Today the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a global body that coordinates internet names, voted to allow companies to apply for their own domain name extensions. Instead of choosing from the 22 existing top-level domain names, like dot com, dot org or dot net, websites will be able to apply for alternate URL endings—think dot takeaway or dot WNYC. At $185,000, the application fee is hefty and will likely limit the applicant pool to global business giants hoping to maximize their internet presence. ICANN will begin accepting applications on January 12, 2012. Mariko Oi, business reporter for our partner the BBC, speaks with us from Singapore, where ICANN met this morning.

In the run up to the arrest of Julian Assange, large companies, including Amazon, Visa and Paypal, refused to continue doing business with WikiLeaks, saying the site and its staff had violated various terms of service. Being dropped has meant WikiLeaks has had to change its online domain name, source its documents from a different web hosting company, and, accept donations via methods other than credit cards. Was this tightening of the noose business as usual or an unethical over-use of corporate power?

For this week's tech segment, we talk with esteemed graphic novelist James Sturm about his attempts to live without Web access.

On Wednesday, Google refined a program to help struggling news organizations limit readers' unpaid access to some news content. It's called the "First Click Free" program, and it means news consumers may be asked to register or subscribe once they've clicked on the website of a particular news outlet through Google News more than five times per day. It's all part of the continuing shakeup over whether or not reading news online should continue to be (mostly) free. For a look at what this might mean for those of you who get most of your news online, we talk to Steven Brill, the founder of Journalism Online.

Ever since it was founded eight years ago, Wikipedia has declared itself "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." But soon, not everyone will be able to edit every article. Starting in a few weeks, the Wikimedia Foundation will require changes made to entries about living people be approved a new class of experienced editors.  The move aims to curb abuse by vandals... but it complicates Wikipedia's wide-open ethos. We speak to Noam Cohen, who writes the "Link by Link" column for The New York Times.

Read Cohen's article on the changes ahead for the online encyclopedia, "Wikipedia to Limit Changes to Articles on People"