ICANN Allows Non-Latin Domain Names

Following the US government’s decision to loosen its hold on The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the internet regulating body has accelerated its moves towards a multilateral strategy by opening up the domain name system to non-Latin characters.

In a statement released this week, ICANN said that it has approved a new Internationalised Domain Name Fast Track Process by the organisation’s board. “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. “Right now Internet address endings are limited to Latin characters – A to Z. But the Fast Track Process is the first step in bringing the 100,000 characters of the languages of the world online for domain names.”

Set to launch on the 16 November, the fast track process will allow countries to apply for internet addresses which are made up of characters in their own language rather than the Latin alphabet. ” This is only the first step, but it is an incredibly big one and an historic move toward the internationalisation of the Internet ,” said Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s president and chief executive. “The first countries that participate will not only be providing valuable information of the operation of IDNs in the domain name system, they are also going to help to bring the first of billions more people online – people who never use Roman characters in their daily lives.”

While it might sound potentially straightforward to include other characters in domain names, ICANN claims the process has actually taken years of technical testing and development to make it possible. “Our work on IDNs has gone through numerous drafts, dozens of tests, and an incredible amount of development by volunteers since we started this project. Today is the first step in moving from planning and implementation to the real launch,” said Tina Dam, ICANN’s senior director for IDNs. “The launch of the Fast Track Process will be an amazing change to make the Internet an even more valuable tool, and for even more people around the globe.”

ICANN and the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration signed a permanent agreement on 30 Sept giving the international global community and the private sector more control over the Internet’s global domain naming system. The agreement allows ICANN to continue to manage the Internet’s DNS while agreeing to a series of review processes to help ICANN assess and improve its mission and operations.

The move follows calls from the European Commission earlier this year to cut the tight ties between ICANN and the US Department of Commerce. EU commissioner Viviane Reding called on US authorities, and President Obama in particular, to make ICANN a standalone company but open to international scrutiny. “I trust that President Obama will have the courage, the wisdom and the respect for the global nature of the internet to pave the way in September for a new, more accountable, more transparent, more democratic and more multilateral form of Internet Governance,” Reding said in a video message.

As well as opening up domains to non-Latin characters, ICANN also plans to open up a potentially infinite number of new generic top level domains (gTLDs) – allowing “dot-anything”, alongside existing domains such as dot-com and others in the pipeline, such as the much-contested dot-eco. Before potential owners can apply, they must wait for a guidebook, the third draft of which (DAG3) is imminently due, and will firm up ICANN policy on trademarks and other issues arising from the new domains.