ICANN allows non-Latin domain names
ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has approved the use of internationalised domain names (IDNs), web addresses made up of non-Latin characters, such as Chinese, Korean and Arabic and other languages.
ICANN's decision follows two years of investigation and will be welcomed by users of some non-European languages.
"This is a culmination of years of work, tests, study and discussion by the Icann community," said Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of the board of directors at ICANN.
"To see this finally start to unfold is to see the beginning of an historic change in the internet and who uses it."
The IDNs could be in use early next year, and industry members have been quick to comment on its significance.
"The introduction of IDNs is a major turning point in the history of the internet," said Lesley Cowley, chief executive at domain registrar Nominet, who is attending an ICANN meeting in Seoul.
"There are currently an estimated 1.6 billion people using the internet and a further five billion who are not yet online. Most of these people are from nations where the language is not based on the Latin script."
Cowley added that organisations should start planning for the change now by communicating with their audience and protecting their brands against cyber squatters.
"For brand owners there is a requirement to be aware and plan for the introduction of these new domains, whether it's for brand protection purposes, or to market via this new channel," she said.
Nora Nanayakkara, director of business development at domain name marketplace Sedo, also warned that the introduction of non-Latin characters could cause problems for brand owners, particularly as subtle differences may make them easy to spoof and difficult for web surfers to spot.
"Security measures will need to be taken extremely seriously. Concerns have already been underlined that sites where users don't see a small accent could attract phishing scams," she said.
"For example, the incidental difference between BankofAmerica.com and BánkofAmerica.com would be a prime opportunity for cyber criminals to take advantage of the average web user."
However, Neil Barton, UK director of hosting firm Hostway, welcomed the news as "a very positive step".
"Businesses that are trading online will be particularly happy with this news, as over time it will create the opportunity to sell to millions of new customers." µ
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How is this different from the International Domain Names that have been around for years now?
The existing system is implemented within browsers where non-Latin domain names are translated into a string of Latin characters. Example: アニメ.com becomes xn--cck5dwc.com
This was reported on BBC World news even at 3AM on the reporting day.
The Inquirer has really lost its way - has no "news" to tell us and is now oft criticised for its inaccurate and late efforts to fill black on white space.
Time to have a morals check and read the Rogister albeit against my friendship with past owner of this now disheveled portal.
It is not enough to have the DNS servers of the world process the foreign charset - all the anti-virus, firewalls, filters, client FTP software and older email systems will need to be upgraded. This "internationalization" change appears to be one more way by registrars and ICANN to make more money by having all the companies who have some brand name go out to "protect" their brand and register their domain name in another 100 languages.
Also, assume you have your domain name in Japanese for your family pictures, and you email the URL to your aunt in the US, who has only a US Windows without oriental fonts (and naturally a US Keyboard). The URL will appear as garbage on her screen, and you can not translate it to English for her to type it in. Mayhem.
InJapan: Now also the TLD (e.g. .com, .net) can be assigned in non-Latin character set.
Kob, you are a moron.
Kob gives a scenerio where a Punycode (ie: xn--) URL is sent to someone who does not have the correct fonts to display the decrypted Unicode in the location bar. In that case the location will be displayed as the Punycode String and the site will still display. Also if your aunt can read Japanese, why does she not have the fonts installed? If she can not read Japanese, the pictures will still display even if the descriptions in Japanese does not display.
We're letting the darkies on the internet!? What's next, letting non-violent drug offenders out of jail? Actual health care reform in the U.S.? Or even something as crazy as true campaign finance reform.
Troubling times indeed.
I have no idea how to feel about this. It means less compliance to nice simple 8-bit ASCII, that's for sure. Perhaps it will be easier to tell when a URL is not an English speaking website, thus letting English-only speakers know to avoid it before they click on it.
I just hope that if newer versions of browsers even support this new URL standard that they provide options to categorically block them from being typed or traversed. This is a security hazard I don't want to have to deal with.
If control characters are permited, they will create a forged address that dislays as a valid address. You will end up doing your banking at a forged site and not know it.