At its annual meeting in Singapore on June 20, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board of directors approved a plan for new top-level internet domain names — an early step in opening up a world of marketing possibilities for URLs way beyond what has come before, from good ol’ .com, established in 1985, to the racy .xxx, trotted out this year (see all 22). In the new system, anyone can apply to own nearly anything on the right side of the dot — whether it’s a company (.canon), a geographical area (.newyorkcity), or a community/concept (.law). Nearly anything, that is, up to 63 characters in length.

The move, seen both as a great opportunity for companies to market their brands and as a potentially increasing threat to intellectual property, has been a long time coming. ICANN has been developing the policy and procedural mechanisms around it for about seven years. And we’re not going to see changes online right away; the application process itself is expected to open sometime in the fall, and, thanks to the complexity involved in vetting applications and any objections to them through open-comment periods, it may take quite some time before approvals come through. For a primer on the process, as well as questions that have come up in Congress and elsewhere, see the resource links below.

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