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Posted to users@spamassassin.apache.org by Michael Scheidell <sc...@secnap.net> on 2009/10/30 19:45:13 UTC

there goes the uri scripts..

ICANN Approves Use Of Non-Latin Alphabets In Web Domain Names

http://www.crn.com/software/221400038

By Rick Whiting, ChannelWeb

9:14 AM EDT Fri. Oct. 30, 2009
Web surfers might begin seeing some very different Internet addresses 
next year. The governing body that oversees Internet addresses has given 
its approval to a plan to permit Web addresses in characters other than 
the Latin alphabet, including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi and Korean.

The 15-member board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and 
Numbers (ICANN), meeting in Seoul, South Korea, voted unanimously Friday 
to allow scripts other than Latin characters in domain names. The move 
came after six years of debate and technical work on the issue.

But the change will initially apply only to country-code domains 
controlled by governments, such as Web addresses that include .cn for 
china or .kr for Korea. Those domains account for about 40 percent of 
all Web sites globally, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal. 
Non-Latin versions of .com, .net and .org won't be allowed for at least 
several years.


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Re: there goes the uri scripts..

Posted by Martin Gregorie <ma...@gregorie.org>.
On Fri, 2009-10-30 at 15:40 -0400, Terry Carmen wrote:
> While the new character-sets are great for business within a country, 
> they're not great for anybody planning on doing business in foreign (to 
> them) locations.
> 
> "The Excellent Rice Company" can pick any Chinese characters they want, 
> but if they want business from outside the country, un-typable 
> un-recognizable characters won't help.
> 
The likely upshot is that ICANN and its registrars will sell a shedload
of extra domain names.

Companies in countries with non-Latin scripts who have business inside
and outside their home country will end up keeping their Latin script
domain, logically split their website in two and add on a local script
domain name for the local version of the website. Many Asian companies
will end up doing this several times, e.g. I'd expect big Japanese car
companies to end up with Japanese, Chinese, Cyrillic, Hindi, Persian,
Arabic, Hebrew and Latin websites and the corresponding domains.

I have no idea how this will affect the spam flood, but if ICANN and
whoever make DNS work in Unicode DNS think things through correctly, all
these related domains will probably end up logically linked in
namespace. Using CNAME records in a single zone may do the trick
provided zones are extended to contain multiple domains. It seems to me
this would be beneficial for all.


Martin


> Terry


Re: there goes the uri scripts..

Posted by Chris Hoogendyk <ho...@bio.umass.edu>.

Terry Carmen wrote:
> James Butler wrote:
>> We've fielded many, many inquiries about the availability of Arabic
>> domain names over the past several years. Don't underestimate the
>> backlash against everything being in English for so long ... there are
>> hordes (sorry) of folks who want to be able to use their native
>> charactersets.
>>   
>
> While the new character-sets are great for business within a country, 
> they're not great for anybody planning on doing business in foreign 
> (to them) locations.
>
> "The Excellent Rice Company" can pick any Chinese characters they 
> want, but if they want business from outside the country, un-typable 
> un-recognizable characters won't help.

That's just your Latin centric point of view.

They have more people than we have.

Anyway, with Apache name virtual hosting, and similar methods, you can 
have your cake and eat it too. Grab both sets of names and serve them 
up. Have the pages you serve depend on how the customer addressed your 
server. Then you gain a huge new customer base that was unable to 
communicate with you before.


-- 
---------------

Chris Hoogendyk

-
   O__  ---- Systems Administrator
  c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments
 (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst 

<ho...@bio.umass.edu>

--------------- 

Erdös 4



Re: there goes the uri scripts..

Posted by Terry Carmen <te...@cnysupport.com>.
James Butler wrote:
> We've fielded many, many inquiries about the availability of Arabic
> domain names over the past several years. Don't underestimate the
> backlash against everything being in English for so long ... there are
> hordes (sorry) of folks who want to be able to use their native
> charactersets.
>   

While the new character-sets are great for business within a country, 
they're not great for anybody planning on doing business in foreign (to 
them) locations.

"The Excellent Rice Company" can pick any Chinese characters they want, 
but if they want business from outside the country, un-typable 
un-recognizable characters won't help.

Terry


Re: there goes the uri scripts..

Posted by James Butler <ja...@musicforhumans.com>.
Oh yes ... there's no denying its complexity. But the desire to use
one's native tongue is quite simple.

James Butler

Pete McNeil wrote:
> James Butler wrote:
>> We've fielded many, many inquiries about the availability of Arabic
>> domain names over the past several years. Don't underestimate the
>> backlash against everything being in English for so long ... there are
>> hordes (sorry) of folks who want to be able to use their native
>> charactersets.
>>   
> No doubt,... but it is quite a bit more complex than that none the
> less...
> http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jay_walker_on_the_world_s_english_mania.html
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XQFsXtFcJE
>
> _M
>


Re: there goes the uri scripts..

Posted by Pete McNeil <ma...@microneil.com>.
James Butler wrote:
> We've fielded many, many inquiries about the availability of Arabic
> domain names over the past several years. Don't underestimate the
> backlash against everything being in English for so long ... there are
> hordes (sorry) of folks who want to be able to use their native
> charactersets.
>   
No doubt,... but it is quite a bit more complex than that none the less...
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jay_walker_on_the_world_s_english_mania.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XQFsXtFcJE

_M


Re: there goes the uri scripts..

Posted by James Butler <ja...@musicforhumans.com>.
We've fielded many, many inquiries about the availability of Arabic
domain names over the past several years. Don't underestimate the
backlash against everything being in English for so long ... there are
hordes (sorry) of folks who want to be able to use their native
charactersets.

James Butler

richard@buzzhost.co.uk wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-10-30 at 15:10 -0400, Charles Gregory wrote:
>   
>> On Fri, 30 Oct 2009, Terry Carmen wrote:
>>     
>>>>  approval to a plan to permit Web addresses in characters other than the
>>>>  Latin alphabet, including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi and Korean.
>>>>         
>>> I'd be *really* surprised if these became popular. The last thing any 
>>> business wants to do is create a domain name that some of it's customers 
>>> can't read or type.
>>>       
>> Uh, good logic, but not an obstacle. It's the *reason* for this.
>>
>> Right now many customers in (for example) China cannot read the latin 
>> alphabet. While I'm sure that most internet users can 'type what they 
>> see' - currently being the only way to get to *any* domains -  business 
>> relies on *memorable* website names, and that can really only happen if 
>> the majority of customers understand the language of the domain name.
>>
>> And for the emerging 'market' of internet users who are now getting 
>> systems that are completely Chinese characters, this step is the removal 
>> of the last barrier to their smooth experience of the web, at least within 
>> their own country.....
>>
>> :)
>>
>> - Charles
>>     
> It brings us to a whole new era in Cybersqatting. I'm lining up the
> Chinese versions of McDonalds, Pepsi, Coke........
>
> Im going to be *so* rich.....
>
>   


Re: there goes the uri scripts..

Posted by John Wilcock <jo...@tradoc.fr>.
Le 02/11/2009 18:36, Matt Garretson a écrit :
> Good point.  It will be fun when grandma loses her glasses and
> clicks on a link to ämazon.com  or  þankofamerica.com

That's the real risk here from an anti-spam point of view, and no doubt 
some new sorts of URI rule will be needed once we see what the spammers 
actually start taking advantage of.

Thankfully there will be rules in place to stop people mixing different 
scripts in a single IDN - can you tell the difference between a Cyrillic 
"a" and a Latin one in the middle of an otherwise Latin-script word? But 
all-Cyrillic, say, will still give some interesting Latin-lookalike 
possibilities (евау.com anyone?)

John.

-- 
-- Over 4000 webcams from ski resorts around the world - www.snoweye.com
-- Translate your technical documents and web pages    - www.tradoc.fr

Re: there goes the uri scripts..

Posted by Matt Garretson <ma...@assembly.state.ny.us>.
Bernd Petrovitsch wrote:
> Think about domain names which (ab)use IDN to generate a very similar
> text strings (read: glyphs) (especially with the default font in our
> beloved monopoly-OS) to serious ones.


Good point.  It will be fun when grandma loses her glasses and
clicks on a link to ämazon.com  or  þankofamerica.com  



Re: there goes the uri scripts..

Posted by Bernd Petrovitsch <be...@firmix.at>.
On Fre, 2009-10-30 at 19:23 +0000, richard@buzzhost.co.uk wrote: 
> On Fri, 2009-10-30 at 15:10 -0400, Charles Gregory wrote:
> > On Fri, 30 Oct 2009, Terry Carmen wrote:
> > >>  approval to a plan to permit Web addresses in characters other than the
> > >>  Latin alphabet, including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi and Korean.
> > > I'd be *really* surprised if these became popular. The last thing any 
> > > business wants to do is create a domain name that some of it's customers 
> > > can't read or type.
> > 
> > Uh, good logic, but not an obstacle. It's the *reason* for this.
ACK. Lots of companies will feel forced to buy many more domain names
(for various reasons - if only that no one else can get it).

[...] 
> > :)
> > 
> > - Charles
> It brings us to a whole new era in Cybersqatting. I'm lining up the
And phishing - similar to years ago when IDN was "deployed!".

> Chinese versions of McDonalds, Pepsi, Coke........
Think about domain names which (ab)use IDN to generate a very similar
text strings (read: glyphs) (especially with the default font in our
beloved monopoly-OS) to serious ones.
Well, IDN was deployed years ago .....

> Im going to be *so* rich.....
Others too.

Bernd
-- 
Firmix Software GmbH                   http://www.firmix.at/
mobil: +43 664 4416156                 fax: +43 1 7890849-55
          Embedded Linux Development and Services


Re: there goes the uri scripts..

Posted by "richard@buzzhost.co.uk" <ri...@buzzhost.co.uk>.
On Fri, 2009-10-30 at 15:10 -0400, Charles Gregory wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Oct 2009, Terry Carmen wrote:
> >>  approval to a plan to permit Web addresses in characters other than the
> >>  Latin alphabet, including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi and Korean.
> > I'd be *really* surprised if these became popular. The last thing any 
> > business wants to do is create a domain name that some of it's customers 
> > can't read or type.
> 
> Uh, good logic, but not an obstacle. It's the *reason* for this.
> 
> Right now many customers in (for example) China cannot read the latin 
> alphabet. While I'm sure that most internet users can 'type what they 
> see' - currently being the only way to get to *any* domains -  business 
> relies on *memorable* website names, and that can really only happen if 
> the majority of customers understand the language of the domain name.
> 
> And for the emerging 'market' of internet users who are now getting 
> systems that are completely Chinese characters, this step is the removal 
> of the last barrier to their smooth experience of the web, at least within 
> their own country.....
> 
> :)
> 
> - Charles
It brings us to a whole new era in Cybersqatting. I'm lining up the
Chinese versions of McDonalds, Pepsi, Coke........

Im going to be *so* rich.....


Re: there goes the uri scripts..

Posted by Charles Gregory <cg...@hwcn.org>.
On Fri, 30 Oct 2009, Terry Carmen wrote:
>>  approval to a plan to permit Web addresses in characters other than the
>>  Latin alphabet, including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi and Korean.
> I'd be *really* surprised if these became popular. The last thing any 
> business wants to do is create a domain name that some of it's customers 
> can't read or type.

Uh, good logic, but not an obstacle. It's the *reason* for this.

Right now many customers in (for example) China cannot read the latin 
alphabet. While I'm sure that most internet users can 'type what they 
see' - currently being the only way to get to *any* domains -  business 
relies on *memorable* website names, and that can really only happen if 
the majority of customers understand the language of the domain name.

And for the emerging 'market' of internet users who are now getting 
systems that are completely Chinese characters, this step is the removal 
of the last barrier to their smooth experience of the web, at least within 
their own country.....

:)

- Charles

Re: there goes the uri scripts..

Posted by Terry Carmen <te...@cnysupport.com>.
Michael Scheidell wrote:
> ICANN Approves Use Of Non-Latin Alphabets In Web Domain Names
>
> http://www.crn.com/software/221400038
>
> By Rick Whiting, ChannelWeb
>
> 9:14 AM EDT Fri. Oct. 30, 2009
> Web surfers might begin seeing some very different Internet addresses 
> next year. The governing body that oversees Internet addresses has 
> given its approval to a plan to permit Web addresses in characters 
> other than the Latin alphabet, including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi and 
> Korean.

I'd be *really* surprised if these became popular. The last thing any 
business wants to do is create a domain name that some of it's customers 
can't read or type.

Terry


Re: there goes the uri scripts..

Posted by Benny Pedersen <me...@junc.org>.
On fre 30 okt 2009 19:45:13 CET, Michael Scheidell wrote

> ICANN Approves Use Of Non-Latin Alphabets In Web Domain Names

if the domain names conform to idn standard its okay with me

-- 
xpoint