Archive for the ‘Blogs’ Category

gTLD Strategy: International Relations

Here on gTLD Strategy, we spend a lot of our time talking about English-language gTLDs, mostly because that’s the language we speak best. The FairWinds staff dabbles in Spanish, Korean, French, Arabic, Chinese, and even Polish, but you could say English is our forte. But, of course, ICANN’s New gTLD Program is not limited to […]

MEP Slams Bulgarian Govt for Falling Behind with Cyrillic Internet Domains

Bulgaria’s government is failing to facilitate the process for the introduction Internet domains in Cyrillic, Bulgarian Member of the European Parliament Ivaylo Kalfin declared after meeting the ICANN management in DC. “The unwillingness of the Bulgarian government to provide arguments and to enter into a dialogue is an obstacle for the country and the EU […]

Insecurity Complex

On Friday, the Financial Times published an article exploring the role that governments have been assuming in cyber security.  At one point while discussing the relationship between the U.S. government and ICANN, the article makes the somewhat misleading assertion that “American control over the administration of the web is slipping.”  In reality, since ICANN signed […]

“.中国” Now Accessible From Outside China

CNNIC has yesterday announced that “.中国” country-code Top-Level-Domain is now ready and accessible from outside China. One example website is CNNIC’s URL in Chinese: http://中国互联网络信息中心.中国/ as well as 新浪.中国 IDN stands for Internationalised Domain Name, and refers to any domain names that contains non ASCII character. ICANN’s IDN ccTLD Fast track process aims to introduce country […]

Sri Lanka and Thailand join ranks of countries getting their own ccTLD in their own language.

ICANN has delegated five more internationalized domain names for top level country code domain names. Yesterday the ICANN board approved a resolution delegating two top level domains for Sri Lanka and one for Thailand: Delegation of IDN ccTLDs: 1. Sri Lanka Whereas, Sri Lanka is a country currently listed in the ISO 3166-1 standard. Whereas, […]

Bulgaria to file ICANN reconsideration appeal over rejected IDN ccTLD

Bulgaria is to appeal ICANN’s rejection of .бг, the Cyrillic version of its existing country code top-level domain, .bg. Technology minister Alexander Tsvetkov said that the Bulgarian government will file a reconsideration request with ICANN, according to a DarikNews.bg interview. The requested IDN ccTLD .бг was rejected because it looks quite a bit like Brazil’s […]

Should an IDN be part of your strategy?

If your company reaches, or plans to reach, non-Latin script language countries, then perhaps you should think of registering an International Domain Name. The first four completely non-Latin top-level domains went live in May in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Russia (More information). It means that now, a website where the content […]

The Ruler of Dubai Launches First Website with Arabic IDN

The ruler of Dubai has made use of the establishment of non-Latin characters in domain names. محمد-بن-راشد.امارات Dubai leader Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid has become the first Arab leader to take advantage of the introduction of non-Latin characters in the titles of web addresses, which became available earlier this month. Following the growing use of […]

One Andrew Mack: Big Cheer for ICANN – But Still a Way’s from Our “Gooool”

As we approach the World Cup in South Africa this June it’s heartening to see the amount of attention being paid to the continent. As with ICANN’s recent Nairobi meeting, the eyes of the world are focusing on Africa in a new way—as a sophisticated marketplace, and as a destination for investment, technology, and yes, […]

IDN Scaremongering: Mashable and Times Online Screw Up

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) might be a slightly “hot” topic at the moment following on from ICANN’s launch of the IDN country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) program recently.

However, IDNs are NOT a new topic.

Far from it.

They’ve been around for quite some time.

Unfortunately neither The Times Online or Mashable seem to have done any homework. Considering the amount of content available on IDNs that has been researched and actually proven—you know, factual information, it’s pretty amazing that not one, but two respected online publications manage to get something so completely wrong.

Andrew from Domain Name Wire explains very succinctly why both Mashable and The Times are wrong.

As anyone who actually bothers doing a bit of research into IDNs could tell you, the IDN projects have been discussed at length and from every imaginable angle.

Do the authors of those two articles honestly think that the DNS community hadn’t thought about potential phishing problems?

Do they think we’re all idiots?

It’s not as if we ever have to deal with phishing or any other DNS related attacks is it?

We’re just misinformed observers, like them, aren’t we?

And here I was thinking that The Times was a quality publication…

Oh well, back to the drawing board I guess.

Written by Michele Neylon, MD of Blacknight Solutions