Father of the web wants no more domain names

ONE OF THE founding fathers of the web has warned that an ICANN idea to add ten new top-level domains to the Internet could devalue existing webnames.

Speaking at the World Wide Web Conference Tim Berners-Lee launched into the plan which would see names like .asia, .cat, .jobs, .mail, .mobi, .post, .tel, .travel and .xxx. According to Microsoftwatch.com Berners-Lee said that adding domain names was not the best way to improve the Web.

The new domain names like .biz and .info had not made the slightest impact or freed up any space on the web. Instead, many companies that already own .com and .net domain names have felt pressured to buy up the .biz and .info equivalents to protect their brands.

He told the conference that when you print money, you devalue the money you already printed, and that was what was happening with increasing the number of domain names.

Berners-Lee slammed the newly proposed .xxx domain name for adult content which he said would not create an adult-content repository. He said the definition of what adult content was too wide for the domain name to be effective.

Likewise he hated the .mobi idea which is supposed to help mobile users. Berners-Lee said that even though there is a need for more content that can be browsable from PDAs and cell phones, a separate domain isn't the way to achieve this, Berners-Lee said. µ