Web addresses go global.

• Position: WEB

The Internet will soon become a lot more inviting for most of the world. Web users worldwide will soon be able to use web addresses written completely in their native languages rather than exclusively in Romance languages.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted at its annual meeting to allow scripts, including Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and other non-Latin languages, in Internet addresses for the first time in an attempt to make the web more accessible to the world.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The decision is a "historic move toward the internationalization of the Internet," Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's president and chief executive, told The New York Times. "We just made the Internet much more accessible to millions of people in regions such as Asia, the Middle East and Russia."

According to The Times, the change affects domain names (e.g., .com, .edu), which have been limited to 37...