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ICANN Approves Seven New TLDs: Dot-Health Not Among Them

From iHealthcareWeekly

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) yesterday rejected the World Health Organization's (WHO) application for the dot-health top-level domain (TLD). ICANN approved the rollout of seven new TLDs.

The announcement was made at ICANN's annual meeting in Los Angeles. Of the 44 applications submitted, ICANN chose dot-biz, dot-info, dot-pro, dot-museum, dot-aero, and dot-coop. The first three strings will be available to all interested registrants--as dot-com, dot-net and dot-org are now--while the remaining four TLDs will have restricted registrant bases.

In its assessment of the WHO's proposal, ICANN said, "The WHO proposal would allow registrations only by those who agree to abide by a set of international ethical principles and quality standards relating to health information. In general, sponsoring organizations in restricted TLDs are required to provide detailed information regarding the proposed restrictions, the purpose of the restrictions and the enforcement mechanisms associated with the restrictions. At best, the WHO's application is vague in providing this information

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