The Internet Runs on Cats and Porn. It’s About to Get Cattier and Pornier

This year, anyone tin use for a slayer top-level domain connected the internet. I’m talking astir the portion to the close of the URL dot, similar .com oregon .org. Over a 1000 of these already exist: .app for apps, .shop for shopping, .dev for bundle developers, .nyc for New Yorkers, .porn for porn, .horse for—who knows.

And successful 2026, for the archetypal clip since 2012, anyone tin invent a caller .word (even, literally, .word).

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, oregon ICANN, is the governance assemblage that makes the rules for domain names and IP addresses. These rules are ostensibly the benignant of boring method worldly that astir radical don’t cognize about, due to the fact that the net “just works.” You benignant successful nike.com, you spot the swoosh. But the rules lick hard problems that thousands of humans walk thousands of hours arguing over. When Ukraine asked ICANN successful 2022 to unopen down each postulation to Russian top-level domains, similar .ru, ICANN declined. No censorship is 1 of the rules: Ensure the stableness and information of the internet, but don’t constabulary content.

It’s June, and I’m successful Seville, Spain, for ICANN86, to larn astir top-level domains and the radical who marque them. The 86 means it’s ICANN’s 86th IRL gathering since ICANN01 successful Singapore, successful 1999, conscionable aft ICANN was created to modulation cardinal net infrastructure distant from US power and toward autarkic management. The US authorities is present too—at slightest 4 representatives from the Department of Commerce—along with 1,000-plus radical from 100-plus countries. And it’s not conscionable bureaucrats. ICANN regulars see large tech companies similar Google and Amazon, domain registrars similar GoDaddy and Porkbun (domain companies person a penchant for wacky names), UN agencies similar the World Intellectual Property Organization, nonprofits, academics, and tons of lawyers and glasses-and-beard machine guys. The assemblage has a retro feel. When I manus radical my old-fashioned paper-and-ink concern card, they manus theirs close back.

ICANN86 is the 2nd of 3 ICANN meetings this year. The aforesaid assemblage spent a week successful Mumbai successful March and volition walk different successful Bali successful October. After on-the-record argumentation forums and closed-door concern meetings each day, the congregation of domain radical volition party-hop betwixt tapas bars, courtesy of the corporates. One longtime attendee tells maine it’s a “traveling circus.” This peculiar gathering is important due to the fact that it’s the past face-to-face gathering earlier the model to use for caller top-level domains, oregon TLDs, closes connected August 12.

Insiders telephone the words and acronyms that go TLDs “strings.” As in, “man, .app is simply a bully string.” In 2012, .app was considered a bully string, truthful bully that Google paid $25 cardinal for it successful an ICANN auction, outbidding a twelve applicants, including Amazon. Owning the top-level domain means Google tin merchantability .app domains, similar cash.app, for a yearly registration fee. That makes Google a registry, not to beryllium confused with a registrar. Registries merchantability domains done registrars to registrants—try to support up. So erstwhile you bargain jitterbug.app from a registrar similar GoDaddy for $27.99, Google’s registry charges $14 wholesale, ICANN collects a 20-cent transaction fee, and GoDaddy pockets the difference. (Google besides utilized to person a registrar, Google Domains, which it sold to Squarespace a fewer years ago.)

The registry that owns .com, Verisign, makes a cardinal and a fractional dollars each twelvemonth conscionable by keeping the lights on. To Verisign’s credit, the lights ne'er spell out: It reports 100 percent uptime implicit the past 28 years. It’s a beauteous slick concern model, watching implicit a database of words and collecting yearly renewal fees. Warren Buffett thought truthful too, investing successful Verisign successful 2012, erstwhile its banal terms was astir one-eighth what it is today. This week I’ll besides speech to smaller registry operators, radical who tally profitable TLDs arsenic solopreneurs oregon with a tiny team. Being here, talking to applicants, I’m starting to privation I were the 1 applying for a shiny caller top-level domain.

The full happening is massively fueled by FOMO. We don’t cognize erstwhile ICANN volition clasp different round—it has been readying this 1 for implicit a decade—and erstwhile idiosyncratic other owns a string, you can’t person it. When the exertion model closes successful August, ICANN volition denote that it received implicit 1,600 applications. And erstwhile it releases the nationalist database connected Reveal Day connected October 7, we’ll cognize who applied for what. Until then, astir organizations volition beryllium highly secretive astir their plans. One applicant from the past circular tells maine companies were flying astir the world, gathering successful idiosyncratic to debar immoderate hazard of integer leaks, avoiding Gmail for fearfulness of Google spying. Instead of email oregon video calls, she flew to London, past to Madrid. “We did it each successful person. People got a small weird and scary, ace paranoid.”

Many applicants won’t adjacent accidental outright whether they’re applying, for fearfulness of inviting competition. Not everyone is truthful discreet, though.

Vaughn Liley quit schoolhouse astatine 15 to merchantability fax machines doorway to door. He refers to that clip utilizing the quaint long-form “facsimile machines” during our speech successful Seville. In his fifties now, Liley tells maine helium has the enthusiasm and enactment ethic of an 18-year-old. He’s been selling alternatives to .com since earlier the 2012 round, erstwhile determination were less than 2 twelve gTLDs (a gTLD is simply a generic top-level domain, successful opposition with ccTLDs, oregon state codification top-level domains, similar .us and .uk). Liley chopped his teeth selling the arguable porny—pardon me, big content—top-level domain .xxx, colloquially known arsenic “triple x.”

Liley hired porn stars Ron Jeremy and Stormy Daniels arsenic marque spokespeople. “I really got chased done LAX airdrome by TMZ.” He’d gone to Los Angeles to conscionable Daniels for a vigor interrogation with Playboy astir triple x. “I didn’t enactment 2 and 2 together, but that was erstwhile the archetypal communicative was breaking astir her and later-to-be president Donald Trump.” Years-long contention implicit triple x is portion of the past that led to ICANN’s no-censorship rule. The Bush medication did not privation a red-light territory for the internet. Liley tells maine 1 authorities authoritative tried to intimidate his boss: “We walk years similar you walk dimes.” All that triple x trauma is simply a cautionary communicative for Liley successful the 2026 round, I gather.

On the nighttime of the Palisades Fire successful January 2025, Liley flew to LA again. This time, helium was visiting ICANN office connected behalf of his company, Nova Registry (it has since rebranded to Link Freedom Group, oregon LFG). The sojourn was a precaution, to get the greenish airy for a splashy announcement Nova would marque the week earlier ICANN82 successful Seattle: It was readying to use for 200 top-level domains successful 2026. He called it SuperNova200.

Which begs the question: Do we truly request each these caller extensions? The 2012 circular brought america much than 1,200 caller top-level domains, galore of which flopped. Have you ever seen a .wedding website? Or a .plumbing business? I’ll accidental this: I tin ideate a aboriginal wherever expressive top-level domains go our idiosyncratic brands, identities connected the internet. This is already existent successful immoderate nerdy corners of the web, similar connected Bluesky, wherever your domain is your username. I don’t telephone my net friends Neal and Luke, I telephone them neal.fun and luke.zip. Instead of joining the onshore unreserved to drawback our username connected each caller societal media site, we’ll transportation our domain astir the web with us.

ICANN charges a $227,000 exertion interest for each string, to retrieve the outgo of moving the program. The $36 cardinal oregon truthful that Nova volition request to screen those fees—and plentifulness much for auctions, Liley adds—is coming from the idiosyncratic slope relationship of Yoni Belousov, a reclusive domain capitalist (industry jargon: “domainer”) who’s been successful the concern since helium was 14 years old. Belousov hired Liley to enactment Nova connected the map. And helium did. Before Seattle, adjacent to nary 1 had heard of Nova, which presently runs conscionable 1 TLD, .link. “At that gathering we were invited to a closed-door session” held by the biggest players from the past round, Liley tells me. “We’ve ne'er been invited to that.”

Liley calls the SuperNova200 announcement—his ain idea—both a “masterstroke” and “an implicit changeable of genius.” Talking to maine for this story, helium spots a publicity accidental and dials up the charm: repeating my sanction successful conversation, telling aged stories, being British. He knows what he’s doing, and I don’t mind. I similar talking to him. But helium inactive won’t archer maine what strings he’s applying for, not until aft the exertion model closes, anyway. (In August, Nova volition bargain ICANN’s thunder and denote the 316 strings it applied for, including .fart.)

There are different applicants who have announced their strings early, though. There’s the .agent assemblage that wants AI cause individuality to beryllium governed by a consortium, not immoderate 1 large lab. There’s crypto domain institution D3 (website tagline: “Own & commercialized the internet”) partnering connected TLDs for meme coins similar .doge and NFTs similar .ape similar it’s 2023. There’s Salesforce, which softly disclosed its plans to use for .salesforce. There’s .self, a community-governed top-level domain for information sovereignty, and .furry, a hackerspace applicant for the furry community. There’s besides .tree, a buy-a-domain-plant-a-tree registry that smells similar greenwashing.

And past there’s .meow.

Aeryn Van Daele was joking erstwhile she archetypal raised the thought of applying for .meow, a top-level domain for the queer community. Van Daele, CEO of the queer-owned and -operated dotMeow Foundation, is starting to archer maine the founding communicative erstwhile Lauren Thomas, dotMeow’s task manager, cuts her off. “The world of it was,” Thomas says, that Van Daele and her cofounder, TQ Hirsch, were “genuinely perfectly hammered.” Van Daele and Hirsch had met up for drinks. Later that night, Hirsch relayed the thought to Thomas, who told Hirsch to nonstop Van Daele a connection connected Signal truthful that .meow wouldn’t beryllium mislaid to a hangover. It was 1 of those uncommon drunk ideas that’s adjacent amended the adjacent morning.

Van Daele has 2 chemoreceptor rings, purple highlights to lucifer her glasses, and nary much abstraction for stickers connected her laptop. FIGHT THE CIS-TEM, NIEMAND IS ILLEGAL, FEMBOY HOOTERS, FUUT THE POLICE, HACKING 0100 FREEDOM, QUEERS BASH BACK, and of course, a .meow sticker. She and Thomas person the unmistakable rapport of bully friends who besides hap to enactment together.

.meow wouldn’t beryllium the archetypal queer top-level domain. But dissimilar .gay and .lgbt from the 2012 round, .meow is simply a much oblique motion to the queer community. Their website calls it “a subtle awesome of solidarity, a wink to those successful the know.” (For those not successful the know, meowing tin beryllium a queerness tell.) Of course, anyone would beryllium capable to registry a .meow domain. The net is truly conscionable “tubes afloat of cats,” arsenic Van Daele puts it. All domain merchantability profits would money queer radical and projects, whether it’s deliberate queer enactment oregon unwitting feline radical doing the buying. It’ll beryllium similar selling Subarus to lesbians, erstwhile the car institution ran a subtle, if-you-know-you-know advertisement bid (“It loves camping, dogs, and semipermanent commitment. Too atrocious it’s lone a car.”).

Choosing a drawstring that isn’t overtly queer is strategical successful different ways too. If dotMeow had applied for .trans, it mightiness look contention from for-profit registries, say, targeting the proscription industry. The accepted contented is to support your drawstring a secret, but Van Daele and Thomas deliberation contention is improbable due to the fact that it would beryllium a “terrible PR move” to beryllium the registry that yoinked the queer community’s TLD. “We’re bully astatine boycotting,” Van Daele adds. Also, .meow is little apt to beryllium challenged successful ICANN’s nationalist remark process. In the past round, Saudi Arabia filed an objection against .gay connected motivation and spiritual grounds. In its words, promoting homosexuality would beryllium “offensive” to immoderate societies and cultures. But Van Daele and Thomas person done their homework: The ICANN rules are written specified that an objection indispensable subordinate to the drawstring itself, not to the enactment and its values. “We are promoting meowing connected the internet, which is decidedly a queer hobby, but it is not inherently queer,” Thomas says, fractional serious.

To rise capable wealth to use for and motorboat .meow, Van Daele and Thomas’ squad ran a Kickstarter campaign. With the fiscal assistance they received done ICANN’s Applicant Support Program, Thomas estimates that dotMeow volition wage astir $55,000 to apply. Crowdfunding was “the astir internet-brained happening you could do,” Thomas says. The run raised astir $137,000—150 percent of its goal. In speech for pledges of $32 oregon more, backers received a voucher for the archetypal twelvemonth of their .meow domain registration (much of which volition crook into renewal gross successful twelvemonth two). The Kickstarter doubled arsenic word-of-mouth selling and a request awesome for registrars evaluating whether to merchantability .meow domains. In that respect, dotMeow has a caput commencement connected different registries who’ll beryllium rushing caller domains to marketplace astir the aforesaid time.

In opposition to registries that person “exited” by selling their TLDs (.gay changed hands successful 2023), Van Daele and Thomas stress that .meow is simply a beingness investment. They’re intelligibly having fun, too. “It’s the weird net that we bash miss a spot and privation back,” Van Daele says. They imagination of .meow domains being utilized for joyful tiny websites, similar a silly idiosyncratic blog nary 1 reads. Now, again, I’m daydreaming astir moving my ain top-level domain and wondering if they’ve thought of different strings. I see myself some a feline idiosyncratic and a canine person, truthful I inquire if they’ve thought astir .woof. I’m not the first, apparently—it’s the astir requested drawstring aft .meow. Per Van Daele, “as galore catgirls arsenic exist, there’s astatine slightest arsenic galore puppygirls.”

Van Daele and Thomas deliberation that, philosophically, ICANN wants much projects similar .meow populating the internet—a little firm and much inclusive, cozy web. Following the wealth corroborates this. In 2012, lone 1 applicant received fiscal assistance done ICANN’s Applicant Support Program. This year, 56 person qualified, including galore from the planetary south. DotMeow’s Kickstarter drew astir 2,000 backers successful 40 countries, crossed each continent with much radical than penguins. That enactment includes “a batch of radical successful a batch of places wherever their governments would not admit it,” Thomas calls out, including Russia. The geographic diverseness validates ICANN’s extremity of supporting 1 unified, planetary net and avoiding a fragmented “splinternet” of walled-off networks, similar Russia’s RuNet.

It’s not conscionable Russia that the 2 person an oculus on. “The mode it’s looking,” Van Daele says, it’s imaginable the US “might person an contented with america being disposable there, astatine which constituent we person nary much accidental if their ISPs don’t connection routing to our TLD.” Thomas points retired that .gay and .lgbt, some owned by American companies, would person the aforesaid problem. One of the argumentation debates this week is astir requiring registries to fulfill urgent requests from instrumentality enforcement for registrant information wrong 24 hours. If a transgression were utilizing a .meow domain to perpetrate crimes, the constabulary successful that jurisdiction mightiness privation to cognize who’s down the website. But what if that idiosyncratic weren’t a criminal, and the constabulary asked anyway? DotMeow plans to tally a “thin” registry that collects interaction accusation but not personally identifying accusation and to support information successful the EU, protected nether GDPR. Van Daele has asked some Belgian and American lawyers whether GDPR would support registrants if the FBI oregon CIA came knocking, for example. The dotMeow Foundation is based successful Belgium, and it’s deliberately staying retired of US jurisdiction—to the grade possible. Many .meow Kickstarter backers unrecorded successful the US, and ICANN itself is simply a nonprofit incorporated successful California.

As the lone American astatine the table, I person a pang of guilt and sadness that Van Daele and Thomas don’t consciousness invited successful my location country. It besides reminds maine of thing I heard Thomas accidental connected the Queerocracy Now! podcast: “This is the internet, not America.”

The US government officially ceded power of the Domain Name System connected September 30, 2016. Yes, ICANN was formed successful 1998, but for astir 20 years the Department of Commerce had a declaration with ICANN to tally what’s called the Root Zone Database, oregon simply “the root.” The basal is an alphabetized database of each the top-level domains: .aaa for AAA, the roadside assistance company; .aarp for AARP, the retiree assistance nonprofit; and truthful on. Whoever controls that database has the powerfulness to region a TLD from it, hence Ukraine’s petition for ICANN to unopen down Russia’s .ru.

I’m cautious not to accidental the US gave up power of the internet because, contempt what Ted Cruz volition archer you, ending the nonstop US authorities narration to ICANN did not mean giving distant the net to Russia, China, and Iran. After Edward Snowden discredited the thought of the US arsenic a neutral steward of net freedom, galore successful the net governance assemblage pushed for an really autarkic ICANN. Ironically, “giving away” US power of the basal mightiness beryllium what allows a globalized net to last. Esther Dyson, ICANN’s archetypal committee chair, has said that ICANN’s intent was to sphere a vacuum of net power—controlled diffusely by everybody alternatively than 1 authorities oregon company.

Domain governance does clasp residual ties to the US. The information that ICANN is registered arsenic a California nonprofit attracted a spotlight successful 2019 erstwhile the nonprofit that runs .org agreed to merchantability it for $1.1 cardinal to a backstage equity steadfast cofounded by a erstwhile ICANN CEO. California’s lawyer wide called for ICANN to cull the deal, and ICANN did. (That aforesaid backstage equity steadfast aboriginal acquired the registry that owns the astir TLDs, Donuts, which has since rebranded to the much corpospeak Identity Digital.) But, largely, the US authorities is conscionable different ICANN stakeholder.

To genuinely recognize ICANN, you indispensable recognize that determination are truly 2 ICANNs: the ICANN Org—about 450 unit connected payroll—and the ICANN Community, the thousands that question astir the satellite for these meetings. The Org’s intent is to bring the Community unneurotic to scope statement connected policy. The uppercase-C Community is expected to beryllium a reflector for the lowercase-c net community—all of us. Metaphorically, ICANN is similar open-source bundle wherever the codification is written by the Community, past compiled and tally by the Org.

Like unfastened root and the net itself, ICANN is unfastened to anyone. As the Org wrote successful a briefing earlier ICANN86, “the Internet functions for everyone due to the fact that everyone is invited to assistance marque it work.” It’s escaped to registry for these meetings, and anyone tin dial successful connected Zoom. (That means anyone, including the hacker who joined a webinar I attended past twelvemonth and seized screen-sharing privileges to blast explicit, full-volume pornography.) Unlike the United Nations, wherever each sovereign gets a vote, ICANN is what they telephone multistakeholder, meaning governments person conscionable different spot astatine the table—on adjacent footing with corporates, nonprofits, and the method community. It’s a bottom-up statement process, alternatively than top-down. Of course, arsenic with immoderate antiauthoritarian system, you extremity up with imperfect representation. It’s easier for corporations to lobby for their peculiar interests than it is for smaller fish, similar net extremity users successful countries with authoritarian governments. Still, it’s a tiny occurrence that the ICANN multistakeholder exemplary works astatine all.

There’s a just spot of oculus rolling astatine these meetings astir however dilatory and bureaucratic the ICANN process is. Newcomers drown successful acronyms and metajargon. There are 3 abstracted meetings scheduled this week for the “Review of Reviews,” an valuation of the valuation mechanics written into ICANN’s bylaws. For transparency, astir ICANN meetings are recorded and disposable to the public, on with an astonishing measurement of assemblage resources. In its effort to beryllium legible, ICANN whitethorn accidentally marque itself illegible astatine times. But you can’t person the occurrence without the bureaucracy. You’ll perceive the aforesaid radical who kick astir ICANN’s inefficiency 1 infinitesimal marveling astatine ICANN’s internet-scale quality collaboration the next.

I’m walking down a sterile, white-walled hallway to conscionable Marika Konings and Theresa Swinehart for an interview. We gag astir being stuck successful the Lumon offices of Severance earlier they each present themselves: Konings is ICANN’s programme pb for the caller TLD round, and Swinehart leads planetary domains and strategy. They’ve each spent astir 20 years astatine ICANN (the Org, that is). Much of their enactment implicit the past 10 has been to nutrient a azygous document.

At 439 pages, the English-language mentation of ICANN’s Applicant Guide Book is the regularisation publication for caller top-level domains. There are a batch of rules. For one, each two-letter extensions are disconnected the table. Those beryllium to countries, similar .co successful Colombia and .me successful Montenegro and .ai successful Anguilla. (The tiny land federation made astir fractional its gross past twelvemonth selling domains.) Three-letter state codes are besides blocked, similar .eth for Ethiopia (sorry, Ethereum). You tin besides use for internationalized domain names (acronym: IDN) successful non-Latin scripts similar Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, and Devanagari. (In Arabic, top-level domains are to the near of the dot.) The rules spell on: If you privation to tally a geographic TLD, similar .nyc oregon .paris, you request support from that municipality; your drawstring can’t beryllium excessively akin to an existing 1 (.corn is simply a no-go; looks excessively overmuch similar .com); you can’t ain different brand’s trademark; and definite peculiar strings are disconnected limits, similar .icann and .www (wouldn’t that beryllium a trip).

A decennary to make the rulebook isn’t precise agelong “in ICANN years,” Konings says. “Have we had hard conversations? Sure.” But there’s besides “a batch of communal respect and appreciation,” she tells me. ICANN’s bottom-up process whitethorn instrumentality a while, but it’s cathartic for participants to get their 2 cents connected the record, adjacent if they don’t get their way. The process is imperfect, Swinehart concedes, but she thinks the extremity effect is bully for the internet. Konings and Swinehart look eminently patient. In fact, everyone I conscionable connected the ICANN Org unit seems to spot the process. They are a benignant and understated bunch, present astatine the domain furniture of the internet. It feels virtually and philosophically acold from the exertion furniture wherever large tech companies operate.

I inquire Konings and Swinehart astir ICANN’s stance connected different rule: What happens erstwhile aggregate applicants privation the aforesaid string? In 2012, ICANN held auctions, similar however I told you Google paid $25 cardinal for .app. The high-water people astatine an ICANN auction was a $135 cardinal bid for .web by Nu Dot Com, underwritten by Verisign, the .com people. You’ve seen each those websites with .web URLs, right? No, of people you haven’t, due to the fact that .web was stalled by ineligible rifts betwixt the bidders for a afloat decennary and is lone present being rolled out. ICANN held 16 auctions past round. But it besides allowed applicants to settee things themselves, whether by auction oregon immoderate different negotiated arrangement. There were astir 10 times arsenic galore backstage auctions arsenic ICANN auctions, and importantly, astir backstage auctions paid retired the winner’s bid evenly among the losers (whereas ICANN collects the proceeds successful its auctions). If, for example, Google, Amazon, and Verisign each wanted .banana, and Verisign was the winning bidder astatine $2 million, Google and Amazon would each locomotion distant with $1 million. You lost, but really, you won. ICANN collected astir $240 cardinal from auctions successful the past round. By comparison, the largest third-party supplier facilitated astir $650 cardinal successful backstage auctions, with astir of that wealth going backmost into applicant slope accounts.

ICANN volition clasp its ain auctions again this round, but the regularisation publication present bans backstage solution aft Reveal Day. “What happens before, that’s not our business,” Konings says. In fact, Konings and Swinehart can’t adjacent spot who has applied, and for what, until October—just similar the remainder of us.

The last session of the week is amended attended than I’d expected. Becky Burr is present to moderate. Burr helped signifier ICANN during her tenure successful the Clinton medication (she jokes that “ICANN is each my fault”) and is simply a skilled moderator. She knows erstwhile to inquire a follow-up question oregon respectfully propulsion backmost connected a comment. The taxable this day is backend database providers for organizations successful ICANN’s Applicant Support Program, similar dotMeow. And contempt however exhausted radical are aft the agelong week, this league is not perfunctory oregon mailed in. I instrumentality down 3 pages of notes during an hr of treatment that includes immoderate contentious but civilian debate. The enactment goes on.

One of the slug points I constitute down is that aforesaid daydream, this clip successful writing: Would I bask moving a TLD? The enactment is some method and creative, and it involves 2 things I americium astir funny in: words and the internet. But there’s thing other astir it that appeals to me. It would beryllium a crushed to support coming backmost to these meetings. ICANN84 successful Dublin was my archetypal in-person meeting, and present successful Seville astatine my second, I already consciousness a tug toward this Community. If I had a 4th of a cardinal dollars, I mightiness hazard it each connected .woof.

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