As expected, regulatory body ICANN has approved plans to let web addresses be written in non-Latin characters in a move that it calls the “biggest technical change” to how the Internet works since its invention four decades ago.
The vote was announced at the last day of the non-profit group’s Seoul conference.
The proposal means domain names could be written in languages such as Greek, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi or Cyrillic and be understood natively by the servers that connect computers together over the web. Currently, domain names can only be displayed using the Latin alphabet letters A-Z, the digits 0-9 and the hyphen, but in the future countries will be able to display country-code Top Level Domains (cc TLDs) in their native language.
The organization will launch a fast-track process for approving the Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) scheme on 16 November, and the first IDN-compliant addresses should be in operation by the middle of next year, said ICANN President Rod Beckstrom.
From the statement:
It will allow nations and territories to apply for Internet extensions reflecting their name – and made up of characters from their national language. If the applications meet criteria that includes government and community support and a stability evaluation, the applicants will be approved to start accepting registrations.
In the fairly cheese video above, Beckstrom says over half of Internet users from all over the world will finally be able to write web address in the “100,000 characters of world languages” that so far were not supported.
According to the outlined proposal, ICANN will charge registries $26,000 for an evaluation processing fee, which can be paid in the local currency. ICANN would also like an annual contribution fee of 3 percent of a registry’s revenue, which can be as low as 1 percent for low-volume registries.
It’s hindi not hindu
hindi=language
hindu=religion
whats so new about idn’s they have been in existence for a long time now… (punny codes)
thanks, altered. IDNs are definitely new.
Robin,
IDNs are NOT new. You and every news organization I’ve seen has dropped the ball on this.
Check out this wikipedia article:
http://en.wikip...zed_domain_name
IDN has existed for 5+ years now, the story is that ICANN is allowing IDN for *TOP-LEVEL domains*. In other words, instead of .com, .net, or .org ICANN could approve a new TLD like .ån
What are you talking about? I speak Hindu.
that did sound like “hindu”. where r u from – hindistan??
God the ICANN are greedy bastards. This is going to be a giant mindfuck and the benefit it allows is trivial. There have been international domains for a while, using nameprep ( http://en.wikip...zed_domain_name ) so the need for this is questionable.
What is this really going to allow for? Phishing, tons of it.
How will people tell the difference between Twitter.com and Тwitter.com ( Hint, the second one uses a cyrillic T )
um – simple the cyrillic T isn’t standard on keyboards …
otherwise agree 100% that this is money grab. absolute no need for it and everyone now has to buy more domains to facilitate this
What? The problem is if I send a email to you, telling you to go to Тwitter.com – The link looks identical to the real address, so the problem of spoofing/phishing becomes very real. It becomes *very* hard to know which address is real.
It is standard on the eyes though.
You are right, and the statement “over half of Internet users from all over the world will finally be able to write web address in the “100,000 characters of world languages”” is BS,
I come for such a country myself, but I absolutely hate this proposal. Now the websites will need to register another domain name with special chars. Otherwise, there is almost no benefit at all.
+1
crap what if the russian porn sites start switching over.
I cant be ascii-ing the cyrillic to get there.
This could be devestating to the internets.
More $$$. I wonder how I can convert this to Chinese http://TwitArcade.com ?
Domain name whores and squatters would luv this news…
Will I be able to access a website whose address I cannot type on my keyboard?
when the name is business … all think about money …
This announcement is specifically about IDN *TLDs*, not about Punycode-encoded domain name labels at lower levels, so it’s not about domain names like “中国.com” (which already exist) but “电子商务.中国” which definitely don’t.
Note that unlike the new round of “generic” TLDs (which may include IDNs) this announcement refers to “country code” IDNs that are the equivalent of .cn, .jp etc, and ICANN won’t make any money from them, any more than they do from the current ccTLDs.
Chinese language TLDs are already here. As I understand it, Chinese language TLDs have already been sold/registered in China. So the real story is the question: Is it in violation of ICANN?
“.中国”, “.公司” and “.网络” TLDs are currently available for registration in China. If you register a Chinese language .cn domain name, you automatically get a Chinese .中国 according to CNNIC.
CNNIC FAQ for Chinese Domain Names: http://bit.ly/13AS2U
ICANN is a nightmare. They seem to be doing everything they can do to create more domain names and more money, when it is pretty clear that all these extensions, and all these “internationalized” domain names are being completely ignored by everyone. (Like, does anyone use Nestlé.com???) This is terrible for users of the Internet since it doesn’t help them, and atrocious for brand owners. ICANN should be ashamed, but I guess they’re too busy figuring out how else to make money after this goes through.
Right now it seems, this is nightmare and might prove greedy. But countries like India, China and other developing nations where still internet is in its maturing stage will be see more growth on regional based languages. And any how, all the nations are devised on the bases of language only. y not internet?
Maybe in China…But I doubt if this is going to help a great deal in India..
Good, this now gives the international community a fair platform in which to compete. When you live in a country where Latin characters might as well be a alien language then this is a big deal.
It opens up the web to those who are poorer, less well educated and with less opportunity to have chance at using a resource which may benefit them. If a non-latin writing person is given a domain in English how hard is it for them to even type it? Maybe a few seconds for us but minutes for them and then they have to change the keyboard back into their language if they want to write something. Why should they have to change their language settings all the time? This is already a huge barrier when it should be just as intuitive for them as it is for us.
Not only that but businesses in those countries can now register their domain in their language and have it protected just as English businesses have had. Why should a business in say Lao be forced to find a domain in English? Finding the right translation is hard enough finding the available domain is even harder. Again this is impossibly hard for a lot of people.
Many English words have in-bedded itself within many other languages around world because of the internet and especially domain names and thus branding. But it only benefits those with the opportunity to learn English. It has created a rich/poor division in some developing countries. IDN’s will remove this division and in someways allow a country to take back its language and in many ways it’s culture. I fully expect those English words to start disappearing and those US companies who can’t adapt i.e change their business names, logos, branding, etc from English to a foreign language
then they might be replaced by those from their own country who can.
Just think about it this way. How would you feel if all domains were in Chinese and you never had the opportunity to learn it?
It’s an unfair advantage that I’m personally glad will be removed and everything else smacks of protectionism.
Now if only we could type programming languages (html) in a foreign language then that would really change everything.
Next you will be demanding programming languages, IP addresses etc. in regional languages.
I think I just did. Actually there is some movement in that area. And whats wrong with that?
Diminishing returns?
I have a better idea. How about nobody pays the ridiculous 26k and we simply use the current system. English is the language of the world. Latin is the script of the world. Get over it.
For a non-latin writing person to learn to type a domain name takes about as long as it does to learn a whopping 26 characters. 26! That’s not asking for much, not to mention those 26 characters will be more useful to him than just in domain names. Latin script is used everywhere.
If domain names written in Chinese were widely used, then I’d have to learn thousands of primitive symbols just to get to a Web address. You’re telling me that is more accessible?
I actually think this is a good move. Yes there are going to be problems, but if we get out of the Anglo-western mind-set for a second, would we all be saying it’s all about the money if the shoe was on the other foot? What if TLDs were all in (eg) Korean and we only had addresses like “techcrunch.ㅞ”. I bet most people would say the move to allowing latin characters would be a good one by ICANN, so why is it bad the other way around?
For a long time French was the international language. Now, English is the international language. Most countries teach their kids English in their schools. Trying to claim this situation is analogous to your example using Korean is absurd.
Right so by your theory, everyone in the world should learn English. Google, etc should remove all there translation tools and stop any development in that area. Everyone who can’t speak English and has no opportunity to learn English – well, that’s just too bad for them. And you can sit on your hands and nothing. Brilliant – instead of speeding up the development of those countries you just put them back 20 more years.
“Most countries teach their kids English in their schools.” really were did you get this data from? I know several schools were I am right now that don’t teach any English.
My point was that using the analogy that Searles did was absurd. Obviously, English isn’t taught everywhere (hell, look what you wrote), but it is taught in many more places than Korean.
I have lived with two foreigners when they first arrived in the US, and I helped teach them English. I find language diversity to be a good thing and the origins of language fascinating.
I’m glad you were able to engage in a discussion with so much reason and without the bias of your own experience and passion. Bravo.
Still, the issues raised by others (e.g. Cyrillic T) need to be addressed before these changes are rolled out
How long before Chinese is the international Language ?
There is no language called “Chinese” as such. Just as there is no language called “mexican”, “Canadian” etc…
If you don’t know how to type in character, do you actually think you’d be able to read the content on the site? That of course, is if the site was written in another language.
The good I can see from this is that it lets countries make their domain names a bit more personal to the business world and community. For instance, in Chinese, there could be one word that can explain something that would take more than one, in English or any other language. I’m no expert on foreign languages, but I know for a fact that this is true. If they are able to use their character set for domains, more power to them. It’s just a progression of the Internet in my opinion.
As for the bad, I’m sure many sites will pop up that actually use primary languages such as English, will start having these crazy characters that people have to use Charmap to type in URLs.
My $0.02
-Ron
Dear me what a bunch of slopeheads you have as readers Mike Arrington. If the Internet were new, they would probably say that was stupid too. Most of them can’t read or write English very well, so I’m not surprised they don’t like other languages either.
The most stupid thing I have heard in a long, long time. Like Dan Blake pointed out, the issue is, if I send you an email and there is a link in it, how do you know it is what you think it is? (As it is, we have clever ppl exploiting typos).
phishing becomes easier. is that not an opportunity for good entrepreneurs to capitalize on?
reading and relating to web addresses for non-latin character using peoples becomes easier. is that not an opportunity for good entrepreneurs to capitalize on?
perhaps innovation only hurts those who do not want to solve new, bigger and more rewarding problems.
Why not typing the url in your address bar; I do that any time i get emails from banks, credit card co., paypal or anything else that has private or financial info etc to avoid any chance of it being a phishing site
“phishing becomes easier. is that not an opportunity for good entrepreneurs to capitalize on?”
Maybe, if your business model is fraud.
http://τεχν...ισμα.κομ
I don’t know about you, but I’m not clicking that link!
Forgot to mention Hebrew.
actually you can already register international domains. what they added is international top level domains
why not .. i want गुरधुम.कम
Will this increase the value of premium top level dot coms? Probably.
Just to be candid here… this is going to be somewhat of a bitch. For web developers and non-latin domain holders alike.
Web developers will have to retrofit every URL validation routine they’ve ever implemented.
People holding non-latin domains will have URLs fail validation on all the forms out there that haven’t been modified for this new change.
True, this is something I’ve thought about and I’m trying to figure out now before it’s too late and it doesn’t apply just to URL’s. Simply having a usernames, etc, validated to ASCII characters is not enough anymore. UTF8 and UTF 16 are becoming standard and I want to allow users access to my site in their language that still validates correctly.
Just like any change there will be unexpected good and bad things that can’t be forseen. The phishing and spam guys will have fun with this. Better start writing better spam fighting software.
I don’t think this will work. Its too messy and english characters are universal on all keyborads
The URL will not be the same even if the character seems similar.
@sarah: Yeah, English Character are universal if u install the english keyboard in your pc. You really seems like never tried to write in a non-latine language.
Cool… I like टेकक्रंच.कॉम (techcrunch.com)