ICANN has Cheezburger: .lol domains available by 2009
For years, experts have debated whether Internet users would benefit from having all the web's pornographic material collected under a .xxx top-level domain. ICANN, the international body in charge of Internet addresses, wants to answer the question once and for all, by introducing a test-pilot program. The new test domain will be called .lol, and it's going to be designated specifically for sites that cause controversial amounts of audible laughter. ICANN says the most popular .lol domains will be sold to the highest bidders in an auction later this year. Some of the addresses that could bring in the most money are cats.lol, epic.lol, and thatswhatshesaid.lol. An anonymous group of forum posters from a well-known site -- our source would only say that it ends in "-chan" -- is looking for investors to buy up the most hotly-contested new domain of all: first.lol.
Not everyone is so thrilled about the launch of this experiment, though. Citizens of the Sovereign Island of Lolliput have been begging ICANN for years to assign the .lol domain to their country. This would have allowed them to compete with their better-known neighbors, the island state of Niue, who have already cashed in on the popular .nu suffix.
We couldn't get in touch with Cheezburger and Tofuburger, proprietors of the ultra-famous website ICanHasCheezburger.com (it's cats with captions!) for a comment on this story. However, a spokeskitteh for the site did say that preparations for the move to .lol were going well. He told Download Squad: "Downtiem: we duz not spect much of it."
