[mulligan]

Domain names need room to grow
Agency discusses non-English addresses

By ANICK JESDANUN
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK -- New Internet addresses, including those entirely in foreign languages, are under review by a key oversight agency, although meetings this week in Puerto Rico are likely to conclude with more questions.

The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers scheduled several discussion sessions in San Juan on separate proposals to more rapidly expand the pool of domain name suffixes -- the ".com" part of an e-mail or Web address -- and to permit non-English characters for the first time.

Individuals and companies outside the United States long have clamored for non-English scripts, finding restrictive the current limitation to the 26 English letters, 10 numerals and the hyphen. Addresses partly in foreign languages are sometimes possible, but the suffix itself requires non-English speakers to type English characters.

Paul Twomey, ICANN's chief executive, said Monday that the organization expects a report or two on policy questions it would need to address before allowing such names.

For example, should the operators of China's ".cn" automatically be entitled to the Chinese version of that, ".com" and anything else in the language? What if operators of Taiwan's ".tw" want to claim it?

"Who gets the string? What's the string for? How many do you get for a country or territory?" Twomey said were the likely questions to be raised by ICANN's committees.

Engineers also will continue work on tests to make sure the non-English scripts won't disrupt users' ability to send e-mail and reach Web sites.

Meanwhile, ICANN has scheduled workshops to discuss procedures for additional domain suffixes in English. It would be the third major round and the first beyond a pilot since the system was created in the 1980s.

Under the procedures being considered, all applicants would go through an initial review phase during which anyone may raise an objection on such grounds as racism, trademark conflicts and similarity to an existing suffix.

For straightforward strings in which no objection is raised, approval would come within three months.

For example, should the operators of China's ".cn" automatically be entitled to the Chinese version of that, ".com" and anything else in the language?

Huh? What the hell ...