Icann directors will now be elected by committees and be selected from various interest groups including business, technical advisors and government players.

Icann chief executive Stuart Lynn said that after the group's meeting this weekend in Bucharest that change was needed to recognise that board members had the relevant knowledge and experience to take the web forward, saying that it had adopted 'reforms to make Icann more efficient'.

Opponents argue that the reforms could make Icann less democratic as hitherto five of the group's 19 directors have been selected by public ballot in order of geographical region.

Icann was set up as an autonomous body by the US government in 1998 to regulate issues that the internet threw up, such as domain name and technical issues, but more recently some US senators have demanded that the US government gets more involved in the regulation of the web.

Other issues resolved at the meeting includes a 30-day stay of execution to allow domain name owners to update expired registrations.