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

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.

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

[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?

[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.

The Internet has to evolve

[PinkyDead]

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