IDN hot topic at ICANN Wellington...

[Drewbert]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/breaki...701678502.html

Quoting...

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Another hot topic on the program will be the application of multilingual domain names, an issue of particular relevance to Asian and Arabic countries that do not use the roman characters in their alphabet.

The issue was recently highlighted by an erroneous report that surfaced in a number of media outlets that internet authorities in China had set up a new family of Chinese language alternatives to .com and other popular internet address domains in a bid to break away from ICANN.

In fact Chinese internet authorities had announced Chinese language alternatives to a new set of second-level domains such as .mil.cn which do not come under ICANN jurisdiction. However the issue remains topical.

"This is a story about after the dot and before the dot. Its amazing how much in the new online world that dot actually matters," said Mr Twomey.

He said the matter of changing top level domain names into non-ascii formats might sound simple, but was in fact a matter of great complexity with top level domains sitting at the bottom of the structure.

"In Wellington we will be examining what is involved in changing those last three characters. The question is how do you do it so the user still has good experience?" he said.

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So DNAME is on the Agenda. Much of it will be videocast, so get a front row seat.