Group Rejects U.S. Effort to Approve New Domains

The Obama administration has failed in its bid to allow it and other governments to veto future top-level domain names, a proposal before ICANN that raised questions about balancing national sovereignty with the venerable Internet tradition of free expression. A group of nations rejected that part of the U.S. proposal, concluding instead that governments can offer nonbinding "advice" about controversial suffixes such as .gay but will not receive actual veto power.