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Polyglot.net |
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Last December domain registrars the world over began accepting registrations
for double-byte domain names. Until now, domain names have been restricted
to standard ASCII characters, but the new domains allow names in Japanese,
Korean, and Traditional and Simplified Chinese characters as well.
Proponents claim that double-byte domain names will help break down language
barriers, increase the amount of multilingual content on the Internet, and
make it easier for non-English speakers to use the Net. I admit that I am
rather cynical by nature, but as far as I can tell, these new domains serve
only to line the pockets of the domain registrars and provide no substantive
benefit to the Internet community.
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The Cash Machine |
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Contrary to the claims of some proponents, restricting domain names to ASCII
letters, numbers and a few punctuation marks is not a linguistic or cultural
issue. It is simply a way of ensuring interoperability. Just about every
international standard in existence, from ISO country designations to
airport call letters, restricts itself to similar characters.
The characters in question can be entered using almost any computer system
on the planet and, as such, they represent a least common denominator. The characters do, of course, come from English alphabet, but you would be hard pressed to convince any Japanese that "Mitsubishi" is not a Japanese word, or that entering www.mitsubishi.com into a browser is anything but trivial. In fact, to enter Mitsubishi's double-byte domain requires that it first be entered in ASCII letters and then converted to Japanese characters. The new domains are actually harder to use in that sense.
The winners here are not non-English-speaking Internet users, but the domain
name registrars. Companies who held ASCII domains are now forced to register
multiple double-byte variants to protect their brands. As a result, the
registration of these new domains has proceeded with all the clam and order
of a gold rush.
Over a million domains were registered in the first month at prices ranging
from $35 to $100/year. Keep in mind that these figures are not a one-time
charge. The domain holders will have to pay a like amount each and every
year to maintain the rights to those domains. And, if that were not enough
guaranteed annual revenue, Network Solutions has announced that it will soon
be accepting domain registrations in Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic. More
languages will follow whenever they feel the need to add a few hundred
million dollars in recurring revenue to their bottom line.
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No Harm Done? |
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It's rather tempting to shrug this whole thing off as one big corporation
squeezing other big corporations for relatively paltry sums. However, there is a bigger issue here. We might be seeing the beginning of the Balkanization of the Internet.
Removing the least common denominator requirement effectively partitions off
portions of the Internet. I can't even give examples of the new domain names
because most of my readers' will be unable to display them, let
alone visit them. Sites using a double-byte domain will be effectively
unreachable by the majority of Internet users.
It can be argued that this is not a problem since a web site with a Japanese
domain name will be in Japanese, but current trends speak against that
claim. More and more sites are multilingual. I suppose a different domain
could be used for each language supported, but I fail to see any advantage
in such a scheme.
The Internet, however, is more than the Web, and it certainly seems likely
that employees of a Japanese company with a double-byte domain name will
need to communicate with a someone whose computer does not support Japanese.
Likewise, there will be those outside Japan who will want to download a file
from a Japanese FTP server. Double-byte domains will make this difficult.
Fortunately, for the moment, the new domain names do not work with email or
FTP.
The most amazing aspect of the Internet, that from which all else springs is
ease and freedom of communication: The ability for a person in Minsk to
communicate with someone in Osaka, Dallas, Seoul or Johannesburg.
Double-byte domain names hinder this ability since they can only be entered
by computers running a specific language. Extensive use of these new domains
will effectively prevent communication between individuals who find
themselves behind the walls of their national domain name schemes. Hardly
the World-Wide Web we have come to know.
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