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Non-Latin scripts approved for Web addresses

The nonprofit body that oversees Internet addresses yesterday approved the use of Chinese, Hebrew, Hindi and other scripts not based on Latin characters in a decision that could make the Web dramatically more inclusive.

The board of the Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted to allow such scripts in so-called domain names at the conclusion of a weeklong meeting in Seoul.

The decision by the board’s 15 voting members was unopposed and welcomed by applause and a standing ovation. It followed years of debate and testing.

The result clears the way for governments or their designees to submit requests for specific names, likely beginning Nov. 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 said.

“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 chief executive officer, 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 ads.

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

Many people online use languages that have writing systems entirely different from English, French, German, Indonesian, Swahili and others that use Latin characters. 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.

In other Internet news from Seoul, news reports said yesterday that the North Korean government was the source of high-profile cyberattacks in July that caused Web outages in South Korea and the US.

The IP address that triggered the Web attacks was traced back to the North’s Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, the chief of Seoul’s National Intelligence Service reportedly told lawmakers.

The ministry leased the IP address from China, Won Sei-hoon told lawmakers on Thursday, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper and Yonhap news agency reported.

The spy agency declined to confirm the reports, while the Unification Ministry said it could not comment on intelligence matters.

The July attacks caused outages on prominent government-run sites in the US and South Korea.
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