Friday, October 30, 2009

ICANN Votes to Move Ahead With Non-Latin Web Addresses

The internet domain name system is about to radically expand. While some fear that it could damage the inter-connectivity of the web with competing language, it should effectively end any serious possibility of a 'second internet' cropping up for another language.

Video embedded below.



"As expected, regulatory body ICANN has approved plans to let web addresses be written in non-Latin characters in a move that it calls the “biggest technical change” to how the Internet works since its invention four decades ago.
...
The proposal means domain names could be written in languages such as Greek, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi or Cyrillic and be understood natively by the servers that connect computers together over the web. Currently, domain names can only be displayed using the Latin alphabet letters A-Z, the digits 0-9 and the hyphen, but in the future countries will be able to display country-code Top Level Domains (cc TLDs) in their native language.

The organization will launch a fast-track process for approving the Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) scheme on 16 November, and the first IDN-compliant addresses should be in operation by the middle of next year, said ICANN President Rod Beckstrom."

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