Multilinguism

What Does It Take To Repair Trust? What Will It Take ICANN To Win Back “Trust”? (Part I)

Some readers may wonder why I chose to raise the issue of "trust" now or even ask what it will take for ICANN to repair it. After all, the New gTLDs have been launched; applications have started being received, and all ICANN official announcements are that all is good and going according to plan. But many other readers and astute observers of this space, domestic and international, would not confuse the public dead silence we are hearing from ICANN and its insider community or the euphoria of the long awaited application submissions we are seeing to mean that all is perfect. more

IDNs in cc-Minor: an Unfinished Symphony

When he wanted to show the transformative and unifying power of the Internet to open this week's ICANN meeting in Seoul, ICANN President Rod Beckstrom had an ace in the hole: Korean guitarist Jay (Jeong-hyun Lim), who became a global YouTube sensation with his hard-rocking version of Pachelbel's Canon. As I watched Jay wail on his gold-plated guitar to standing ovations, I couldn't help but think of Rod waxing that the Internet was a "symphony" of ideas and voices from around the world. more

Getting a Handle on IDNs

Internationalized Domain Names or IDNs are back in the news. ICANN recently released a document entitled "Proposed Final Implementation for IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process"... In a nutshell, ICANN has now offered a path toward authorizing the adoption of ccTLDs in many countries' native languages. This marks a welcome advance for millions of Internet users who do not speak English or who do not use another language covered by ASCII. But with this advance comes some concerns. more

ICANN Approves At-Large Framework for Latin America

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recently launched organizing of the individual Internet user community (At-Large) for increasing global participation and representation in ICANN. Under a framework approved by ICANN's Board of Directors, local and regional groups may now form in Latin America to involve their members in critical issues that effect their use of the Internet's domain name system. more

Scene Behind the Screen of IDN ccTLDs

Fundamental & imperative story behind this enablement of a meaningful string as IDN ccTLD name script in local language is very interesting. Previously there was a limitation of two letters as abbreviation for the IDN ccTLD name script and it is I, who proposed and convinced ICANN to remove this limitations that enabled all countries and territories of the world (who use non-Latin base script of their official language) to apply for a meaningful abbreviation or full name of the country as IDN ccTLD. more

Human Network, Human Challenges

It has now been about eight months since I joined the Internet Society as the Director of Deployment & Operationalization and I still get asked on a fairly regular basis "what do you do?" Well, with ISOC's Chief Internet Technology Officer Leslie Daigle's recent departure, and with my time here having exceeded both my first 120 days and my first 6 months, this seems like the right moment to reflect on my brief tenure here so far and perhaps pontificate a bit on where we're going - and why. more

Nominet to Apply for .Wales and .Cymru Top-Level Domains

In the run up to the launch of new TLDs there were a lot of rumours about which organisations would apply for which strings. Detractors might pick holes in the entire project, but it's very hard to argue against the merits of new TLDs specifically in the context of cultural linguistic communities that fall outside the realm of ccTLDs (country code top level domains). The case of Catalonia and .cat is probably the best one and has been vaunted as the poster child for new TLDs in some circles. more

A Little Flexibility from ICANN and We Might Just Get IDNs… for Everyone

Nobody doubts that some time in the near future there will be Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) in Chinese, Russian or Arabic scripts. The Chinese, Russian and Arabic-character-using worlds are large -- encompassing hundreds of millions of current and potential users. They are politically influential blocs, with the ability to demand action in international meetings. And perhaps most importantly, they are -- at least when taken together -- rich. Everybody knows that access on the web in these languages is not a matter of if, but simply a question of when... more

First Leap to Secure Linguistic Internet - Arabic SSL Certificates Launched

Linguistic Internet is becoming stronger with the first leap to develop non-Latin applications, as Arabic Language SSL Certificates has been launched by M/s ArabicSSL with the support of Live Multilingual Translator and The Multilingual Internet Group. This step is highly appreciable because this will ensure the security and stability and develop trust over new Internet layers of Internationalized Domains (IDN TLDs). more

AdDomains: A New Weapon for Traditional Advertising

ICANN's new gTLD program was designed in part to boost innovation. The thinking was: give people the canvas and let them paint in new and fascinating ways, with no set direction... and paint they will. Now that the new gTLD dream has become reality, new uses and business models are already emerging to prove this theory correct. One of the industries in which new gTLD innovation is making itself felt is traditional advertising. This is a sector that has been turned upside down by the Internet revolution of the last decade. more

ICANN May Not Be Perfect, But It Is Working

Though I have been critical of some of ICANN's shortcomings, I remain a strong supporter of ICANN's role as a private sector-led, multi-stakeholder global regulator for the Internet's core addressing systems. My recent blog post about my concerns with the communications processes relating to the addition of the first Arabic script IDN ccTLDs has been quoted in an ITU Staff Paper prepared for the ITU Council Working Group on the World Summit on the Information Society, to be held in Geneva tomorrow. This document seems to suggest... more

Domain Names in 9 Indian Scripts to Be Added to the Root Servers by June

Internet root servers will soon allow domain name registrations in nine Indian scripts, according to Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG). more

Russia’s Cyrillic IDN ccTLD Blasts Off, Through the 500K Mark in Under a Week

Since last Thursday's launch of Russia's Cyrillic script IDN ccTLD, registration volumes have smashed all expectations, much like a Soyuz rocket blasting off into space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. At the time of writing (14:00 17/11/2010 UTC), .??, which is Cyrillic for RF (short for ?????????? ????????? - Russian Federation) has just exceeded 500,000 registrations, having passed the 100,000 mark in the first three hours. It is already among the top 30 ccTLDs worldwide and heading towards the top 20 at high speed. more

Chinese Drawing Even With English on Global Websites

Over the past decade Simplified Chinese has grown to become one of the most popular languages on global websites, second only to English. According to the Web Globalization Report Card, which has long monitored languages supported by the world's leading brands, Chinese was seen on only about six out of ten websites in 2006. Today, it is seen on virtually every global website. more

ICANN and Free Speech

Upon being appointed as ICANN's new CEO in Sydney, Rod Beckstrom gave a rousing speech in which he stressed the vital importance of free expression on the Internet... Many ordinary, powerless people are indeed willing to fight and die. But is ICANN going to help them? Or at very least make sure that their decisions won't help those who want to muzzle them? more