Forbidden Cyber City

China may be planning to break away from ICANN and the
Domain Name System, after creating its own versions of several top-level
domains

China has announced it is creating a new set of domain names based
on Chinese characters.China has created three of its own top-level
domains that will use the domain names .cn, .com and .net, in Chinese.
The domain names were launched on Wednesday by the Chinese Ministry
of Information Industry.

from ZDNet

We predicted this months ago (Alternet
Rising). It seems inevitable
that there will be some variety of many-tiered Internet in the future,
with variations in speed,
media-on-demand and access to restricted areas, but we prefer the model
wherein there is a universal global aether, so to speak, within which
users
and companies can establish areas of private access and specialized
services, rather than the Balkanization model wherein multiple and
mutually exclusive Internet universes compete with each other, as the
Chinese seem determined to establish.

On the other hand, ICANN says it ain’t so….

However, ICANN officials contacted the Chinese Internet Network Information
Center (CNNIC), which oversees the country’s .cn top-level domain, after
the report was published and were told there are no new Chinese top-level
domains. The report may have resulted from a misunderstanding of work
already in progress that involves second-level domains, according to
Tina Dam, ICANN’s chief GTLD (generic top-level domain) registry liaison.

from PC World