Updated 28 June - Internet regulators ICANN (Internet Corporation for assigned Names and Numbers) after a three year leadup, voted on Thursday in France for changes in net regulations to relax the strict rules on top level domain names.
At present top level domain names are restricted to individual countries, such as .co.nz (NZ) or .com.au (Australia), as well as to commerce, .com, and to institutional organisations, such as .net, or .org.
Companies will now be allowed to turn their brands into domain names and individuals will have the ability to register a domain based on their own name, or any other combination of letters, as long as they can show a “business plan and technical capacity”.
Domains names written in Asian, Arabic and other scripts was also approved.
Dr Paul Twomey, chief executive of Icann, said this is the biggest change to the way the internet works in decades and will have a massive increase on the geography of the internet, with groups, communities and business able to express their identities online.
The process for the new system will start in 2009, and the first websites should possibly show online near the end of the year.
But before you rush out to express your identity online, a unique domain looks like costing you somwhere in the range of six figure dollars - at least initially!