This Will Not Wendel

PARIS (AFP) — Web regulators Thursday voted to allow the creation of thousands of new domain names, from .paris to .Pepsi, in one of the biggest shake-ups in Internet history, a French web official said.

Currently all web addresses fall under one of some 250 top-level domain names: .country or .territory domains, and generic ones such as .com, .net and .org, .gov, and .edu.
Under the new system, the web's 1.3 billion users would be able from 2009 to buy an unlimited number of generic addresses based on common words, brands or company names, cities or proper names.

This has to be some massive, off kilter joke on the part of ICANN. I just cannot see this working as intended - however the hell they intend it. While it seems designed to proliferate domain availability, single companies already are jockeying to lock down entire top level domains as THEIRS. .ebay and several others are already planned. Surely SOMEONE sees the problem with this other than myself? What good is it to have more top level domains, when suddenly a top level domain becomes the equivalent of a normal domain. If every address under xxx.blahblah.ebay is owned BY EBAY - how is it any different than xxx.ebay.xxx ?

Oh, stupid browser trick for the night. Because of the way DNS systems render domain names, they are actually all rendered as xxx.xxxx.xxx.null - Try typing notes.strixus.net. into your address bar. It renders as the current address because . is the default subroot.

Edit: More commentary, and hopefully soon discussion, here at TheGeekMedia's forums.