Multilinguism

NCUC Group Releases Nominations

The Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) is the constituency group representing civil society organizations in the formation of domain name policy. In August 2004 it initiated a process to nominate people to serve on the UN Secretary-General's Working Group on Internet Governance, as representatives of civil society. Our purpose was to assist the Secretary-General to identify qualified and widely-supported individuals capable of serving on the WGIG on behalf of civil society. more

Analysis of the IDN New gTLD Applications

There has been a lot of excitement since ICANN revealed the list of 1930 applications for new gTLD yesterday at an event in London yesterday. Even some of the strongest opponents of the ICANN's new gTLD program have acknowledged there is a case to open up new gTLDs for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). I am going to focus here on the analysis of the IDN applicants. more

Gmail Now Supports Internationalized Domain Names

If your first language isn't English and you don't use the Latin character set you can and will run into barriers. While Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) i.e. domain names where either the left of the dot, the right of the dot or the entire string is in characters other than Latin ones, do exist and have existed for a number of years not all services work well with them. more

How to Listen to the Individual Internet User

The recent ICANN meeting in Vancouver touched upon many issues important to ordinary Internet users: privacy in domain name registration; the cost and terms of .com domain names; internationalized domains; introduction of new domain suffixes. But there were few "ordinary Internet users" at the meeting. Few people can roam the globe to keep up with ICANN's travels, and not many more participate in online forums. more

New gTLD Registration Strategies: Preparing for the Inevitable

As we draw closer to the first new gTLD registry launch, many companies are beginning the arduous task of developing their new gTLD registration and blocking strategies. And after speaking with dozens of clients, I can tell you that the planned approaches are ranging from very minimal registration and blocking strategies for one or two core brands, all the way through to registrations of multiple brands in every single new gTLD registry. more

Universal Acceptance – Making the Internet Work for Everyone

Back in 2014, to foster innovation and to better the choice in domain names, ICANN introduced new generic top-level domains through its New gTLD Program. It was a monumental move that enabled businesses, individuals, and communities across the globe to mark their presence on the Internet. Allowing users to be present digitally in their chosen language (non-ASCII characters and scripts) gave opportunities to local businesses, civil societies, and governments to better serve their communities. more

Google Beats Facebook in Popularity Because it Supports More Languages (For Now)

John Yunker co-founder of Byte Level Research and author of The Web Globalization Report Card writes: "The big story this year is that Facebook and Google finished in a numerical tie. But because Google supports more languages (for now), it edged out as the winner. ... Even as we look across all 225 web sites, the number of languages continues to increase. Although the rate of language growth slowed over the past two years -- due in large part to the global recession -- growth continues. This year, the average number of languages increased to 22, up from 20 languages in 2008." more

New “.trademark” gTLD is Here

Few Brands have noticed it yet but a company has applied for a domain name extension which literally means ".trademark". The company is based in Hong-Kong and its name is "Huyi Global .?? Domain Registry". The ".??" is what we call an International Domain Name extension (IDN) and it means ".trademark" in Simplified Chinese. It is pronounced: "Shang Biao". more

Testing IDNs

Internationalized (non-ascii) domain names (IDN) are a key issue for ICANN. Yesterday, the Board completed two days of workshop presentations about various matters (IANA, security, GAC relationships), and we were briefed on the IDN testing that is planned. I thought it might be useful to make clear the distinction between the tests (which are testing mechanisms for IDNs) and the very difficult policy questions that confront ICANN. As several people explained to me yesterday, they're different. more

On the Hunt for “Critical Internet Resources”

I'm writing this column in November, and that means that it is time for the traveling circus known as the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to come down to earth, unpack its tents and sell tickets for its annual song and dance routine. The script for this year's show has been changed, and after being excluded from the main arena last year at the Athens gig, the headline act of "Critical Internet Resources" is taking a starring role this year in Rio. Some folk are even saying that it is the single most contentious issue to be scheduled at this year's IGF show. So what are "Critical Internet Resources" anyway? If folks are going to spend all this time, energy and carbon emissions traveling to Rio to talk on this topic, then wouldn't it be helpful to understand what it means in the first place? There are probably a number of ways to answer this question, so in this heavily opinionated column I'd like to look at the range of possible answers to this question. more

New gTLDs and Endangered Languages

While exploring the UNESCO's interactive atlas of the world's languages in danger, I am happy to see that new generic Top-Level Domains could help save some of these languages. .CAT for Catalan language already exist; .BZH will probably have the "Breton" language to help survive; "Basque" is vulnerable but there is a .EUS initiative; .CORSICA will certainly help the "Corsican" language to develop... more

ICANN Gives Jordan Preliminary Approval for Its ccTLD in Arabic

ICANN has given Jordan preliminary approval for its IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) ccTLD. "At this time ICANN has received a total of 21 requests for IDN ccTLD(s) through the String Evaluation process, representing 11 languages. A total of 13 requests have successfully passed through the String Evaluation and are hence ready for the requesting country or territory to initiate the application for String Delegation." more

Russians Not So Eager to Embrace Cyrillic Domain Names

Clifford J. Levy of the New York Times reports: "[Russian] computer users are worried that Cyrillic domains will give rise to a hermetic Russian Web, a sort of cyberghetto, and that the push for Cyrillic amounts to a plot by the security services to restrict access to the Internet. Russian companies are also resisting Cyrillic Web addresses, complaining about costs and threats to online security." more

Africa at ICANN - Continent on the Move

There was one obvious take-away from this week's ICANN meetings in Toronto, and for once it was less about policy and more about geography. Simply put, Africa is really - finally - coming together at ICANN, with a new energy, new unity and lots of new participation from African participants. And from top to bottom, the ICANN community seems to be taking notice. more

Chinese and Japanese IDN in .BIZ

I just got back this morning from attending the OASIS XRI TC face-to-face meeting with Bill Barnhill, Drummond Reed, Laurie Rae, Les Chasen, Markus Sabadello, Marty Schleiff. A number of good things came out of the meeting, which I'll leave for another blog because this post is about Internationalized Domain Names, not XRI. So we just opened the flood gates for Chinese and Japanese IDNs for .BIZ. This has been my brainchild for the past half a year or so, and represents a significant step forward for our registry in terms of internationalization. more