Opinion ID: 2824570
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Top Level Domains

Text: Each Internet website is assigned a unique Internet Protocol (“IP”) numerical address. For ease of searching, websites also have alphanumeric domain names, such as “nytimes.com.” The portion before the dot—“nytimes”—is called the “second level domain.” The portion after the dot—“com”—is the TLD. There are three main types of TLDs—sponsored TLDs (such as “.gov” and “.edu”), restricted to users who meet specified criteria; country-code TLDs (such as “.uk” or “.fr”), controlled by sovereign nations; and generic TLDs (such as “.com” and “.net”), those at issue in this case, open to all users. Individual generic TLDs are operated by registries, such as VeriSign, which sell the ability to register a domain name with a particular TLD and maintain a zone file, or registry, of all the domain names associated with that TLD. These registries approve registrars, such as godaddy.com, to sell domain names incorporating those TLDs to the public. NAME.SPACE, INC. V. ICANN 5 A “Domain Name System” (“DNS”) links each of these unique domain names with the IP address corresponding to that website. When an Internet user searches for a domain name, the DNS converts the domain name to the IP address by searching a list of TLDs called the “root zone file” (the “Root”). Additional TLDs are made available by organizations other than ICANN on alternative root files. However, alternative root files can only be accessed through special settings not routinely employed by most Internet users. Thus, the vast majority of Internet users can only access websites with TLDs included in the ICANNcontrolled Root. When the complaint in this case was filed, ICANN included eight generic TLDs on the Root.