ICANN Approves Non-Latin ccTLDs

Several readers including alphadogg tipped the news that ICANN has approved non-Latin ccTLDs at its meeting in Seoul. "Starting in mid-November, countries and territories will be able to apply to show domain names in their native language, a major technical tweak to the Internet designed to increase language accessibility. On Friday, the Internet's addressing authority approved a Fast-Track Process for applying for an IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) and will begin accepting applications on Nov. 16. The move comes after years of technical testing and policy development... Currently, domain names can only be displayed using the Latin alphabet letters A-Z, the digits 0-9 and the hyphen, but in future countries will be able to display country-code Top Level Domains (cc TLDs) in their native language. ... 'The usability of IDNs may be limited, as not all application software is capable of working with IDNs,' ICANN said in a 59-page proposal (PDF) dated Sept. 30 that describes the [application] process." Reader dhermann adds, "Great, now even less chance I can identify NSFW links before they are blocked by my work's big brother app and my boss is notified... again."

Comments

ICANN has lost it!

[RiotingPacifist]

Far too much software makes the assumption that TLDs only contain [a-z0-9-], so if you want to go changing that there needs to be a damn good reason, there is not. There are ~1369 2 letter TLDS to be shared between ~200 soverin states and 49284 3 letter generic ones to be split between uses (.xxx .nws .org .edu, etc), there doesn't seam to be any good reason to expand that and make lots of software more complex.

Re:ICANN has lost it!

[Jorgensen]

Yeah right. Because everybody in the whole world only uses ASCII right?

Sorry for sounding flippant, but such US-myopia is far to prevalent for my liking.... Come on guys: Wake up and smell the coffee! There is more to the world than the US! There is no reason to make most of South East Asia and China 2nd-rate citizens on the internet.

I agree that there is a lot of software that needs changing as a result though. But that just means more work, right? You could probably sell this as an anti-recession measure too.

Phishing aid

[querist]

This will only make phishing attacks easier unless there are SERIOUS checks on domain name registrations. There are letters in the Cyrillic alphabet that have different character codes than their look-alike letters in the Latin alphabet. I'm sure there are other collisions as well. I'm sure they accounted for this in the proposal, but the problem always lies in the implementation. From a security standpoint, this is a VERY bad idea without proper regulation of domain name registrations, and so far it has been demonstrated that we cannot manage them properly even with only the Latin alphabet. From a cultural and usability standpoint, this is a good thing. It will be easier for someone whose native language uses a non-Latin alphabet to recognize the supposed purpose of a web site by its domain name if some of those domain names can be in their native language. A hypothetical native Tamil speaker who speaks no English will be able to recognize the purpose of a site with an appropriate domain name in Tamil, for example

Re:Phishing aid

[Mathieu Lu]

This risk can be greatly reduced if they limit domain names to only one alphabet, i.e. Russian domain with Cyrillic ccTLD should have only Cyrillic letters in it.

In many of these countries, they often have two domain names for a website: one that is easy to remember by foreigners, one that is easy to remember by locals (i.e. cyrillic name transliterated to Latin alphabet). The transliterated domain name is usually horrible, sounds weird, and often people transliterate stuff in different ways, so it's often not easy to remember anyway.

I think non-latin ccTLDs is a good thing.

matt

don't forget who wer're talking about here...

[damn_registrars]

There are letters in the Cyrillic alphabet that have different character codes than their look-alike letters in the Latin alphabet. I'm sure there are other collisions as well. I'm sure they accounted for this in the proposal, but the problem always lies in the implementation

This is a decision made by ICANN. We've known for some time that they will willingly approve really tremendously bad ideas, if enough money is presented to them. They recently moved on a motion to start selling gTLDs, after all.

From a security standpoint, this is a VERY bad idea without proper regulation of domain name registrations, and so far it has been demonstrated that we cannot manage them properly even with only the Latin alphabet

Security is not of any concern for ICANN. Never has been, never will be. As long as they keep making money they're happy; security, spam, phishing, etc, be damned.

Excellent idea

[ugen]

Now those countries, organizations and businesses that wish to become inaccessible to most of the world (except the native speakers of their own language) can finally do so as easily as possible. Create their own little Internet reservations and stay there :)

As long as my software (such as Firefox) obligingly converts these IDN urls into the dash-hex notation making them obviously unreadable, I am ok with that.

Disclaimer: I am a native of non-English speaking country. I am sure a few of my countrymen will use this feature based on misplaced patriotism. I am also sure that vast majority will ignore it just like they ignore potential to use non-latin domain names that exists right now.

Latin =/= Support for English only.

[mano.m]

A lot of the debate here seems to be about English-speaking countries vs. the rest of the world, but English isn't the only language that uses the Latin. Also, the unavailability of non-Latin scripts hasn't hampered the flourishing of home-grown websites in India and China named in their many local languages - what makes the ICANN think this is even necessary?

Re:Latin =/= Support for English only.

[pablo.cl]

Actually we are talking about the English alphabet, with j, u and w, which Latin din't have.

Re:Its to do with people with the wrong keyboard .

[mea37]

Uh, yeah, because the keyboard you're using is a clear indicator of which language(s) you understand.