The Hindu News Update Service
News Update Service Saturday, November 3, 2007 : 0945 Hrs Sci. & Tech. Internet agency forms group to work on domain names New York (AP): A key Internet oversight agency has formed a working group to work on speeding the process of assigning addresses entirely in other languages. The decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers represents another step toward the approval of internationalised domain names, or IDNs, as early as next year. The working group will focus on developing a "fast-track" mechanism for domains for specific countries, such as the Chinese-character equivalent of China's ".cn" suffix. "The introduction of the IDNs is absolutely one of the most important changes to the domain name space since its inception," Vint Cerf said during his final meeting as ICANN chairman. "It's taken many years to get to the point where there is confidence that we understand how to do this." ICANN started technical tests on such suffixes last month, but work on policy questions is still preliminary. The organisation needs to grapple with how to assign such names and resolve any conflicts or complaints. For example, should the operators of China's ".cn" automatically be entitled to the Chinese version of that and ".com"? What happens when a competing organisation, such as Taiwan's ".tw" or a private company, wants to claim it? Those questions could take years to resolve so ICANN is looking at interim procedures that would apply to country-specific domains. The working group was tasked with figuring out how to develop that process. It is to provide a status report in time for ICANN's February To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
