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Saturday, June 28, 2008

[vinnomot] Fw: The internet: www.checkthisout.ch



The internet: www.checkthisout. ch

We've seen the future and it's mostly not in English

Dot what? That is the new question. Dot more or less anything. That is the new answer. Where we have spent quarter of a century growing used to .com, .gov and .co.uk, we will soon be living with an unlimited surfeit of suffixes. There will be probably be .car and .caravan. There may also be .sausage and .news. Specialists may find what they are looking for in .siberianicefishing holidays (in cyrillic), or .confucius, in Mandarin.

These are "top-level domain names" that do not yet exist, but could. The space where they exist, after the last dot of every web address, is being deregulated. The possibilities are literally endless. The parameters, which hitherto have been a few stubby English syllables selected by an earnest non-profit corporation called ICANN, will be set henceforth by 15 languages, in any combination of letters and numbers, up to 37 characters and beyond. The only constraints on new domain registrations are the price - £50,000 and up - and the need to present a persuasive business plan.

There is a logic that says this infinite territorial expansion of the internet should be arranged by computers talking to computers deep in the fibreoptic ether that links them. In fact, ICANN has declared its manifest destiny in front of 1,500 real people billeted in real hotels in Paris.

They are not responding to demand for more domains, but they are ensuring that web addresses will suddenly make more sense for the 4.4 billion people who have yet to be lured on to the internet at all. Most of them do not speak English. That should no longer be a problem. The rest of us will simply go on pestering that search engine that needs no further advertising.

The Times

June 27, 2008
http://www.timesonl ine.co.uk/ tol/comment/ leading_article/ article4221595. ece
 
 
 
Rules relaxed on web address endings

Website naming rules may be relaxed


Last Updated: 7:01am BST 26/06/2008

The way the internet works could be changed forever following a proposed relaxation of the rules governing domain rules.

ICANN: Questions and answers

Up until now websites could only use certain suffixes at the end of internet addresses, such as ".co.uk", ".com" or ".org".

But in a move to liberalise the World Wide Web the regulator is considering allowing the use of any suffix by summer 2009.

If the plans are approved companies could use their own names as the suffix, for example Google could register www.search.google.

The sex industry, which accounts for about 12 per cent of all internet content, is hoping to use the ".xxx" domain name.

Pornographers says it will help safeguard children from stumbling across inappropriate sites.

The web's regulator, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), is also set to allow new scripts to be used in domain names.

Up until now only the Roman alphabet could be used for website names.

Critics say the rules disadvantage billions of people in the developing world who can only read their own script.

The most commonly-used scripts - Arabic, Mandarin and Cyrillic (the script used by hundreds of millions in the former USSR), - will be fast-tracked and could be operational in the next few years.

Emily Taylor, of Nominet, one of the largest domain name registries, said: "There are currently 1.5 billion people using the internet, which means that there are a good 4.5 billion people who are not doing so," she said.

"These people are not from Europe or America – most of them will be from developing world nations where the Roman script is meaningless. "

http://www.telegrap h.co.uk/digitall ife/main. jhtml?xml= /connected/ 2008/06/26/ dlinternet126. xml

The Telegraph

 


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