The group controlling Internet domain names may soon decide whether to <A HREF="http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/25/domain.names/index.html">relax naming rules</A> and potentially open up a virtual domain name gold rush. At a meeting in Paris Thursday, the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will vote on two key proposals.

The first would allow domains that do not use Latin characters, meaning domain names using Chinese, Arabic or Cyrillic letters. The other proposal would allow domains to use nearly any letter or number combination, up to 64 characters. If ICANN approves the proposals, the world of .com and .org and country names like .jp or .fr would be opened to a much wider choice, such as .hotel or .sex.