After three years of planning, and subsequent to a marathon meeting, Paul Twomey, Chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigning Names and Numbers, or ICANN for short, has apparently thrown caution to the wind by approving the deregulation of domain name suffixes.

The intent is to free up internet access by lifting the current limited number of suffixes currently used throughout the world. The move will also lift the restriction on languages, used enabling non-English speaking people to create their own domain names using their own native alphabets.

The process will begin in 2009 and the first suffixes are likely be limited to business and other major organizations and institutions. Countries will likely keep their specific suffixes, but now this move frees up cities to be more specific, enabling .london, or .newyork or .nyc to become the norm.

Companies will have the opportunity to register for "dot-company" addresses like .yahoo or .eBay. ICANN officials said a trademarked name, such as .eBay or .IBM, could be purchased outright by those companies, but more generic names like .car, .porn, or .bet would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. So you had better get your credit card at the ready.

While on the face of it, this sounds like a good idea, enabling companies and organizations to create domain names specific to their market industry, it could also create an increase in cybersquatting and the subsequent chaos and could cause many companies all kinds of legal issues with protecting intellectual property, as well as forcing companies to buy multiple domain addresses to protect their brand.

"For example, Amazon would have to register many more domain names including Amazon.amazon, amazon.shopping, amazon.electronics. The list is practically endless, and the net result would be a much more chaotic and disorganized web." According to Thomas Herbert of Hostway, one of the world's largest web hosting companies.

Many people, on both the consumer advocates side and on the corporate side, have wanted this change for some time. For example .xxx has been sought as a universal suffix for all adult content and porn sites, thus indicating the subject nature of the site, hopefully minimizing the, 'oops-click' and the embarrassing pop-ups from inadvertent mouse control.

The rules will be simple any name is viable as long as it uses the required number of characters. However, before you rush off to nab an infinite number of addresses, be warned, purchasing one of the new trendy domain names won't come cheap—some estimates suggest that the cost could be as much as $500,000—and another catch, ICANN would still have to approve all the name applications.