ICANN APPROVES NEW TOP LEVEL DOMAINS

The Board of ICANN today gave final approval to the most dramatic change to the Internet in four decades — allowing the expansion of new Top-Level Domains (TLDs). This monumental decision will allow companies and organizations to turn their own brands into Internet domain extensions (that is .brand) or to create broad generic strings such as .CAR, .SPORTS or .BANK. ICANN's TLD expansion plan was first announced three years ago on June 26, 2008 at the 32nd ICANN Meeting in Paris. The ICANN board members voted 13 for, 1 against, 2 abstain during its 41st international meeting currently underway in Singapore.

ICANN has indicated that it anticipates between 300 and 1,000 new TLDs could be created under the new program, providing an alternative to existing TLDs such as .com or .net.

VERIZON BUYING iPHONE DOMAINS

It would appear that Verizon Wireless is buying Verizon iPhone-related domains from around the web. PocketNow is reporting that a company called “Verizon Trademark Services, LLC” has purchased iphoneforverizon.com as well as iphoneonverizon.com. The same corporation owns Verizon’s main domain, www.verizon.com, which legitimizes the company and makes this report seem factual. Who did Verizon Wireless allegedly buy the domains from? A gentleman named Jim Benton who has used the aforementioned domains as paid link farms. The sites still don’t forward to any official Verizon Wireless webpages, most likely to not draw any attention to the fact that the company has presumably been scooping up iPhone domains.