The board of directors for the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) departed from the norm with its approval of the .cat domain extension, officials announced Thursday evening.

The board also deferred a decision on the highly controversial sex domain, .xxx, stating concerns over draft compliance and process terms.

The establishment of the .cat sponsored top-level domain (sTLD) is a departure for ICANN. The TLDs approved thus far fall largely under commercial, professional or nationalistic organizations like .com, .uk, .jobs or .biz.

.Cat, on the other hand, is a domain space reserved for members of the Catalan ethnic group. According to Fundacio puntCAT, the authors of the .cat bid, those identifying with the Catalan language and culture want their own domain on the Internet.

"We believe, for example, that if cooperatives, the aeronautical industry or museums have been recognized as communities with their domain on the Internet, the Catalan language and culture have a very important basis for having a .cat domain," the organization's Web site states.

The Catalan language is understood by as many as 12 million people located in portions of Spain, France, Andorra and Italy, according to Wikipedia.