This Week in Tech: Tech world braces for wave of new domain names

{mosads}Groups had to pay $185,000 to apply for a new top-level domain.

ICANN will evaluate the applications based on technical and legal criteria but could ultimately approve the vast majority of them.

The group says the expansion will lead to more choices and spur innovation on the Internet. But advertisers and some business groups warn the change will force companies to defensively buy up names related to their brands.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Jon Leibowitz has expressed concern that the expansion could confuse consumers and enable scammers. 

Others have questioned what the nonprofit plans to do with the more than $350 million in additional application fees.

Although the full roster of applications won’t be revealed until Wednesday, some groups already have identified the domains they applied for.

Google, for example, applied for .google, .youtube, .docs and .lol, among others.

In other tech policy news, the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government will mark up legislation on Tuesday that includes next year’s funding for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission.

A markup in the House last week of counterpart funding legislation exploded into a fight over an FCC rule that would require television broadcasters to post data online about political ad buys. Republicans included a provision in the bill to strip the FCC of the authority to enforce the regulation, which the agency adopted in April.

Democrats accused Republicans of trying to keep the public in the dark about the spending of outside “fat cats” in elections, but Republicans said the rule unfairly burdens television stations.

Also on Tuesday, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson will participate in a panel discussion at the Brookings Institution on the future of the “mobile technology revolution.” Glenn Hutchins, co-founder of Silver Lake and vice chairman of the Brookings Board of Trustees, will also participate, and the discussion will be moderated by Darrell West, the director of governance studies at Brookings.

Stephenson will discuss policies that can foster investments in mobile technology that will boost healthcare, education, e-commerce, entertainment and communications. 

Stephenson is not a fan of the FCC’s current leadership and has rarely passed up an opportunity to take a shot at the commission since it helped block AT&T’s attempt to buy T-Mobile last year.

Most recently, AT&T has criticized the FCC’s plans to overhaul its “special access” rules, which govern how much carriers and other businesses pay for high-speed circuits to carry their traffic.

On Monday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) will hold a dinner to honor “Champions of Freedom.” The privacy group will give awards to Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski and The Washington Post‘s Dana Priest. Computer scientist Willis Ware and cryptographer Whitfield Diffie will receive lifetime achievement awards. The event will be hosted by Dahlia Lithwick, legal correspondent for Slate.