said by wifi4milez :

You are correct. China could purchase the {insert Chinese character} domain, and then limit all internal (ie. people in China) users to just that domain. They will then be able to very tightly control what people are doing, as their "firewall" would simply prohibit traffic going to any other domain.

said by wifi4milez :

China could purchase the {insert Chinese character} domain, and then limit all internal (ie. people in China) users to just that domain. They will then be able to very tightly control what people are doing, as their "firewall" would simply prohibit traffic going to any other domain.

said by TKJunkMail :

Also part of this decision is the use of non-Roman alphabet characters in domain suffixes. This is very democratic, but it will inevitably lead to a segmentation of the monolithic internet in to regions and languages. Aside from the censorship by China with their "Great Firewall" and in some other countries with national firewalls as well, this decision will actually foster the breakdown of international access to the internet as a whole.

said by voipdabbler :

ICANN--opening up even more opportunities for online fraud. Personally, I think they've opened up an unmanageable can of worms. I do agree that there will be lawsuits with respect to domains with intellectual property connotations. And I wouldn't hold my breath expecting porn sites to voluntarily choose domains connoting sex--they know that it will be too easy to filter those names.