Asian language Web names seen sowing conflicts
By Eric Lai
LOS ANGELES, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Internet names in Asian
languages ending in the coveted ".com" were criticised on
Monday at a meeting of the Internet's governing board for being
technically premature and encouraging a new wave of
cyber-squatting.
VeriSign Inc.'s <VRSN.O> Global Registry Services, which
oversees all Internet addresses such as ".net" and ".org"
except those ending in country codes, last week began accepting
registrations using Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters.
Proponents say that VeriSign's system will speed the
take-up of the Web outside the English-literate world.
For instance, in China, many popular Web sites are named
after significant number combinations. One of China's most
popular Web sites is an eBay-type auction site called 8848.net
- 8848 is a play on the height of Mount Everest in metres and
the lucky number eight, which sounds like prosperity in
Chinese.
Web addresses were generally limited to the 26 letters of
the English alphabet, 10 numerals and a hyphen. With VeriSign's
system, the multi-lingual addresses are still half in English,
using the final ".com" or ".gov" suffix.
Companies that specialise in selling Web domain names
reported strong initial demand for Asian language Web site
names last week. Register.com, a US-based company, said it had
received thousands of applications, both from Asia and from the
United States.
But some attendees at the annual meeting of the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said introducing
Asian-language domain names now could prove disruptive to an
increasingly-overburdened domain name system, as well as being
confusing for users. That could lead to misdirected e-mail,
disappearing Web sites, and more.
TOO MANY TECHNOLOGIES
"Too many technologies are confusing. It could cause a big
mess," said Qian Hualin, deputy director of the China Network
Information Center (CNNIC), the semi-governmental group which
oversees Web addresses in China ending in ".cn."
CNNIC has also launched a similar service letting people
register Web sites in Chinese language. This service, as well
as similar moves by Korea's Internet administrator, in effect
offer a competing system that allows the whole address,
including the suffix, to be written using no English.
The Chinese government, along with the Internet Society, a
U.S.-based non-profit group, criticized the introduction of
VeriSign's multilingual service.
The Internet Society put out a strongly worded statement,
calling VeriSign's current testing "premature under the
technical standards of the Internet" and asking it to delay its
launch until its engineering group works out compatibility
standards.
That's a charge that security software maker VeriSign,
which entered the Web domain business when it bought Network
Solutions earlier this year for $20 billion, disputes.
SYSTEM GLITCH-FREE
The Internet Society's "concerns are not warranted," said
Brian O'Shaughnessy, a spokesman for VeriSign.
He acknowledged that VeriSign's technical infrastructure
allowing domain names to be translated back and forth between
English and other languages was still buggy, but said the
system would be glitch-free by its expected launch by year end.
"We don't want to hurt the Net in any way," he said. "No
e-mails will get lost."
What's at stake are millions - if not billions - in dollars
of revenue from the increasingly-lucrative business of signing
up Web sites. For instance, sales of domain names and related
services made up an estimated half of VeriSign's $173.1 million
in revenue in its third quarter ended September 30.
Besides Web addresses that end in country codes, such as
".uk" for the United Kingdom, there are currently seven
top-level domain names. But ICANN's board of directors this
week will rule on the addition of a number of new Web domains.
Proposed ones include .kids, .geo, .xxx and others.
Critics say those possible new domain names, along with the
just-introduced multilingual domain names, highlights VeriSign
and ICANN's inadequate policies to prevent cybersquatters -
people who buy up Web site names in the hopes of auctioning
them off later for high prices.
"First come and first serve is the wrong way to approach
it," said Naseem Javed, an expert on corporate trademarks and
branding. Creating new foreign language domain names will
"multiply the problem."
((--Eric Lai, San Francisco bureau, 1 415 677-3919))
REUTERS
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