Egypt Business Network

Egypt Business Network

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  • Dr. Nilgün Birgören
    Dr. Nilgün Birgören    Premium Member   Group moderator
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    Arabic and other scripts get Web address nod
    The nonprofit body that oversees Internet addresses approved on Friday the use of Arabic, Hindi, Korean and other scripts not based on the Latin alphabet in a decision that could make the Web dramatically more inclusive.

    The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - or ICANN - voted to allow such scripts in so-called domain names at the conclusion of a weeklong meeting in Seoul, South Korea's capital. The decision follows years of debate and testing.

    The decision clears the way for governments or their designees to submit requests for specific names, likely beginning November 16. Internet users could start seeing them in use early next year, particularly in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts in which demand has been among the highest, ICANN officials say.

    "This represents one small step for ICANN, but one big step for half of mankind who use non-Latin scripts, such as those in Korea, China and the Arabic speaking world as well as across Asia, Africa, and the rest of the world," Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's CEO, said ahead of the vote.

    Domain names - the Internet addresses that end in ".com" and other suffixes - are the key monikers behind every Web site, e-mail address and Twitter post.

    Since their creation in the 1980s, domain names have been limited to the 26 characters in the Latin alphabet used in English - A-Z - as well as 10 numerals and the hyphen. Technical tricks have been used to allow portions of the Internet address to use other scripts, but until now, the suffix had to use those 37 characters.

    That has meant Internet users with little or no knowledge of English might still have to type in Latin characters to access Web pages in Chinese or Arabic. Although search engines can sometimes help users reach those sites, companies still need to include Latin characters on billboards and other advertisements.

    Now, ICANN is allowing those same technical tricks to apply to the suffix as well, allowing the Internet to be truly multilingual.

    Many of the estimated 1.5 billion people online use languages such as Chinese, Thai, Arabic and Japanese, which have writing systems entirely different from English, French, German, Indonesian, Swahili and others that use Latin characters.

    "This is absolutely delightful news," said Edward Yu, CEO of Analysys International, an Internet research and consulting firm in Beijing, emphasizing that the Internet would become more accessible to users with lower incomes and education. Yu spoke ahead of the approval, which had been widely expected.

    There will be several restrictions at first.

    Countries can only request one suffix for each of their official languages, and the suffix must somehow reflect the name of the country or its abbreviation.

    Non-Latin versions of ".com" and ".org" won't be permitted for at least a few more years as ICANN considers broader policy questions such as whether the incumbent operator of ".com" should automatically get a Chinese version, or whether that more properly goes to China, as its government insists.

    ICANN also is initially prohibiting Latin suffixes that go beyond the 37 already-permitted characters. That means suffixes won't be able to include tildes, accent marks and other special characters.

    And software developers still have to make sure their applications work with the non-Latin scripts. Major Web browsers already support them, but not all e-mail programs do.

    In China, Guo Liang, a researcher who studies Internet use for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the government's top think tank, questioned whether all Chinese will embrace the new domains.
    Although the move will reflect linguistic and cultural diversity, Guo said, "for some users it might even be easier to type domains in Latin alphabets than Chinese characters."

    China has already set up its own ".com" in Chinese within its borders, using techniques that aren't compatible with Internet systems around the world.
    It is among a handful of countries that has pushed hardest for official non-Latin suffixes and could be one of the first to make one available, said Tina Dam, the ICANN senior director for internationalized domain names. The other countries, she said, are Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

    About 50 such names are likely to be approved in the first few years.
    The Internet's roots are traced to experiments at U.S. universities in 1969 but it wasn't until the early 1990s that its use began expanding beyond academia and research institutions to the public.

    The US government, which funded much of the Internet's early development, selected ICANN in 1998 to oversee policies on domain names. ICANN, which has headquarters in the United States in Marina del Rey, California, was set up as a nonprofit with board members from around the world.


    Source: GulfNews
    • 30 Oct 2009, 8:11 pm
  • Dr. Nilgün Birgören
    Dr. Nilgün Birgören    Premium Member   Group moderator
    The company name is only visible to registered members.
    Re: The Web Learns Arabic
    Dear friends and members,

    Most people use the internet without thinking about how it actually works. They type in a domain name and are taken to the website they want. But for the hundreds of millions of people around the world who don’t read and write the Latin script, much of the virtual world is off limits.

    That is about to change.

    The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which regulates website address around the world, began accepting domain names in every script last month, from Arabic letters to Chinese characters, an effort experts say will open up the internet to millions more users.

    “The internet now speaks Arabic,” Egyptian Minister of Communication and Information Technology Tarek Kamel said last month during a conference in Sharm El-Sheikh.

    Egypt is poised to be among the first countries to take advantage of the new system. Kamel said the Egyptian government has already applied for the domain name .misr in Arabic.

    “We have to have the same user experience in our languages,” says Manal Ismail, Vice Chair of ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee. “We cannot expect people around the globe to master the same language.”

    Baher Esmat, a regional manager for ICANN, said the change was a long time coming. He expects to see an impact even in countries where English is largely understood. In Egypt alone, which currently has about 16 million web users, Esmat says the change could help 10–20 million people.

    The difficulties of introducing the new system lay primarily in the way the internet was first put together. When you type in a website name, your computer is actually looking up an IP address, a unique string of numbers assigned to that site. Because the internet originated in the US, the system that was used to match names and numbers only allowed for the Latin script (along with numerals 0–9 and the hyphen).

    In the early days of the internet this was not a problem. Most users were Americans or Europeans whose alphabets were close enough to English that only minor adjustments were necessary. Today 60% of internet users are non-English speakers, according to ICANN.

    With the internet markets in the US and Europe nearly saturated and use in the developing world continuing to expand, the proportion of users whose native language is written in a non-Latin script is expected to increase.

    The changes to domain names are expected to make the web much easier to navigate for people in the Middle East and Asia. Currently, transliteration from Arabic into English causes several problems. For example, there are often multiple correct transliterations of an Arabic name.

    So if someone hears about a new site from a friend, “he has more than one way of writing it down [in Latin script]. He cannot just go and reach the website." Also, a company’s rival may register a website under an alternate spelling, hoping to take advantage of the ambiguity. Switching to Arabic script in domain names eliminates this ambiguity, protecting both users and copyright holders.

    While the most common way to find a new website is probably through search engines, which don’t require Latin web addresses, the script, say some, remains a barrier.

    Looking for an Arabic company’s website may be time consuming, since a user would either have to guess the English transliteration or search for the name in Arabic, which will not necessarily match the domain name. Although you will usually be able to find the site you are looking for, the new Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) eliminates transliteration issues altogether. And for internet users who have no exposure to English, the improvement in accessibility is even more pronounced.

    ICANN allocates blocks of internet addresses to five regional internet registries around the world. These address registries are then sub-allocated to domestic internet service providers and other parties, says Rod Beckstrom, CEO of ICANN.

    “The Domain Name System (DNS) is handling up to 1 trillion queries and transactions per day. It links together the most complex system mankind has ever developed and that system is, of course, the internet.”

    Egypt took the first step in setting up a .misr registry when it filed its application last month. Next, ICANN must ensure that the country, like any other organization applying for a registry, will be able to manage it.

    The organization must prove that they have the financial backing and technical know-how to get the registry up and running; the last thing ICANN wants to see is a section of the internet becoming inaccessible because the registry isn’t up to the task.

    ICANN must also decide if the new registry could somehow create confusion among users. For example, an application for a .kom registry would likely be rejected since it is too similar to .com.

    The application process is expected to take a few months.

    Assuming there are no problems with the application, “it will not have a clear and sudden impact. It will take time until the end user can realize the impact, it will take time to see tens of thousands of names registered in Arabic under .misr."

    Kind regards,
    Nilgun Birgoren
    • 27 Dec 2009, 5:20 pm