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Crucial vote on internet's future BBC A complete overhaul of the way people navigate the internet could begin following a crucial vote in Paris. The net's regulator Icann will vote to decide if the strict rules on so-called top level domain names, such as .com or .uk, can be relaxed. If approved, firms could turn brands into web addresses while individuals could also grab a unique domain based on their name, for example. The plan would also allow names written in Asian and Arabic languages. "We are making it open for anyone to apply in any character set, not just Roman characters," Dr Paul Twomey, chief executive of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), which acts as a sort of regulator for the net, told BBC News He said that the proposals would result in the biggest change to the way the internet worked in decades. "The impact of this will be different in different parts of the world. But it will allow groups, communities and business to express their identities online," he said. "Like the United States in the 19th Century, we are in the process of opening up new real estate, new land, and people will go out and claim parts of that land and use it for various reasons they have. "It's a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the internet."
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