The infrastructure and standardisation basket
are still managed by a variety of institutions or individuals that received accreditation in the early days of the Internet, when some governments were not all that interested in such matters. The issues The creation of new generic domain names Technically, the creation of new TLDs is almost unlimited. However, the introduction of new gTLDs has been very slow, with a number of new gTLDs introduced only recently. Currently 20 gTLDs are active and three more are under consideration.10 The main opposition to the creation of new gTLDs originates from the trademark lobby, whose concern is that increasing the number of domains would make the protection of their trademarks difficult and increase cybersquatting. Under pressure to introduce new gTLDs, ICANN initiated consultations to design a new policy in this field which would address the resolution of competing claims for gTLDs, the risk of cybersquatting, questions of public morality, and registration fees, among others. Content-related generic domain names Another ICANN policy issue is deciding on the creation of new domains, which could involve linking domain names to content.11 The most illustrative situation is the proposal to introduce the .xxx domain for adult materials. The ICANN Board rejected this proposal in March 2007. The main criticism of this decision was that ICANN made it under pressure from the US government, which strongly opposed its introduction.12 Interestingly, many other governments supported the US government, including those who are usually critical of the US position in Internet governance, such as Brazil and China. The issue was revisited in June 2010 at the ICANN meeting in Brussels where the ICANN Board positively reviewed the application for the .xxx domain and initiated negotiations for its introduction. This decision also re-opened the discussion about ICANN’s role in public policy issues. Generic domain names for cultural and linguistic communities In 2003, ICANN introduced a new .cat domain for the Catalan language. This is the first domain introduced for a language.13 The Spanish government did not oppose this decision. At the time it was introduced, it triggered many concerns that it could be used as precedent for other languages, or even more controversially for language 43