Currently one of the key areas in progress towards multilinguilisation of the Internet revolves around the complex issue of the domain name system (DNS) whish was originally developed using the ASCII character set, employing only Roman characters and a limited number of symbols. An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that (potentially) contains non-ASCII characters. Such domain names could contain letters with diacritics, as required by many non-English languages, or characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese or Hindi. However, the standard for domain names does not allow such characters, and much work has gone into finding a way to internationalize domain names into a standard ASCII format, thereby preserving the stability of the domain name system. (Also read Geoff Huston article: Internationalizing the Internet) Read the full background at Multilinguism Wikipedia
Former malware analyst, Wes Brown, has reported on the growing internationalization of malware. He writes: "In the past, an anti-malware company could focus on English-targeted samples. But an increasing percentage of malware samples are international in origin and targeting international machines. I saw numerous cases of Chinese malware targeting Chinese software or hosts. This was quite a challenge to determine if it was malware or not for several reasons." Brown further explains: "One of the most fascinating facets of the increasing internationalization of malware is the cultural assumptions around such software. What is considered malware in the US may be commonly accepted in China or Japan, and this is largely due to the society that it exists in." more»
Bulgaria has submitted a letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for the Top-Level Domain (TLD) '.bg' in Cyrillic script as part of efforts to boost national pride amid a growing influence of English. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has also called for his country to be assigned a Cyrillic TLD as the Kremlin is concerned that Russian, once the main language throughout the Soviet Union, is losing ground to local languages. more»
With more than a billion internet users worldwide, doubling that number, which should happen within the next decade, will obviously have a profound effect on the network, technology, the computer software industry, access to knowledge, and our environment. Understanding the effect of another billion internet users starts with considering the origin of those users. Although some will reside in North America, Europe, and other developed countries that close their domestic digital divides, the majority of the growth will undoubtedly come from the developing world. more»
It has been reported that the U.S. control over how domain names are assigned dominated discussions at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) which began yesterday in Brazil. Although few participants at IGF attacked the United States directly, most were well aware of the role Americans play over domain name policies, including whether and how to assign top-level domains in languages other than English. more»
On Oct. 15, ICANN plans to unveil mechanisms for individuals and businesses to try out the new sample Top-Level Domains in nearly a dozen languages. The 11 domains now under review will read "test" in Arabic, Persian, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese and Tamil. At this point, these 11 domain names are meant primarily for software developers and website designers to test the new system, but they are the first such names entered in the root servers after years of discussions and limited-access tests. more»
"The future of the Internet will be front and center as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) opens its 29th International Public Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Monday, 25 June 2007," says the ICANN press release issued today. Discussion will include issues such as new top-level domains and internationalized domain names. more»
In a story at SFGate, Jeff Yang has written a report on the upcoming role out of the recently approved top-level domain name .asia. The ceremony of .asia's approval by ICANN last year in Brazil was largely ignored. But Jeff points out that as the "fall launch of this new domain approaches, it raises some interesting, perhaps even historic, implications". more»
Internationalized domain names have moved a step closer to reality, after ICANN announced it had successfully completed testing.
ICANN commissioned a laboratory test of IDNs in October 2006. The test was designed to establish whether the use of encoded internationalized characters would "have any impact on the operations of the root name servers providing delegations, or the iterative mode resolvers." more»
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will discuss key projects and initiatives at a meeting this week, including the internationalization of the domain name system and a new, lucrative Web site registration practice that some object to. more»
On the eve of the first ever United Nations-sponsored Internet Governance Forum, which opens near Athens on Monday, Cerf said national interests had surfaced in recent weeks that would change the process for "internationalizing" Internet addresses. The fresh conflict shows that the high- level global debate over U.S. influence and control of the global network is still unresolved, he said. more»
Starting next week, about 1,200 diplomats and technology ministers will gather at a hotel in the outskirts of Athens to resume a debate that has often pitted the Bush administration and a handful of its Western allies against Brazil, India, China and African countries. Officially, the inaugural meeting of the United Nations' Internet Governance Forum is designed to explore topics like free speech, security, spam and multilingualism... more»
The ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) has unveiled an Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) resource site to share information on work progress, achievements and acquired knowledge in the field of IDN. It includes an introduction to IDN, information about related events, standards materials, news, information on national and other IDN developments and a FAQ. more»
The internet is a global revolution in communication - as long as you use letters from the western alphabet. ...According to Kaled Fattal, "People say the net works, but it only works for those communities whose native language is Latin-based. The rest of the world is totally isolated." Fattal speaks perfect English but as chairman and chief executive of the Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC), and an Arab, he knows that the majority of the world's population does not. more»
ICANN will start the trial testing of internationalized domain names (IDN) in the Top-Level Domain (TLD) system, in the third quarter of 2006, Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN, told Interfax in an interview Tuesday. Once IDN domain names are implemented Internet sites will able to have domain names in foreign languages, and foreign character sets -- such as Chinese.
"The preparation for the testing is already underway, and it will be a testing on the top of the root," said Twomey. "We are presently moving to introduce the IDNs of TLD, and are much closer to the end for the answer." But the exact date for the launch of the IDN is not yet available. more»
On July 29, the Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) and Public Interest Registry (PIR) sent out a joint letter to ICANN asking it to consider the interests of the end-users as core to its policies in Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) implementation... As of today's date, August 21, 2008, we have yet to receive even an acknowledgement of receipt of our letter... ›››
Recently we teamed up with the Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) to express our concern to ICANN that the rights and needs of end-users are taken into account in the discussion of Internationalized Domain Names (IDN). ›››
DomainSponsor™, the domain monetization business of Oversee.net and organizing party of DOMAINfest Global, a premier conference for the domain industry, today announced the final DOMAINfest agenda, which features global experts who will cover all aspects of the domain industry. ›››
The conference agenda for the second annual DOMAINfest Global, taking place January 21-23, 2008 in Hollywood, CA, has been finalized. The agenda is available on the event's web site. ›››
On October 19, 2007, Sedo was awarded Ernst & Young's highly-coveted "Entrepreneur of the Year 2007" by a panel of industry and business experts; Sedo was one of five entrepreneurial organizations selected from more than 350 companies and 98 finalists across five categories. ›››
NeuStar announced today that it has deployed internationalized domain names (IDNs) for the Korean language in the .BIZ top-level Internet domain as of August 19, 2007. IDNs in .BIZ enable companies and for-profit organizations to register domain names in their languages of choice. ›››
The Public Interest Registry (PIR) is pleased to announce the appointment of Alexa A. S. Raad, an entrepreneurial technology executive, as its new CEO. The appointment is effective July 9, 2007. Ms. Raad brings more than 20 years of experience from the telecommunications, payment, and Internet sectors. ›››
NeuStar has deployed internationalized domain names (IDNs) for both the Chinese and the Japanese languages in the .BIZ top- level Internet domain. Interested registrants will be able to secure .BIZ domain names using these characters as of April 21, 2007. ›››
As part of its ongoing efforts to improve the Internet and ensure access for users worldwide, Public Interest Registry (PIR), the .ORG registry, will make available Spanish Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) on 03 March 2007. ›››
Pindar Wong has been actively involved in developing the Internet in the Asia Pacific region, holding several board positions including chairman of the Asia Pacific Internet Association, executive committee chairman of Asia Pacific Internet Conference on Operational Technologies and alternate chair of Asia Pacific Network Information Center. ›››