purposes of a TLD is to symbolize that a string of letters represents a web address. Most teachers and students know that a .edu address will direct to a school or university, but most candy store customers will not be aware that yummyyums.candy represents a website.

The www part is simply a subdomain and is decided by the domain owner. It is a convention but is not forced. Some websites even frown upon using it.

.COM – Community.
.NET – Network
.ORG – Organization
.INFO – Information
.WS – Website
.TV – Television

And so on and on.

@Written – nearly but not quite.

.com – commercial
.ws is the TLD country code for Samoa
.tv is the TLD country code for the islands of Tuvalu

Now that you ask, @seazen, I wonder if the rigid order is necessary any more.

Maybe when the Internet was new it seemed important to distinguish the ORGs from the COMS and the MIL and the GOVs

But is there a good reason to impose the classifications now?

I can see the utility of the XXX porn domain – but who cares if you want to be a COM or a BIZ or a ZZZ?

I understand the “necessity” of it – especially initially – for clarification and ease of use. I get the dot com, org, edu etcetera.

I am asking who decided that so and so would be the web police? Isn’t it everyone’s? Why would there be a governing body – who established it – who maintains it – and what is its mandate?

Why can’t someone who designs websites simply create a domain name ending in whatever he wants?

Why isn’t this possible is what I’m asking, both from a computer programming and legal aspect?

From a legal aspect, there is a single registry of Internet domains, ICANN, which assures that every domain on the Internet is unique. So that if you type “www.fluther.com” and I type “www.fluther.com”, we both end up at the same place. And they only accept registrations for domains ending with an approved Top Level Domain (TLD) like .com or .org or .uk.

From a programming aspect, when you visit a web site, your computer locates the site’s address by referencing an authoritative list which is tied to those ICANN registrations.

So you can only reach a site which is in ICANN’s list, and ICANN only allows particular TLDs.