TEXT OF STORY

Bill Radke: For years, other countries have resented America’s lead role in overseeing the Internet. Well today, there’s a new regime in effect. It puts U.S. and foreign representatives in charge. As Ashley Milne-Tyte reports, that has implications for those expensive domain names.

Ashley Milne-Tyte: The U.S. works with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. That’s a mouthful for ICANN, the Internet’s governing body. Now, more foreign representatives will help run the Internet.

ICANN assigns domain names and it’s decided to make more endings available beyond just dot-com, dot-net, and dot-biz. Milton Mueller of Syracuse University says U.S. companies lobbied against that.

Milton Mueller: ICANN’s decision was kind of thrown into the U.S. political system, where large businesses with brands to protect objected strongly.

But foreign representatives favor broadening the selection. It could lead to all sort of dots, like dot-booze, dot-food or even dot-I-CANN!

Still, U.S. businesses say domain names similar to theirs could force them to pay as much as $100,000 a pop to buy out cybersquatters.

In New York, I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte for Marketplace — and Marketplace.org.