If there is one question or concern related to IDNs that have been asked continuously in the past year it has to be that of internationalizing versus localizing the domain name space. In other words, questions such as:
“Well, but I don’t have a keyboard that enables me to type in all these new characters, so I cannot type in these IDN addresses, why are you allowing this to happen?”
“I don’t understand <insert any language> so IDNs will keep me from accessing and using the Internet like I used to, that is not a positive development, why are you doing this?”
The answers are really quite simple. Internationalizing the domain names is not done in order for all users across the world to be able to type in all domain names. It is done to ease local communication and accessibility. It is called “internationalization” (and not “localization”) because the Internet and the DNS is a function that needs to work on a global or international level. However, it is the individual user or business choice as to what characters (within the current standard and registry offerings) their domain name should contain.
Think of it this way, if you for example are launching a website with information or services to Russian users, with Russian content, then it is quite natural for the domain name used in the web URL to be in Cyrillic characters that Russian users are able to understand and use. Users that do not understand Russian most likely would not be interested in accessing the site, would not see any advertisement about the site, and hence has no need to be able to type in the address for the URL and go to this site. The same arguments can of course be made for other languages.
To stress the point further, today there is a large amount of content online in various languages, specifically targeted local language communities and the fact that domain names today so far are internationalized only at the second level (i.e. the “icann” part in the domain name “icann.org”) makes it impossible in many cases for the web URL to contain characters solely from one language.
It can be argued that search engines to some extent are solving these problems for many users, as search engines are becoming widely localized; however, this is not always sufficient. It can be quite confusing, especially when offline media in a local language is listing a URL containing characters unfamiliar to those reading the media. Fr the example above, it is confusing to have a latin-constructed address in a cyrillic/russian offline media, where the reader need to reconstruct that address later when online. I can easily imagine how difficult it would be if I had to remember an address in Chinese characters (I don’t read or understand Chinese) and how much trouble I would have if I needed to reconstruct that address later online.
I am not trying to reopen the discussion of whether we need IDNs or not. It is clear that we do and the main focus on ICANN’s IDN Program is that of introducing Internationalized TLDs. But sometimes the reasoning behind why we need IDNs is misunderstood, and in any event questions as the above are the ones I have answered the most times during the past year. As such the primary message with this post is to restate that IDNs and IDN TLDs are not being deployed with the intent for all users to have and be able to use all characters allowed in domain names. It is done for user choices to be made available. That is, choices that fit the local communication better than that of using the basic Latin characters that was originally the only choice for domain names.
(The Internet and Internationalization is obviously not “just” web URLs, but they are used above for ease of illustration.)
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Philemon 12.30.07 at 3:33 am
I can understand from your input that before one have the IDNs TLD domains ready, we will only have, for a given IDNs domain, the TLD part in Latin characters such .com, .net, .cg etc and the second level of the domain in Cyrillic or Chinese characters for example. However I am wonder, where a Russian or Chinese user will fund the Latin characters on his respective keyboard to type .com, .net… ? I think that this situation (using the second level of the domain in local characters and TLD part in Latin one) will remain such for quite some times.
The ideal should be that one writes the overall IDN domain name in no Latin characters. Anyway i agree that it is easy that only the community is consider to be interst for typing ‘local’ characters as URL using they corresponding keyboard.
热门榜 - Hot Lists 12.31.07 at 3:45 am
Give people more choice to build a site with a IDN tld domain, we are excite waiting the moment that it comes to true.
pagerank 01.01.08 at 8:05 am
I can understand from your input that before one have the IDNs TLD domains ready, we will only have, for a given IDNs domain, the TLD part in Latin characters such .com, .net, .cg etc and the second level of the domain in Cyrillic or Chinese characters for example.
deniz çakır 01.01.08 at 8:08 am
Comment by 热门榜 – Hot Lists
2007-12-31 03:45:27
Give people more choice to build a site with a IDN tld domain, we are excite waiting the moment that it comes to true.
I support to you.
Tina Dam 01.03.08 at 11:51 am
Hi Philemon,
the problem of having the right keyboard or software to enter/key-in the IDNs is quite different from place to place. In some regions the Latin keyboard is widely used, in others local characters/scripts are used.
The goal is to make the domain name fully international, both at top level and at second level. In that way users around the world can make their own choice as to which script they would like to use. If you are a business you then need to take keyboards and software and other application software into consideration when you decide what characters to base your domain name on.
Tina
David Wrixon 01.09.08 at 11:29 am
All keyboard configuration have Latin Characters.
The proof that IDN.com work already is the huge amount of Traffic that Russian dot Com IDNs are already receiving from Russia.
David Wrixon 01.09.08 at 11:35 am
All keyboards have Latin Names. ASCII.com are used the World over. How do you think they could work if people couldn’t type Latin. A Japanese Keyboard is really a Japanese/Latin keyboard.
Chinese nearly all use just a Latin Keyboard and input via PINYIN. It is possible to input Chinese directly on a Wubi keyboard but they are not much used, and even these have Latin characters.
It amazes me how many people come up with hundreds of different arguments why this cannot work, when in reality it is already working!
Tina Dam 01.10.08 at 1:43 pm
Hi David, I dont know if your comment was directed to me – but in any event….I was certainly not trying to say that IDN.ASCII (with any of the exisiting TLDs that have implemented IDNs) does not work.
The reason for moving further and have IDNs at the top level as well is to make it even better and avoid the need to switch from some script to Latin, and in some cases direction. Further, those scripts that have characters that are similar looking (confusingly similar looking) to those in latin, such as cyrillic have not implemented IDNs at the second level because the domains then become confusingly similar to the users.
So, we want to take the experience from the second level implementations and move IDNs to the top level.
The article was not about that by the way, but about why IDNs are implemeted in the first place and why we continue….
Tina
Joe Hepperle 01.11.08 at 12:02 am
I’m not sure what the problem is… I agree with Tina. The only way to open up the internet and make it available to all users worldwide is to make sure that most Russians can access only Russian sites, most Chinese can access only Chinese sites, etc.
Those persons in America and other English-speaking countries have no business on a Russian or Chinese web site. As Tina says, you aren’t supposed to be able to access the Russian or Chinese pages if you only speak English. This is the best way to help ensure the free exchange of correct ideas.
People deserve to have the truth when they are exposed to any ideas. The truth will come from their respective governments, not from outsiders. China is already kept busy actively jamming radio signals from Voice of America. They are forced to do this because the radio signals can be broadcast from any transmitter offshore, and can be received by any receiver onshore. To ensure that their subjects only receive the truth, the Communist government is forced to jam the disruptive outsiders broadcasting through the Voice of America.
The advent of the internet, with its many Free ideas expressed in English was not good for the Communist governments. China has already strong-armed the Search Engines to automatically filter out search results that might contain ideas harmful to their subjugated people. This strong-arming was easy to do since the Search Engines are not really about enabling access to websites, but rather are purely profit-motivated. In essence the major Search Engines are now compliant sub-departments of the Communist Governments. All for the chance to make billions in profit in the Chinese market. “Uh, I’ll take ‘Subjugated people remain subjugated’ for $400 billion dollars, Alex”
But yet, disruptive Free ideas are still getting through. So the next step is to ensure that there is little or no exchange of ideas across borders. Once the Chinese people are sequestered to the Chinese language websites, the process of rooting out dissent becomes much easier.
The United States Government has computer programs (Raptor, Echelon, TIA) that filter ALL internet traffic in the United States, looking for whatever they want to look for. The Chinese surely have a similar program. When all the Chinese websites are in Chinese, then the government only has to filter for LATIN characters being transmitted, to home-in on disruptive dissenters who are receiving their news and ideas from Free Outsiders. This control is necessary if the Communists are to maintain order within their borders. Ensuring that Chinese are only reading Chinese sites, Russians are only reading Russian sites, French are only reading French sites, English are only reading English web sites will enable each government to more efficiently control dissent within its borders by ensuring that disruptive ideas are not actually coming from the outside.
And lest anyone have problems with this, remember that all of the internet-related governing bodies who are buyable have already focused on the internet as a communication link between big-money sellers and their potential customer-buyers. That’s why Tina says that the English speakers would have no interest and will not click on a Russian website. Because the internet is no longer an avenue for free-exchange of ideas worldwide. Instead, your computer is simply the new tool for you to shop with – only. If you are not clicking on ‘Buy-It-Now’ links, you are misusing the new internet as envisioned by the New Order.
Finally, please stop using these forums as if they are here to enable suggestions and critique of proposed direction(s). The decisions have already been made by those few in actual control. These forums here are simply to validate the claim that they “…gave the public an opportunity to comment and submit input….” As such, these blogs and forums have no impact or influence on the actual power-brokers. As Tina says, all decisions about what is ‘necessary’ have already been made.
Tina Dam 01.11.08 at 9:21 am
Hello Joe, there is pretty much NOTHING in your post that equals what I said. In other words, we completely dissagree.
There is one core functionality for the Internet that is very important to keep and that is that _everybody_ have access to _everything_. This principle is the top principle that must be adhered to when implementing IDNs and that goes for both the exisiting IDNs at second level and the future ones at top level. (yes, we know that some regions are regulated today, no need to comment about that, its aside the point)
What I tried to argue is that one should not be against the internationalization development because one does not have the adequate keyboard to type for example cyrillic characters. The intend is not to ensure that everybody have all scripts on the computers.
The argument concerning content was simply to give an example of an unfair situation that exist today where sites have for example content written with cyrillic characters but the URL address is in Latin characters and that causes confusion for the users needing to access such site. Further that if you dont understand russian then maybe you are not interested in accessing the site. If you do understand russian then chnaces are that you have a way of typing in cyrillic characters. Latin and Cyrillic can in some cases cause additional confusion because of the many characters between the two scripts look similar.
However, that is NOT to say that “…most Russians can access only Russian sites..” – the Internet will offcourse stay open and accessible. The mere fact that you can’t type the characters does not mean that you cant click on links in emails, articles, or elsewhere.
On your last point on the forums – the forums at ICANN are offcourse OPEN for EVERYBODY no matter your opinion.
Tina
Phio 01.15.08 at 9:10 pm
Hello Tina,
We in the IDN community thank you for all your IDN related work. It has been a real eye opener to me — after purchasing several IDN domains and seeing type in traffic from several countries. IE7 or Firefox must be kicking around in China, Thailand, Japan and Korea — because I am getting traffic from those countries. I think what you and the folks at ICANN are doing will improve commerce and communication throughout the world. IDN.IDN will improve the quality of life on the internet for Billions of people who now have to suffer because they don’t understand what they are typing in. Of course they do understand the meaning of .com and .net and .jp and .cn ect. So they will continue to use these extensions. By adding IDN.IDN to the current IDN.Ascii I think it will increase the use of both for the next several years.
By the way, I can type in at least 10 languages currently on my PC including Korean and Chinese. I just downloaded the language pack from microsoft and with a simple click can switch languages. It’s really fairly easy. So with a standard qwerty keyboard I have access to many IDN sites.
Once again thanks Tina for all you help and work in improving the future of the internet for the non-english (non-ascii) world.
Phio
Phio 01.15.08 at 9:12 pm
ps. If you need any help, drop me a note, I’m not far away in Malibu.
Whens the answer? 01.17.08 at 11:56 am
“So, we want to take the experience from the second level implementations and move IDNs to the top level.”
And that means what? The elimination of .com; Dname to cryllic .kom from .com; or a whole new seperate namespace?
There can only be one of those and Icann seems not to want to address this. Will the namespace be seperate or aliased to the .com? It’s a simple question.
Whens the answer? 01.18.08 at 8:20 pm
I knew you wouldn’t answer it. You won’t because you are making money off of current IDN holders. Telling everyone you are opening up a new namespace would cancel out the renewals and canceling out the money to be made funding this PROJECT!
Tina Dam 01.18.08 at 9:41 pm
Hi there, introducing IDNs at the top level does not mean elimination of any existing TLDs. However, when it comes to DNAME or aliaising (as i prefer having the discussion about since ethe functionality of DNAME has not been proven at the top level to work) is not yet decided and that is the sole reason you are not seeing a solution/answer from ICANN yet.
Aliaising is a matter of policy decisions. ICANN staff does not make decisions on policies. This is done in the bottom-up processes by supporting organizations and advisory comitteees to ensure that the broad community is the developing forces behind such decisions.
On the GNSO side, the policy for introduction of new gTLDs (incl IDN TLDs) is not yet finalized. So far though the GNSO IDN WG position was that being the operator for an exisiting TLD does not set precedence to becoming operator for translations or transliterations of the TLD. On the other hand the process for introduction of new gTLDs also includes a objection process for confusability, wich could come into play in relation to application for TLDs that can be considered translations or translietrations of exisiting TLDs.
On the ccNSO front the volunteers are working on two parallel processes. A formal policy development process currently working on the development of an issues report. And a fast-track process aiming at intorducing a limited number of IDN TLDs in the short term – the WG for this process is currently working on the initial report that contains the issues that are to be considered. As such there is yet not an answer to your question here either.
I understand it is an important question for domain name registrants – but the fact that we dont have an answer yet is not because we dont want to but simply that the process is not far enough underway.
I hope this helped clearing things up a bt?
Tina
Tina Dam 01.18.08 at 9:43 pm
See above – next time you are impatient feel free to contact me directly and remind me there is a pending question. Staff at ICANN tries to answer questions as quickly as possible
Roberto 01.23.08 at 9:35 am
In my opinion, IDNs are a first step versus a real internazionalization / localization process. For example I think that some big companies will be damaged because their names are universally known with latin alphabet and there’s no need to change.
Maybe next generation global brands shoud consider to launch the same name in different languages
Sorry for my english
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