ICANN wants to kill off Soviet Union

THE INTERNET Domain Naming body ICANN wants to shut down the Soviet Union, but it isn't Russian into anything.

Just before the fall of communism, the Soviet Union got itself a nice new domain name, .su.

Russian Internet enthusiasts want to keep the domain name for its nostalgia value. Alexei Platonov, director of the independent Russian Institute of Public Networks said that there is history behind the name, a community of supporters and it offers websites that other domains don't have.

The .ru domain assigned to Russia is most popular domain name for Russians but there are nearly 10,000 registered Web sites with the .su domain name and around 1,500 new ones have been added this year.

ICANN, which is answerable to the Soviet's old enemy the United States, wants to purge the interwibble of all useless and outdated domain names.

More here. µ