ICANN approves new top-level rules.
A plan to allow users to register generic domain names has been approved.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted late Thursday to approve the new top-level domain plan.
The plan will allow users to register whatever domain suffix they want for their site, rather than being limited to the traditional .com or .net labels.
Users will also be allowed to register domains with non-latin characters, thus paving the way for international sites which uses Chinese, Russian, or other unique characters.
"This was an extremely successful meeting that will be remembered as a milestone in the development of the Internet," said ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush.
"New generic Top Level Domains and Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) will open up the Internet and make it look as diverse as the people who use it,"
The group has not yet decided on what registration of the new domains will cost, though the prices are expected to be significantly higher than existing suffixes.
The approval came at the conclusion of ICANN's International Public Meeting in France. Other measures passed in the meeting included new measures designed to eliminate large-scale 'domain tasting' in which multiple domains are registered and unprofitable addresses are quickly dumped.