WHO's plan to police health websites rejected
BMJ 2000; 321 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.321.7272.1308/b (Published 25 November 2000) Cite this as: BMJ 2000;321:1308
The body that approves so called “top level” domain names for the internet last week rejected a plan that would have made the World Health Organization (WHO) one of the most powerful players on the world wide web.
The WHO wanted to establish a “dot health” domain to guide internet users to “reliable” health sites. Websites with the dot health (.health) suffix would have carried the WHO's seal of approval, giving the WHO a formidable policing role—and unprecedented power.
A WHO spokesman said: “The BMJ website would become www.bmj.health. It's so logical that there should be a dot health domain, and there's no better organisation in the world to run it than WHO.”
The Californian based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) rejected the proposal, partly because of anxiety over “content control.” There was concern in the United States that one body should assume the right of veto over many thousands of websites. No one knows just how many health websites there are, but Robert Kiley, editor of Health Information on the Internet, puts the figure at 100 000.
Web experts also doubt if any single body has the necessary staff to fulfil a policing role. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers was not unsympathetic to WHO's main aim. The corporation's chairman, Vinton Cerf, said, “We feel it would have been a great benefit to consumers for guaranteeing the quality of health and medical information on the web.” The proposal, he added, had not been rejected out of hand and “could be pursued.”
There are many arguments for and against new generic top level domains. The corporation's website explains: “Those in favour argue that new gTLDs [generic top level domains] are technically easy to create, will help relieve perceived scarcities in existing name spaces, and are consistent with a general push towards consumer choice and diversity of options. Those opposed point to greater possibilities for consumer confusion, the risk of increased trademark infringement, cyber-squatting and cyber piracy.”
Cybersquatters are speculators who buy up domain names to sell to people whose businesses depend on them. Registering domain names costs about £25. Cybersquatters have made hundreds of thousands of pounds by registering and then selling individual domain names.
The corporation did approve seven new top level domain names last week (.aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, and .pro).