A recipe for improved internet diversity or corporate takeover? Plans to open up the address system on the internet are currently under discussion.
The net's regulators will vote on Thursday to decide if the strict rules on so-called top level domain names, such as .com or .uk, can be relaxed.
If approved, it could finally allow non-Latin Asian and Arabic characters to be used in domain names. It would also allow for companies to turn their brands into domain names while individuals could also carve out their own corner of the net.
Top level domains are currently limited to individual countries, such as .uk (UK) or .it (Italy), as well as to commerce, .com, and to institutional organisations, such as .net, or .org.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), which acts a sort of regulator for the net, as well as overseeing the domain name system, has been working towards opening up net addresses for the last three years.
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