Dot com overhaul
Updated
Web regulators have voted to open up the Internet's domain name system to create hundreds of new website addresses.
Domain names such as ".paris" or ".Pepsi", will be introduced in one of the biggest shake-ups in online history.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, approved the overhaul, which has major implications for businesses and consumers worldwide, during its annual general meeting in Paris.
"This is a historic resolution," ICANN chairman, Peter Dengate Thrush said.
"It is going to make a big difference to the way the Internet looks and works."
Limited current availability
Currently the world's 160 million web addresses end with one of some 250 top-level domain names: .country or .territory domains, and generic ones such as .com, .net and .org, as well as .gov and .edu.
But ICANN was under pressure to find a solution for burgeoning demand, with the stock of available addresses set to run out by 2011.
Under the new system, the web's 1.3 billion users will be able from the third quarter of 2009 to buy generic top-level domains (gTLDs) based on common words, brands or company names, cities or proper names.
Paul Twomey, ICANN's chief executive, said the regulator needed three or four months to work out the details, and would start accepting applications in the second quarter of next year.
A boon for business and
The web body also voted to allow domain names to be lodged in languages such as Arabic or Mandarin Chinese.
In theory, an infinite number of new generic domain names could be born, but in reality applicants will need the technical ability to run an Internet registry of millions of individual domain names, and deep pockets.
Paul Twomey said each new domain will have a substantial pricetag, "in the low six-digits, US dollars", to allow the non-profit body to recover its $US20 million development costs"
"We don't expect there to be thousands of applications. You are going to have to be a reasonably serious business or community of businesses," said Thrush.
But he said ICANN was "hoping for and expecting a broad range of applicants."
"We're expecting indigenous communities interested in protecting aspects of their language and culture.
"Or vanity domains: we may see .smith, for all the Smiths of the world to have a place."
Cities could also benefit from the liberalisation, with the German capital hoping for .berlin or New York for .nyc.
On the business front, product groups such as .bank or .car are likely contenders, while the popular online trading site eBay is one of many companies that wants its own domain name.
Mr Thrush said the change was "very exciting from a commercial perspective."
ICANN says it will not act as an "arbiter of law and morality," but that a dispute resolution mechanism will allow anyone to oppose a domain.
Grounds for opposition will be trademark infringement, potential confusion with an existing domain, if a name wrongly purports to represent an economic or cultural community or is "contrary to morality and public order".
If two or more applicants want the same domain, ICANN will ask them to find a settlement, with the possibility of an auction if that fails.
Up until now some cities or regions have been bending the rules already to get the domain they want.
The city of Los Angeles has for example signed a deal with the southeast Asian state Laos to use its .la domain.
More than 1,500 delegates from 70 countries gathered in Paris for the annual meeting of the California-based ICANN, which oversees the assignment of domain names and Internet protocol addresses that help computers communicate.
