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

terrorist level domain

[czarangelus]

Arabic TLDs are a threat to national security

Re:terrorist level domain

[Anonymous Coward]

That has been possible for years.
This is about registering bankofamerica.cõm or lloydstsb.cø.ûk

The part AFTER the dot.

first urls, then slashdot

[azior]

ï höpé thãt slâshðõt wìll dö thís töø wìth ÜRLs!

www.íçáñn.örg

ìt wörkéð!

Re:first urls, then slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a demonstration of how non-Latin characters show on /., starting with Arabic:

Hindi:
Russian:
Japanese:
Korean:
Chinese:

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.

And the answer to that...

[Looce]

... of course, is Punycode.

A comment before yours has www.íçáñn.örg, which, when entered into Firefox, turns into

www.xn--n-tfarxw.xn--rg-eka

. Looks like the software will still live :)

Re:And the answer to that...

[Looce]

You don't understand. Punycode is how second-level domains are already implemented, even on top of relatively old browsers. This is an extension of Punycode to be usable in the TLD as well.

In other words, your current version of Firefox will be able to visit pages in IDN TLDs when they're implemented, and so if someone does create a .örg TLD today, you can go to www.anysite.örg to your heart's content already.

Note that this doesn't mean you can go to www.anysite.örg in NCSA Mosaic or anything, because these old browsers were around when Punycode wasn't even a standard. You can go to www.anysite.xn--rg-eka and NCSA Mosaic will recognise that, though. The seamless IDN TLD usage is just going to be present in the more modern browsers. I expect that Opera 8+, IE 6+, Firefox 2+ and recent Safari/Konqueror/Epiphany are going to be able to visit www.anysite.örg and 'hide' the xn--etc- access details from you, the user.

Happy surfing!

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

[nsayer]

I think the limitation that nationalized character sets will be restricted to the country TLDs where that language is native is a good first step. Additionally, I believe you're not allowed to use the latin alternative form characters from unicode (like 0xFF20-0xFF5F).

If you're really paranoid, you could just be extra suspicious of domains that end in two letters (and yes, I am including .us), particularly when the 2nd level name is something you recognize, like paypal, ebay, etc. If you're in China, there may indeed be a legitimate paypal.cn, but I suspect it would set off my spidey sense to see a URL like that show up in my e-mail.

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

Re:Encoding?

[Psx29]

"in order to maintain compatibility with the existing infrastructure." Tons (dare I say, a majority) of software would break if they used UTF8

Re:Encoding?

[DamonHD]

To avoid breaking all the DNS-related code out there that assumes (ie correctly, based on the current spec) only alphanumerics and '-' in each component.

If you wish to rewrite every single bit of DNS-dependent code, in every laptop, server, embedded network device, etc, etc, ... well assume that it can't be done, and with this mechanism it doesn't need to be. Though I bet a few bits of code will barf at the '--' anyhow...

Rgds

Damon

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.

it just got easier to phish

[Nadaka]

Yay. Now you can can register yourbankname.com with some funky characters that render in exactly the same way as the letter you are used to.

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.

The Internet has to evolve

[PinkyDead]

....although obviously not ... in Kansas.

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

[shutdown -p now]

How exactly do you think you'll be able to type in a URL in mandarin or russian on west european keyboard?

You enable Chinese keyboard layout (dunno what's it called), and type it. The letters printed on the keys of your keyboard aren't some sort of magic that lets your computer input languages written in them, you know.

I don't have any keyboards with Russian characters on them, but I happily type in Russian regardless (in fact, I only first realized that I do actually truly touch type when I first ran into this problem, which turned out to not be a problem in the end).