ICANN Approves .IRAN (in Non-Latin)

penciling_in writes "CircleID reports that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has announced its approval of non-Latin string evaluation of 'Iran.' This approval will allow the availability of Iran's top-level domain in its own native language, Persian, also known as Farsi (that is, the domain name .IRAN, in non-Latin characters). According to ICANN, there are currently 33 requests for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs), representing 22 languages, out of which 18 countries/territories have so far been approved."

Comments

Dont do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious? This is the exact thing what we are fighting against and now we give terrorists their own ccTLD that allows them to hide behind weird non-latin characters?

Someone has to do something.

Re:Dont do it

[sourcerror]

ICANN haz non-latin domainz

Show me the TLD

[mad_ian]

So... what does this look like? I think a lot of us are using OSs that show us Unicode and non-Latin characters, so lets see it.

Re:Show me the TLD

[MachDelta]

Here you go: .????

Re:Show me the TLD

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, the stupid thing is Slashdot doesn't support it! Just try putting UTF-8 characters in a comment or any of the Unicode symbols.

Totally broken if you ask me. People have been whining about it for over a decade.

Re:Show me the TLD

[Anonymous Coward]

It's here:

http://icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/string-evaluation-completion-i-en.htm#ir

No image, though. You will need a browser that supports the characters.

What the internet really needs

[Chuck Chunder]

Approval of Unicode 1F4A9 as a TLD

Re:What the internet really needs

[mysidia]

Approval of Unicode 1F4A9 as a TLD

The internet domain name system needs to be re-parented; it's too short sighted and will be quickly obsoleted once we need to interact with aliens, space stations, or colonies on other planets.

All the existing TLDs should be moved to thid-level domains under .GL.E.MW. (GL for ground level, E for Earth, MW for Milky-Way Galaxy)

That will provide for proper DNS hierarchy when stations on other planets need to communicate, for example....

WWW.GOOGLE.GSO15.MA.MW. Referring to a Google site local to the internet community in geosynchronous orbit conduit #15 around Mars

The ccTLDs in question

[Looce]

Iran, Islamic Republic of. ccTLDs: xn--mgba3a4f16a, xn--mgba3a4fra.

The Unicode whitelist on Slashdot is preventing us from having the Farsi reading, so see here.

What injustice!

[Anonymous Coward]

I demand .AMERICA as a TLD.

You can't see it in Slashdot, but it's in 72 point font, bold and blinking.

Because America is that cool.

Re:What injustice!

[peppepz]

While you're at it, you can demand that domain in Shavian. It's a script that is native to English and it's already in Unicode; so you can stop using those foreign roman letters with inconsistent pronunciation.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:So?

[c6gunner]

Why in the world would you assume that the article has anything to do with the geopolitical situation? This is like someone writing an article about the price of Viagra coming down, and you yelling "STOP TALKING ABOUT MY ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION!!!". Chill out.

non-latin names and whois

[MavEtJu]

Who has any clarity / clue on how whois gets implemented for these domains?

Re:http://www.jerseys-2010.com

[Looce]

I believe you meant http://www.jerseys-2010.xn--mgba3a4fra/

Re:So?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Why in the world would you assume that the article has anything to do with the geopolitical situation?

Maybe because even the freakin summary said that 18 other IDN's have already been approved.
If it weren't for the geopolitical situation, what makes the 18th approval worthy of note?

ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day?

[mykos]

I am all for giving people resources in their own language as a stop-gap measure, but in the big picture, it would be nice if we didn't re-segregate the world by language?

Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day?

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean, rather than forcing billions of people around the world to continue using domain names in a foreign character set that they can’t read? “stop-gap?” Until what? Until English takes over the world? News flash: won’t happen. Along with lots of other people, a billion Chinese say otherwise.

Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day?

[mysidia]

You have a problem with making Persian the one language used by the whole world?

Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day?

[peppepz]

Being able to speak your own language has nothing to do with not being able to understand others' languages.

I believe computers should adapt to people's customs and not the opposite; current technology gives us the opportunity for this to happen more often than not, and localised domain names are a step in that direction.

Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day?

[peppepz]

"Eradicating languages and cultures" is not "compatible with western individual freedoms".

Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day?

[squiggleslash]

Yes and know. Languages also converge given the right circumstances. That's what's terrifying some French culturalists, for example: when English words started to creep into generic French some decades ago, there was a pushback by those worried that ultimately the French language would become diluted, and ultimately redundant. Laws were passed to protect the French language.

It's hard to believe now, but in Britain as recently as fifty years ago, people in many parts of the country couldn't understand the dialects used in others, and vice versa. As mass audio mediums, from TV and radio to pre-recorded audio, have spread, dialects have slowly merged together. In the mean time, in non-English speaking countries, the prolific audio cultural output of the English speaking world, in particular the US, has meant that many have effectively gone bi-lingual, especially throughout Europe.

I don't think a common language will happen overnight, but I think that unless somehow the English speaking world's movie, TV, and music producing machine somehow loses its dominance, a huge portion of the world will be English speaking by the end of the Century, if not earlier. There will be push-back, as we've seen in France, but it'll happen, because an increasing number of the voices people want to hear will be English-speaking.

Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day?

[rockNme2349]

I mean, I don't want to be pompous and promote my own language, but it seems obvious if you look around and see what people are speaking everywhere. The world would be better off if everyone just learned French.

Re:So?

[maxwell demon]

As a sovereign nation, Iran has the same rights to a top-level domain as any other nation, and in her official language now that it is possible

I didn't know that Iran is female. Does it need a burqa to cover the whole country , then?

Re:Why not .arabic?

[tonique]

FYI: Persian alphabet is derived from, and looks similar to, the Arabic script but the written languages are certainly distinguishable. Being able to distinguish might require some expertise -- I can't do it anyway. Also, the Persian (or Perso-Arabic) script is used by many other languages.

Wikipedia knows these things:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perso-Arabic_script
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet