In this new age the Wizard of Oz is actually a guy named Peter. Peter is the Chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). If you pull back the curtain in the Emerald City you’ll find, behind all the green smoke and billowing flames, that this middle-aged guy named Peter Dengate Thrush rules.

He rules the Internet, reigning supreme over all the addresses located there. And his corporation, ICANN, is about to disrupt everything about the Internet address system. Users will soon be able to create and live at any web address suffix that they desire:  Forget .com, .net and .org.  Here come .berlin, .canon and .anythingyouwant.

The New York Times calls this “one of the biggest changes in the history of the Internet”. 

It will require that brands invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect their brand addresses. New extentions will cost brands $185,000 plus $25,000 annually. Not everyone is happy. In fact, most are very unhappy. Owners of many corporate brands see a new round of intellectual property abuse. Trademark owners will have to decide to register their names for use with other extensions, apply for new suffixes, or do neither. The real winners are godaddy and their competitors, who will register a zillion new domain names.

This is going to really.suck.