ICANN News: New TLD's

On May 10, 2006, ICANN's Board of Directors voted against a proposed agreement for a .XXX. Sponsored Top Level Domain (sTLD). [Note: sTLD's are referred to as "sponsored" since they are reserved for use by a specific community.] The application was proposed by the ICM Registry.

Here is the list of all current Generic Top Level Domains, as administered by IANA. Note that some are reserved and some are open to anyone:

The .aero domain is reserved for members of the air-transport industry and is sponsored by Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques (SITA).
The .biz domain is restricted to businesses and is operated by NeuLevel, Inc.
The .cat domain is reserved for the Catalan linguistic and cultural community and is sponsored by Fundació puntCat
The .com domain is operated by VeriSign Global Registry Services.
The .coop domain is reserved for cooperative associations and is sponsored by Dot Cooperation LLC.
The .info domain is operated by Afilias Limited.
The .jobs domain is reserved for human resource managers and is sponsored by Employ Media LLC.
The .mobi domain is reserved for consumers and providers of mobile products and services and is sponsored by mTLD Top Level Domain, Ltd.
The .museum domain is reserved for museums and is sponsored by the Museum Domain Management Association.
The .name domain is reserved for individuals and is operated by Global Name Registry.
The .net domain is operated by VeriSign Global Registry Services.
The .org domain is operated by Public Interest Registry. It is intended to serve the noncommercial community, but all are eligible to register within .org.
The .pro domain is restricted to credentialed professionals and related entities and is operated by RegistryPro.
The .travel domain is reserved for entities whose primary area of activity is in the travel industry and is sponsored by Tralliance Corporation.

Registrations in the domains listed above may be made through dozens of competitive registrars. For a list of the currently operating accredited registrars, go to the InterNIC site.
Information about becoming an accredited registrar is available on the ICANN site.

The .gov domain is reserved exclusively for the United States Government. It is operated by the US General Services Administration.
The .edu domain is reserved for postsecondary institutions accredited by an agency on the U.S. Department of Education's list of Nationally Recognized Accrediting Agencies and is registered only through Educause.
The .mil domain is reserved exclusively for the United States Military. It is operated by the US DoD Network Information Center.
The .int domain is used only for registering organizations established by international treaties between governments. It is operated by the IANA .int Domain Registry.

These are the gTLD's that are accessible via the Domain Name System ("DNS"). There are also several domains that operate outside of the DNS. See http://www.new.net/

For more information on gTLD's and registries, see http://www.icann.org/registries/listing.html