Posts filed under 'domaining'

“Go East, Young Man!” Landrush is Very Strong!

DotAsia’s First Day of Landrush
By Chuck Kisselburg

I recently had a brief chat with Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia regarding DotAsia’s first day of Landrush. There was no doubt why Edmon was upbeat as DotAsia reported 266,663 applications received on the first day of DotAsia’s Landrush program. 266,663!!!! That is double what Edmon was expecting! This brings the total of applications received for domain names since Pre-Sunrise, Sunrise, the Pioneer Programs and the first day of Landrush up to 298,861 applications received.

Since fall of last year I have been hearing a small but persistent undercurrent from the domainer community that the domains will mainly be from North America and Europe, thus “basically” nullifying the true reason of DotAsia; being a gTLD that will happen to foster business and development within the rather expansive and diverse Asian region. While 40% came from North America and 24% came from Europe, over 35% of the applications came from Asia. Rough calculations show that over 93,000 applications were received from Asia alone – ON THE FIRST DAY! With respect to that small amount of skepticism, my thought is imagine the number of Asia-region-based applications that would have arrived had IDNs been in use. As mentioned in a previous blog post of mine, “.asia” IS a social networking goldmine; especially with the eventual rollout of IDNs.

So my congratulations to continued success of the DotAsia team. You can read more about DotAsia’s first day of Landrush through their recent press release.

Add comment February 25th, 2008

IDNs on the…. “Fast Track”?

By Chuck Kisselburg

With ICANN’’s conference in New Delhi behind us now (February 10th – 15th) the topic of IDNs was one of the hot topics of this conference. In fact, New Delhi was a great place to showcase the progress of IDNs for several reasons.

1). India has 22 “official” languages.
2). India is part of a dynamic region, a region with MANY languages (portions of the Middle East, Southern Asia as well as Southeast Asia.). Not only does this region support a large number of varied languages, it has an even greater number of diverse cultures.

Being that IDNs will prove to have a significant impact to the whole global Internet community, my next couple of posts will focus around IDNs and what it means to members of the ICANN “community”. As such I have asked a couple of members of our “community” about their thoughts on the subject.

Through my previous writings you know that I am keenly in favor of IDNs since I see the value this can bring to the local “community”. In other words, I see IDNs bringing a whole new social aspect to users of the Internet, helping to increase this global community. While some feel IDNs are a way for registrars, and ICANN, finding a way to obtain more money, and others feel IDNs dilute the very reason of the Internet, that being bringing people together, what I appreciate most about IDNs is the impact this will have in preserving cultures. Who better to be aware of the many cultures of this globe than this community of ours?

Then there are applications. Will applications be IDN “aware”? For more information on this, please visit my previous blog post on practical implications of IDNs.

I approached my first ICANN conference in LA with great enthusiasm about IDNs. I had a great time meeting members of this global community and enjoyed listening to what they had to say. When it came to IDNs, however, it is an understatement to say I received an ear full, especially when talking about IDNs being on ICANN’s “fast track”.

The topic of IDNs is not new. In fact, this is something people within our global community have been working towards for years. There is no doubt that much needs to be considered when moving forward with IDNs, but on the “fast track”? At the LA conference ICANN was demoing concepts of how IDNs can work. This is not a fast track?

As mentioned earlier, when I talked with people at the conference (regular attendees as well as sitting committee members) I received an earful about the topic of “IDNs” and “fast track”. It seems the same word kept coming up in each conversation: “China”.

What I learned was China has been working on an initiative to bring Internet connectivity to as many residents of China as possible – even down to the small towns throughout the country. When you think of China’s population, our global online community will thus be expanding at an unprecedented rate. What impact would this have on the stability of the root servers? Hmmmmm…… In fact, as I continued to listen to those at the LA conference, China was moving forward, even if it meant they would manage and own their own root servers, with or without ICANN’s involvement. So it appears that what “fast track” movement on IDNs we have seen from ICANN appears to be due to China’s initiative and progress. If China moves forward on its own with its own root server(s) would it send today’s root servers into a state of imbalance? What if China refuses to sign ICANN’s “Mutual Responsibilities Agreement” outlining mutual responsibilities on the operation of root servers; as ICANN recently entered into with the Internet Systems Consortium? What impact would this have on ICANN if China moved forward on its own and operated a version of the Internet that was not under the authority of ICANN? What would this do to ICANN and mean for the current global online community?

2 comments February 19th, 2008

Domainer Industry Alive and Thriving at T.R.A.F.F.I.C.

By Chuck Kisselburg

ICANNWiki.org

Last week I attended T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East, held just north of Miami. The brainchild of Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu the conference was very well attended by domainers, parking firms, registrars and other companies from around the globe. While this is T.R.A.F.F.I.C.’s ninth conference, the success of this conference continues to underline the need for organized conferences for this segment of the Internet industry. New to the family is John Epp, T.R.A.F.F.I.C.’s new Executive Director.

As with my blog after the Domain Roundtable, this conference was made up of a solid group of entrepreneurs.

The format of T.R.A.F.F.I.C. continues to be seminars with industry experts along with healthy amounts of time set aside for networking and developing relationships/partnerships. The conference ended with an auction of domains.

In attending the sessions and talking with people during each of the networking events, I heard a couple of themes:

1). Transparency

2). Development

3). Code of ethics

4). Representation

1). Transparency: There appears to be a growing need within the domainer community for there to be greater transparency with the parking companies. The reason behind this is as Google and Yahoo have driven down the costs associated with advertising clicks, owners of parked domains are, on an average, seeing decreasing revenues on their investments. The only thing this points to are the parking companies and how much money might be staying with these companies. As such parking companies are seeing the need for becoming more transparent regarding costs associated with managing parked domains.

2). Development: Almost every domainer at the conference wishes to develop, where possible, their domains. Realistically it will be difficult for a domainer to develop all of their domains as it takes time and resources to develop even one domain. Think of development as creating and executing a business plan. Also note that while some may think of a domainer as owning huge amounts of domain names, in truth there are domainers present who own a small number. However, everyone sees the value of developing their domains. True, it does increase the value of their domain, but people really want to utilize their domains where they are actually providing value to the end user.

I had the pleasure of talking with quite a few people at this conference and found those in attendance spanned the gamut of domaining and development. On one extreme I talked with one person who is all about domain tasting. He “tastes” anywhere from 35,000 to 40,000 domains a day. On the other extreme a former CEO, who has a small portfolio of domains, wishes to create a full blown business with each domain. With the exception of the one domain taster in attendance, everyone wanted to develop their domains as much as possible. I also heard LOUD AND CLEAR that people are really against the concept and practice of domain tasting.

3). Code of ethics: As this community continues to evolve, domainers, and the organizations that support them, feel they have been tainted by the activity of a minority, and that deals with “tasting”, “kiting” and “cybersquatting”. There is a strong current to help further define this community through the establishment of standards as well as a code of ethics. This means that not only should there be a code of ethics for domainers, there should also be a code of ethics for registrars and parking companies, with the goal being to set the standard as well as weed out those who don’t “pass the grade”.

4). Representation: There is a strong undercurrent that those of this community are not listened to by ICANN. When ever I ask a simple question about this I can usually get blasted with a cadre of examples. You can tell the frustration level is quite high. There is work to be done, but I strongly feel that with open communication ICANN and the domainer community can work together. Aside from ICANNWiki being able to provide a platform for communication among those who fall within the overall ICANN community, the Internet Commerce Association, or the ICA, has gained heavy support from the various groups attending T.R.A.F.F.I.C. to be the official association to work with ICANN to ensure the domainer community is represented and heard. Personally speaking, I see the need for ICANN to have representation at each of these domainer conferences as this can only help continue the conversations and mutual education.

For those reading this blog who don’t live within the domainer’s world, here are a couple of blogs to view:

Frager Factor

Conceptualist.com

Seven Mile

Ron Jackson’s Blog

Whizzbangsblog.com

Rick’s blog

Jay Westerdal’s blog

The keynote speaker to the conference was Steve Forbes. Steve’s speech centered around the entrepreneurial spirit and how such spirit created turbulence over the centuries, however, each time such entrepreneurs help define the industry. The domainer community is in such a space where they are working in a world that is still very young, helping to create and shape the industry.

One of the “Ah-Ha” moments for me was hearing where one organization, who has a sizeable domain portfolio, found it best to “park” their domains due to the “traditional” way the financial world views the domainer world. In other words, investors don’t look at the “value” of what developed domains can bring. Instead investors look at the historical data of what domains have sold for as well as what money the domains are bringing in today. Thus, when working with the financial world, it appears best to park domains instead of develop the domain.

As mentioned earlier, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. continues to grow, thus showing the need for such events. It was mentioned today that Fabulous.com will be the first organization to be a licensee of T.R.A.F.F.I.C. and is now slated to hold a T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in Australia in November of 2008.

1 comment October 17th, 2007

Domain Name Alliance Registry Formed.

The Domain Name Alliance Registry Inc. (“Alliance Registry”) is a newly formed joint venture between two leaders in the Internet domain space: registrar GoDaddy.com, Inc. and registry Afilias USA, Inc., an Afilias Limited company.

Both Go Daddy and Afilias are technology and domain name industry marketing pioneers that are combining their expertise to create a new entity that will provide leading stewardship for critical TLDs that must be managed and marketed professionally.

Most recently, Alliance Registry has put forth a proposal to manage the usTLD in response to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s request for quotations.

Read the text of the press release announcing Go Daddy and Afilias’ partnership here.

Media contact

Members of the media should contact Alliance Registry atpress@dnalliance.us or George Attalah at Qorvis Communications Tel: +1.202.448.3147 or Email: gatallah@qorvis.com

News

2007.08.15

Alliance Registry’s solution will close a security holes in kids.us and enhance content delivery. more…

2007.08.08

Alliance Registry has put forth a proposal for usTLD that will improve DNS security and stability, enhance registry system security, and implement anti-phishing mechanisms. more…

2007.08.07

The public needs a clear and accurate description of what “quality” registry stewardship really means for a top-level domain like the usTLD. more…

Community Responsibility

By Chuck Kisselburg
ICANNWiki.org

While at the Domain Roundtable Conference in Seattle last month I was listening to someone from Canada talk about ccTLDs and how the .ca extension has grown in adoption over the years. While ccTLDs have been most heavily adopted in the UK and Germany, this gentleman was pleased to see how .ca was being adopted within his country. The main reason for such adoption is due to the amount of marketing that went into .ca awareness.

What does that really mean? Community? Why is it important and why we (the collective “we”) have responsibility for our communities.

Last week I was in Whistler for a week. Being an American, when I use the net I rarely see .us used anywhere. Instead I am personally used to using .com, .net, .org, .gov and .fm. So, while on this trip to the north I thought this would be a good opportunity to “notice” and be “aware” of .ca.

The social networking enthusiast that I am, I am not one who is shy when talking with people. Yes, Whistler caters to a world-wide clientele of all economic strata. In order to get a feel for .ca awareness I talked with only those who were local to the village. I talked with six people, all of which were from various backgrounds and ages. Three were in the 20-30 year age range while the other three where in the 40-60 age range.

What I found were those in the older age range pretty much relied on .com for all of their needs, except for one individual whose visits to the Internet were primarily sports related. If sports related, it was all .ca for this person. Else, everyone within the older age group felt that if they landed on a .ca site it was because the .com for that domain name had been taken by some other organization.

As for the younger age group, the message was consistent. If they were looking for something they knew was a Canadian company they would always start with .ca, even if they were searching for the URL. If an organization they were looking for were more global in nature, they knew to look for .com. All voiced that similar opinion very matter-of-factly, as if, “Why would it be anything else?”.

When looking around I found the following:

When watching a baseball game between Baltimore and Toronto, hosted in Toronto, I saw advertisements for Expeidia.ca and Toyota.ca. Yet on one of the signs in Toronto’s Rogers Centre ballpark was www.bluejays.com. When going to that site the URL actually resolves to http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=tor. Just as I thought, the “Blue Jays” team is a franchise of the Major League Baseball; an American organization.

Other sites I noticed were:

www.vancouver-2010.com (saw printed on material, but while still under construction, www.vancouver-2010.ca works well.)
www.whistler.com (for visitors)
www.whistler.ca (for locals)
www.vancouver.com (for visitors)
www.vancouver.ca (for locals)
www.Translink.bc.ca (local Vancouver transit network)
www.BCFerries.com (local BC ferry system, however when using my trusty browser I see they also have www.BCFerries.ca.)
www.shaw.ca (Canadian cable provider. I found it interesting they use ONLY the .ca extension.)

I would also see “.ca” this and “.com” that on various delivery trucks. From my perspective, as a casual viewer, there was no rhyme or reason. As this world continues to shrink, think of what people face as they trot the globe!

My favorite coffee house in the village is, what I thought was a Canadian enterprise only. True, they are headquartered in Canada, but they also have franchises in the UAE, China and Japan. Perfect for localization of sites, right? Nope. .com all the way.

Being in Whistler I thought I would head to Panasonic’s site as they are one of the sponsors for the 2010 Olympics that are to be held in Vancouver and Whistler. Here you have this huge, global company, but sure enough I found site localization for MANY countries. My favorites inclue:
Panasonic-Canada (http://panasonic.ca/)
Panasonic-Middle East (http://panasonic.ae/PMM/english/home.aspx)
Panasonic-China (http://panasonic.cn/)
Panasonic-Australia (http://panasonic.com.au/)

In talking with a person from the UK who’s job used to include localizing various sites for his organization’s international audience, commented that some people who were savvy about the site localization would understand that such localized sites would sell products based on their target country’s currency system. What this meant is they were finding some people would go to the localized site that offered the best exchange rate when purchasing their goods, such as computer systems. Talk about savvy bargain hunting! Companies, however, are becoming savvy to this practice and are focusing the purchase price based on the currency to either where the product is being shipped or the billing location of your credit card.

What I thought was nice, however, is when I would open up my browser, my Google home page allowed for searching in Canada only, if I so desired. When going to Google directly, it was no longer “Google” but “Google Canada”. Personally I thought that was a nice touch. I felt that it catered to me, giving me options I did not have previously. Somehow I felt like part of the Canadian “clique”.  Eh?

Thinking back to my conversation with the person from Canada at the Domain Roundtable Conference in Seattle, saying that .ca has grown due to a rather large advertising effort, I couldn’t help but wonder who such advertisement was targeted towards, locals or organizations?

So, what does all of this mean? To me localization is, and will continue to be a mixed bag for locals and visitors alike. However, such localization helps foster community. Within every community you will find people who, on one side think of “What’s in it for me” while those on the other side will make decisions based on what’s right for the community; hence community responsibility.

When talking with the Whistler locals, especially those in the younger age group who were very familiar with .ca, you could tell there was a sense of pride in how they talked. From my perspective I would look at this as an opportunity to gain a better sense of the country I was visiting. I also found I had a greater appreciation for organizations that take that extra step to do what they didn’t have to do and that was to spend the time and money for site localization for the countries they serve.

Community responsibility. How do you foster community responsibility? Developing and growing communities is never easy. However, making a sustained effort is necessary. DotAsia will soon be launching the .asia TLD. Through their Pioneer Domains Program, they are working to have organizations come together with their proposals for how they will develop domain names under the .asia TLD, thus helping to form the .asia community. We should all carefully watch how the .asia community unfolds as we may find ourselves watching the creation of the mold for launching new communities in the future.

Add comment September 21st, 2007

Get Ready for the Vote!

As seen from an earlier post titled, “DotAsia Partners with ICANNWiki to Harness Online Community Participation for Pioneer Domains Program - Extends Program Deadline to 10 September“, the deadline for submitting a proposal for a .asia domain has ended. However, now the fun begins for others of the ICANN community! Soon you will be able to add your voice to the Pioneer Domains Program process, offered by DotAsia, by voting on what you feel is the best proposal. Check back soon to view the proposals and VOTE!

Add comment September 13th, 2007

Birthing a New TLD!

As we move forward with all of the stresses and commotion of our everyday lives, we need to be reminded that a new TLD will be available soon, that being “.asia”.

Change is always interesting and this will be no different. It will be interesting to see what impact .asia has not only within the domainers community, but within industry itself.

With respect to the process, I wanted to take a quick moment to look at the beginnings of .asia. While the official signing ceremony was held on 6 December, 2006 between ICANN and DotAsia a couple of events had to take place prior. Prior to the signing of the .asia Registry Agreement. DotAsia had to obtain support, file an application, that was reviewed by a non-ICANN review panel over a period of six sessions, a time for public comment and then the process where comments were addressed regarding the application for the .Asia gTLD. As you can see, “Compared to hundreds of emails articulating anxiety with regards to .ORG, .INFO and .BIZ registry agreements, there were only two emails expressing issues with the .asia contract from the public comments forum.”

When you think about the process, a lot of work goes into the “birthing” of a new TLD.

What are your thoughts on .asia?

Check back again when I post on how I see this community becoming a social networking goldmine!

Add comment August 27th, 2007

DotAsia Partners with ICANNWiki to Harness Online Community Participation for Pioneer Domains Program - Extends Program Deadline to 10 September

Great news!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Hong Kong, 24 August, 2007 — DotAsia, the registry operator of the “.Asia” Internet domain, today announced a landmark partnership with ICANNWiki, a grassroots domain collaborative website and industry resource for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) stakeholders, that will leverage the Web 2.0 web-based communities to expand online community participation for DotAsia’s .Asia Pioneer Domains Program.

This initiative marks the first time in the history of the Internet that the online public, including ICANN stakeholders from both inside and outside of ICANN, will play a major role in deciding who will be awarded the best cyber real estate in a domain, in this case, the new .Asia domain name. ICANN is responsible for managing the assignment of Internet domain names and addresses, including the introduction of new generic top-level domains.

At the same time, DotAsia said it will extend the application period for the Pioneer Domains Program to September 10, 2007.

“The partnership between the team at ICANNWiki and DotAsia enables greater participation from the overall community in the launch of .Asia. With this, DotAsia is again setting a new benchmark for community participation by managing the entire process in a more Web 2.0 way then a typical new domain registry,” said Dan Mendell, the Executive Director of ICANNwiki and the CEO of Neutral Space, Inc., the organization that maintains the Wiki for the ICANN community.

“A great promise of the Internet is the enablement of mass participation.  The partnership with ICANNwiki enables us to engage the community to express their thoughts on voting for the best creative ideas for the best .Asia domains,” said Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia.

“This sort of democratization has never been done before when there has been so much still on the table.” said Dan Mendell CEO of Neutral Space, Inc. “Edmon and his team are true believers in the .Asia domains and this sort of balanced commitment to the process shows that they really mean it.”

The online polling will be global through the ICANNWiki website www.ICANNWiki.org. Results will be maintained online and will provide input to the Pioneers Commission — the evaluation committee — in the consideration of Pioneer applications.

The posting of the Pioneer applications on the ICANNWiki website will also assist in the challenge process, enhancing the procedures for the allocation of domain names. In an announcement earlier, DotAsia has partnered with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Organisation a specialized agency of the United Nations dedicated to the maintenance of a balanced and effective international intellectual property system, to be the Challenge Resolution Provider for the Pioneer Domains Program.

The .Asia Pioneer Domains Program offers the ultimate first-mover advantage for brand development and e-commerce in Asia. Applicants are invited to submit a brief proposal for the domain of their choice and measures are in place to protect the rights of others and curb abusive registrations. This concept marks a departure from the conventional first-come-first-served allocation model to directly motivate the adoption and positive usage of the domain names. The best ideas win the right to operate the best .Asia domains. “This is the overall key to any rollout in business,” said Dan Mendell. “Anything you can do to kick off usage, verses encourage long term holding of the domain, is good for the registrar’s branding and good for it’s supporting community.”

After the deadline for the Pioneer Domains’ Program, the DotAsia organisation will launch the Sunrise (i.e. priority registration period for prior rights holders) registration of names for the .Asia domain on October 9, 2007.

To summarize some of the advantages of the Pioneer Domains Program over the Sunrise:

  1. Before the Sunrise begins, Pioneer applicants may propose the best .Asia domain names
  2. The Sunrise process requires evidential proof of rights in the form of Trademark registrations.  The Domain name applied for must match with the trademark. For the Pioneer Domains Program, applicants can apply for additional domain names such as common typos of a brand or variants that are commonly used but not trademarked. Brand owners can apply to use an abbreviation or variation of their brand as the chosen domain name, and the name thus applied for is not required to have a registered trademark.
  3. The .Asia sunrise process requires for a trademark to be applied for before certain cut-off dates.  For the Pioneer Domains Program, there is no such requirement, especially for common words and phrases.
  4. Applying for .Asia domains under the Pioneer Domains Program is free of charge. Trademark verification fees, which are required for Sunrise applications, will be waived by the DotAsia Organisation for the Pioneer Domains Program. Applicants under the Pioner Domains Program are however required to place a Marketing Commitment Deposit of US$10,000, and will be promptly refunded for marketing of the proposed businesses upon documented proof.
  5. DotAsia will work with Pioneers on co-marketing and other joint promotional activities, highlighting the commitment to the Asia community.

About DotAsia
The DotAsia Organisation is a not-for-profit community-based organisation incorporated in Hong Kong with a focused mission to operate the .Asia Registry.  It is the sponsoring organization and registry operator for the .Asia sponsored generic top level domain. The DotAsia Organisation has a purposeful mandate to direct surplus proceeds to initiatives that benefit the community in the region, such as projects to bridge the digital divide and regional research development projects.
About ICANNwiki.org
This fabulous resource was put together by ICANNWIKI Volunteers suach as Ray King amd Dan Mendell, with the belief that a public facing wiki could be a real benefit to the ICANN community At Large.  A wiki is a medium for “peer production”, where the act of building and using the site as a community will create a valuable common asset.  This “lasting work” made up of our industry’s collective intelligence can then be used to further the common mission of making the Internet a better place to live and work.  This site and all proceeds collected by the site are used to further these important goals

All DotAsia media queries please contact:
Amanda de Silva or Cherry Velarde at Upstream Asia, Tel: (852) 2973 0222.
Email: amanda.desilva@upstreamasia.com / cherry.velarde@upstreamasia.com

All  ICANNwiki.org media queries please contact:
Chuck Kisselburg (ICANNwiki Director) Tel: (503) 869-9025
Email: Chuck@ICANNwiki.org

Add comment August 27th, 2007

The Wild-Wild West of the Internet!

Last week I attended the Domain Roundtable Conference in Seattle. The conference focused on the owning and managing of domain names. In attendance were those who own domains, otherwise known as domainers, as well as the organizations who manage the portfolios of the domainers.

In a sense, this is where you meet the true cowboys and cowgirls of the Internet. I have heard people say of domainers that they are all about grabbing as many domains as possible with the goal being profits. Some people I talked with did not like the fact that there may be factors that may limit when they may acquire available domain names. In other words, every person for themselves! Thus should I screem, “Yeeeeha!“?

Yet as I sat through various sessions, I heard presenters discuss:

  • Establishing a business plan
  • Creating LLCs
  • Developing domain names to create greater value and branding
  • Apply for patents around developed domains
  • Domain name financing
  • Asset evaluation
  • Understand foreign legal and political structures when acquiring domain names with country code extensions
  • What is a domain name’s ROI?
  • Valuation metrics
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • Domain name portfolios
  • Exit strategies

The more I listened, the more I understood that domainers are not the lawless, wild-west figures some come to believe, but entrepreneurs. Yes, you can follow the link to “entrepreneur”, but within that post you will find the following:

An entrepreneur is someone who seeks to capitalize on new and profitable endeavors or business; usually with considerable initiative and risk.

There are some domainers who have been wildly successful in acquiring, developing and selling domain names, while others are just starting out – have a few domain names, but limited cash that prevents them from developing domains.

There is no doubt domain names equate with money. Just check Jay Westerdal’s blog on the auction, held at the end of the Domain Roundtable Conference, to gain a sense of the value of some domain names up for auction.

So is the Wild-Wild-West still alive on the Internet? I believe there is a bit of the Wild-West in every entrepreneurial venture/market. Are the domainers the “cowpoke” pushing the envelope regarding Internet “real estate”? I think so. Is this a bad thing? I think not, especially when domainers work to develop a brand/market for domain names owned. This is no different than a typical “Mom & Pop shop” trying to develop and grow their business. Now, for those out for pure personal greed such as the domain tasters, yes, I see no community value in such practice. However, my perspective is many good things have evolved by pushing the envelope.

What are your thoughts? Do you see domainers as traditional entrepreneurs? I would like to hear from you.

1 comment August 21st, 2007

Thoughts on ICANN’s IDN TLD Evaluation Deployment in the Root Zone

I just wanted to take a moment to look at the effort underway by ICANN regarding the program that enables the routine introduction of TLDs (Top Level Domain) with IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) labels.

I find this effort to be both ground-breaking as well as monumental in its overall concept. What this means is this program will pave the way for domain names to be internationalized, containing non-ASCII character sets. To me this speaks of the fact that domain names will contain character sets that may not be recognizable to other users on the net. From a pure social networking perspective, this can yield to a much more localized experience for Internet users; an experience that can possibly help foster cultural heritage.

True, the effort underway today is to test how DNS (Domain Name System) will accommodate such a change. The test will be to use the TLD of “.test” and localize “.test” in eleven different languages to see what effects this may have on the whole DNS structure. Through the use of “scripts”, words will be translated to their respective languages. One of the purposes of this test is to develop the process for quickly removing such IDN-based TLDs should the DNS structure become unstable. The scope of the immediate task at hand is well defined, manageable and will utilize a non-production DNS structure.

However, when examining the overall goal, think how monumental this task can be! Think of languages in general. How many languages will this effort eventually be able to support? Doing a quick scan of languages, I found one page that lists the “official” languages of India. As you can see, the list is as follows:

Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kasmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Meitei, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

However, another page lists the languages in India that are spoken by more than 1 million people of India. Those languages include:

Assamese, Awadhi, Bagri, Bengali, Bhili, Bhojpuri, Chhattisgarhi, Deccan, Dogri-Kangri, Garhwali, Gujarati, Haryanvi, Hindi, Ho, Kanauji, Kannada, Kashmiri, Khandesi, Konkani, Konkani(Gaonese), Kumaoni, Kurux, Lamani, Magahi, Maithili, Malayalam, Malvi, Marathi, Marwari, Meithei, Mundari, Nepali, Nimadi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sadri, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Tulu, Urdu

Hmmmmm…… So how many other languages of India are there that are spoken by less than 1 million people? Who will decide which language, or languages, to include for a specific country?

What about language nuances? While vacationing in Austria we ran across a German-Austrian dictionary. While to some that may appear perfectly fine, the astounding thing is both countries speak German! Although small it was amazing to see that there is enough of a difference between how either country uses German that there should be a German-Austrian dictionary.

Getting back to IDNs, it will be interesting to see what challenges arise when dealing with languages whose character sets contain non-ASCII characters.

One avenue to help maintain a stable DNS structure is to handle IDN-based TLDs through browsers utilizing scripts to translate the information into the structure we use today, instead of having DNS handle the translation. But getting back to the shear complexity of this simple statement, think of languages that are written from right to left. Think of languages that have difficulty with any character set translation. One item that came to mind were languages that use clicking sounds within their vocabularies, such as the ever popular Click Symbol. Imagine talking with someone over the phone and telling them to write down this URL! As stated in the draft proposal titled, IDN Application Evaluation Facilities, the “IDNA currently requires that a string of characters in a script written right-to-left neither begins nor ends with a combining mark. (A string of left-to-right characters may not begin with a combining mark either, but it may end with one.) The clearest example of resulting difficulty that has thus far been noted is with Dhivehi, the official language of Maldives. This is written in the Thaana script (in the Unicode range U+0780…U+07BF), which requires the addition of a combining mark to every base character. A vowel following a consonant is indicated with a combining mark, and special combinations are used to indicate consonants and double vowels in syllable final position.”

Also, what about the length of the word? Right now the longest TLD is six characters in length, that being .museum and .travel. While this has been extended to support larger words, we may find that language localization, especially if official country names are used, “… stored strings of up to the maximum of 63 characters require evaluation”. Can anyone recite the longest word in the English language? Does anyone KNOW the longest word in the English language? Well, here it is – all 1185 characters! Based on the context of this discussion I found it humorously ironic that the first message on that page is, “The correct title of this article is too long. Article title lengths must be less than 256 characters because of technical restrictions.” Hmmmmm… A shadow of things to come, perhaps?

The other monumental challenge I see is proper translation. First of all, type out a single paragraph, find a site that will do a free, on-the-spot translation for you. Next take the translated text and translate it back. Do you find the exact same paragraph/context that you originally typed? The other aspect is how organizations deliberately misspell words to appear “edgier”. Might this signal a move away from the deliberately misspelled words back to proper-spelled words? If so, imagine what impact this might have within the domainer’s world!

Yes, while this concept will start with the use of the mere word, “.test”, I feel the challenges and implications are nothing short of ground-breaking.

Check back as I will have another posting on the practical implications from the user’s perspective; a perspective from non-English speaking countries.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Please chime in as this is an open community. Discussion is healthy and we want to hear your opinions.

Add comment August 9th, 2007

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