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Root hits 1,500 live TLDs as US oversight ends

Kevin Murphy, October 4, 2016, 06:20:22 (UTC), Domain Registries

The DNS root saw its 1,500th concurrent live TLD come into existence on Friday, just hours before the US relinquished its oversight powers.
Amazon received its delegation for .通販 (.xn--gk3at1e, Japanese for “online shopping”) and satellite TV company Hughes got .dvr, meaning “digital video recorder”.
That took the number of TLDs in the root to exactly 1,500, which is where it still stands today.
Both went live September 30, which was the final day of ICANN’s IANA contract with the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which expired that night.
An ICANN spokesperson confirmed that the two new gTLDs “were the last ones requiring NTIA’s approval.”
From now on, the small clerical role NTIA had when ICANN wanted to make changes to the root is no more.
The fact that it hit a nice round number the same day as ICANN oversight switched to a community-led approach is probably just a coincidence.
Amazon’s .通販 was almost banned for being too confusingly similar to “.shop”, but that ludicrous decision was later overturned.
Hughes’ .dvr was originally intended as a single-registrant “closed generic”, but is now expected to operate as a restricted but multi-registrant space.

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Comments (2)

  1. Bob Barker says:

    1500 is equivalent to:
    1+5+0+0= 6
    Coincidence?
    42 ( The answer to all things in the universe)
    is equivalent to:
    4+2=6
    Be careful what you wish for, and keep your enemies even closer!
    Have a nice day

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