Tweet
Web chief warns of domain name chaos
Source: http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/web-c...871392720.html
What do you guys think about it? It kinda horrible to imagine if it really happens.
Plans to fast-track the introduction of non-English characters in website domain names could "break the whole internet", warns ICANN chief executive Paul Twomey.
To date, website names can only be registered using Latin characters, which effectively alienates countries using Arabic, Chinese and other foreign letters from registering internet addresses in their native tongue.
ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is a non-profit body responsible for, among other things, administering the domain name system (DNS).
A domain name is a unique address that allows people to access a website, for example, smh.com.au.
Speaking in Sydney today, Australian-born Twomey said that, at the recent United Nations internet summit held in Athens, he and ICANN were placed under significant "political pressure" to allow non-English letters in domain names.
One source of the pressure was Adama Samassekou, president of the African Academy of Languages in Mali, who said that the Anglo-centric internet left people isolated and marginalised.
"I think the digital divide is not as important as the linguistic divide. And that's the one we should be bridging in order to guarantee the democratic governance of the internet," said Samassekou.
But Twomey refuses to rush the process, and is currently conducting "laboratory testing" to ensure that nothing can go wrong.
"The internet is like a fifteen story building, and with international domain names what we're trying to do is change the bricks in the basement," he said.
"If we change the bricks there's all these layers of code above the DNS ... we have to make sure that if we change the system, the rest is all going to work."
At present there are 37 possible characters that can be used in domain names, but if non-English letters are allowed, this number would rise to 50,000 or more, said Twomey.
He said that this could create problems where, for example, a character in Urdu looks identical to one in Arabic. This would confuse the system and make it difficult to direct users to the right website every time.
"We live in multicultural Sydney ... and we all want a multicultural internet," said Twomey.
"And yet, there's one big difference between human beings and computers. Human beings can deal with ambiguity, but computers can't."
Poor implementation of foreign domain names may also pose security risks, whereby fraud artists could create websites with names that appear identical to current English language sites, but in fact replace some of the English characters with similar-looking foreign characters.
As a result, users may think they're on the legitimate version of the site, when in fact they're visiting a fake created by fraudsters looking to steal their personal details.
In light of this, ICANN is working closely with developers to ensure that applications such as web browsers and e-commerce software are upgraded so that they can handle the slew of potential new web addresses.
A resolution on the issue is expected to be reached by the end of 2007.
To date, website names can only be registered using Latin characters, which effectively alienates countries using Arabic, Chinese and other foreign letters from registering internet addresses in their native tongue.
ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is a non-profit body responsible for, among other things, administering the domain name system (DNS).
A domain name is a unique address that allows people to access a website, for example, smh.com.au.
Speaking in Sydney today, Australian-born Twomey said that, at the recent United Nations internet summit held in Athens, he and ICANN were placed under significant "political pressure" to allow non-English letters in domain names.
One source of the pressure was Adama Samassekou, president of the African Academy of Languages in Mali, who said that the Anglo-centric internet left people isolated and marginalised.
"I think the digital divide is not as important as the linguistic divide. And that's the one we should be bridging in order to guarantee the democratic governance of the internet," said Samassekou.
But Twomey refuses to rush the process, and is currently conducting "laboratory testing" to ensure that nothing can go wrong.
"The internet is like a fifteen story building, and with international domain names what we're trying to do is change the bricks in the basement," he said.
"If we change the bricks there's all these layers of code above the DNS ... we have to make sure that if we change the system, the rest is all going to work."
At present there are 37 possible characters that can be used in domain names, but if non-English letters are allowed, this number would rise to 50,000 or more, said Twomey.
He said that this could create problems where, for example, a character in Urdu looks identical to one in Arabic. This would confuse the system and make it difficult to direct users to the right website every time.
"We live in multicultural Sydney ... and we all want a multicultural internet," said Twomey.
"And yet, there's one big difference between human beings and computers. Human beings can deal with ambiguity, but computers can't."
Poor implementation of foreign domain names may also pose security risks, whereby fraud artists could create websites with names that appear identical to current English language sites, but in fact replace some of the English characters with similar-looking foreign characters.
As a result, users may think they're on the legitimate version of the site, when in fact they're visiting a fake created by fraudsters looking to steal their personal details.
In light of this, ICANN is working closely with developers to ensure that applications such as web browsers and e-commerce software are upgraded so that they can handle the slew of potential new web addresses.
A resolution on the issue is expected to be reached by the end of 2007.
What do you guys think about it? It kinda horrible to imagine if it really happens.