ICANN is moving forward with plans to allow country-code Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). IDNs are domain names displayed in a language-specific, non-Latin script or alphabet, such as Chinese, Russian, Arabic, or Hebrew. The inclusion of country-code IDNs in the domain name system will enable countries and territories to offer domain names in their native languages to the more than 60 percent of internet users who are not English speakers. This change will also allow users of languages based on right-to-left scripts or users of languages based on non-alphabetic scripts, such as Mandarin Chinese, to participate.
The IDNs will initially be available as ccTLDs, such as .рф (Cyrillic for .RF or Russian Federation), if the IDN is based on non-Latin script(s) that are considered official in the corresponding country or territory. The registries will only be available to the governments and administrators of countries and territories listed in the ISO 3166-1 standard, or their designated representatives. After the requester for an IDN registry has been approved, the domain names will be available to the public for registration. It is anticipated that the first IDN registrations will become available in the middle of 2010, with each registry providing its set of rules and guidelines for registrations. While some countries may give existing ccTLD holders rights to the new IDN ccTLD, this will not be required.
Vol. 53, June 2010