[governance] Re: IDN's Internationalized Domain Names - A New Era

[David Goldstein]

Of course, those on this list wouldn't want to get the media hyping this event in the way of what was actually claimed.

From the ICANN news release:
"The coming introduction of non-Latin characters represents the biggest
technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades
ago," said ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush.

Giving people whose language is not Latin-based the ability to use domain names is very significant. Eventually it will probably benefit every language that includes a character in addition to A to Z, 0 to 9 and a dash.

I guess many of those whose languages are Latin-based can't think outside the square and appreciate this.

Whether you like ICANN or not, there was a lot of work done to ensure IDNs were safe and secure to use. But then, many on this list are loathe to admit such a thing.

Well, I guess bitterness prevails...

David



----- Original Message ----
From: Ian Peter <ian.peter at ianpeter.com>
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer at internatif.org>
Sent: Sun, 1 November, 2009 10:57:22 AM
Subject: Re: [governance] Re: IDN's Internationalized Domain Names - A New Era

Fouad wrote

>> a move that is being described as the biggest change to the way the
>> internet works since it was created 40 years ago.

Very few people who have examined this subject think the Internet was
created 40 years ago. See
http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/origins.html
for an article I wrote when the same group celebrated the "35th
anniversary". 

I think Stephane's comments are relevant. ICANN's tick on IDNs is welcome
and overdue, but not ground breaking.

The real credit here does not lie with ICANN, but with people like Dr. John
Klensin, Dr. Konishi (Japan), Prof. Qian (China), Dr. Kenny Huang (Taiwan),
and Dr. Ko (Korea), James Seng (Singapore), TanTin Wee, many others. And as
Stephane states, the breakthrough was five years ago, not now.

But spin doctors create popular history and myths propagate.



On 1/11/09 12:11 AM, "Stephane Bortzmeyer" <bortzmeyer at internatif.org>
wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 08:22:33PM +0900,
>  Fouad Bajwa <fouadbajwa at gmail.com> wrote
>  a message of 109 lines which said:
> 
>> The internet regulator ICANN has approved plans to allow
>> non-Latin-script web addresses,
> 
> Unicode characters in domain names have been technically approved in
> 2003 (with the publication of RFC 3490) and installed first in a TLD a
> few months later (though I do not remember which TLD was the first
> one). ICANN, as often, is very late here. We see "non-Latin-script web
> addresses" for many years.
> 
>> a move that is being described as the biggest change to the way the
>> internet works since it was created 40 years ago.
> 
> This is simply ridiculous. More than the creation of the DNS? Or of
> BGP? Or than the deployment of TCP/IPv4, both non-existent 40 years
> ago?
> 
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