Groups Lobby for .Gay Internet Domains

The New York Times' City Room blog reports that two separate groups are lobbying the Internet's main regulatory body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (or ICANN for short) for the creation of a .gay suffix. The groups, the Dot Gay Alliance and dotGay, have not yet coordinated their efforts but are planning to petition ICANN at an upcoming meeting in Seoul, South Korea. If approved, the suffix could join the ranks of .edu, .org, and .com as prominent domain names. While the process of creating a top-level domain name is exceptionally expensive—they can cost upward of $400,000 to register —they are very profitable and usually pull in about $8 per site annually. The founders of both groups have said that if their efforts are successful, the majority of the proceeds would go to gay nonprofits.

Read original story in NYT City Room | Friday, Oct. 23, 2009