ICANN Approves International Domain Names
ICANN has approved international web addresses, meaning anyone with the desire to register a domain name containing non-Latin characters will soon be able to do just that.
In what ICANN president and chief executive officer Rod Beckstrom hailed "an historic move toward the internationalization of the Internet," the body Friday approved international domain names containing characters other than the letters A-Z and 0-9.
InformationWeek reports that the first to reap the benefits of the decision will be country-code top level domains controlled by national governments. According to IW, ICANN plans to launch on Nov. 16 a Fast Track Process that will allow nations and territories to apply for Internet extensions reflecting their names and made up of characters from their national languages. If these applications are approved by ICANN, the applicant can start accepting registrations of Web addresses.
Currently, approximately half of Internet users are native speakers of languages that do not use the Latin alphabet.
Read more here.
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Here comes the madness URL in online games/chat and ads.
This is gonna be a great big mess...
Internationalization? If anything, this is a move to segregate the internet - I'll bet a good portion of the planet doesn't know how to enter non-native characters into a browser.
Using a unified language on the Internet is one thing that made it great. Imagine if every country tried to use their own transfer protocol - where would the Internet be had that happened?
this makes no sense.
considering that the adopted universal language is English, I don't know how they are going to make this work. I understand where they want to let everyone do there own thing but at some point you have to draw the line.
Take air traffic control for example. It doesn't matter if you are a french pilot flying from Paris to Berlin, everyone speaks English. Nobody would be able to communicate with each other otherwise.
Can you imagine a day where we have Chinese character URL's running around? I don't even know how to find them.
... Yeah, what they said. 'Nuff said.
Gigantic mess incoming.....
http://www.tÖmshárdwáré.com should be easy for everyone to type, right?
Time to invest in anti-phishing software companies!
Smart web administrators will maintain URL's for all the major languages.
great! More questionable sites but in languages we won't be able to understand! Good time to update that firewall and get your AV up and running =)
Anarchy Overdrive.
But this have already been the case for a long time. I know of both Swedish and Hebrew URLs.
But this have already been the case for a long time. I know of both Swedish and Hebrew URLs.
Time to invest in anti-phishing software companies!
Hopefully, the browsers will display the URL in some way that you're able to distinguish very similar letters from other alphabets. Otherwise, it will only make phishing easier...
This is a great step by ICANN towards an Internet for all. It does make sense that a site in Russian should also have the URL in Russian. Use Google translate if you want to find out what it says on a website in Greek
But this have already been the case for a long time. I know of both Swedish and Hebrew URLs.
I think that I read that this type of address has been possible for a while but isn't internationally supported. For example a chineese URL could work in China and some other countries but wouldn't be accessable from others. This seems to move it a bit wider to anyone who can type it (or be directed there by a link / virus) can get there.
the same with æ, ø and å for the Danish language for .dk. ICANN just opens up for all top level domains now.
can I have my ñ?
No one would care if they did this from the beginning.
[citation][nom]Currently, approximately half of Internet users are native speakers of languages that do not use the Latin alphabet.[/citation]
Yeah, and that half probably speaks at least 50 totally unique languages. They have literally turned the Internet into a hay stack, and websites into needles.
ICANN is just as messed up and corrupt as the UN.
So you don´t think it is a good idea for a Greek person to have a website address in their own language? Still if you feel the need to visit websites in languages you don´t understand then use the Google translate tool
It's time to change your DNS settings!