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Sporkman
October 26th, 2009, 01:54 PM
Internet set for change with non-English addresses

* By KELLY OLSEN, AP Business Writer - Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:58AM EDT
SEOUL, South Korea -

The Internet is set to undergo one of the biggest changes in its four-decade history with the expected approval this week of international domain names — or addresses — that can be written in languages other than English, an official said Monday...

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20091026/ap_on_hi_te/as_tec_internet_names_1

Giant Speck
October 26th, 2009, 03:15 PM
Um... English isn't the only language to use Latin letters.

Sporkman
October 26th, 2009, 03:19 PM
Um... English isn't the only language to use Latin letters.

Correct and irrelevant.


One of the key issues to be taken up by ICANN's board at this week's gathering is whether to allow for the first time entire Internet addresses to be in scripts that are not based on Latin letters. That could potentially open up the Web to more people around the world as addresses could be in characters as diverse as Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Hindi and Cyrillic — in which Russian is written.

(Edit: Never mind - I see you are citing the title as inaccurate - I agree.)

Bölvaður
October 26th, 2009, 03:26 PM
Um... English isn't the only language to use Latin letters.

I dont see how this is relevant to the OP. I see how this comes very close to it, but Latin Letters != A-Z and 0-9
Currently you cannot have naïve.com
Most languages use extra letters, they might have latin lettes like a but they also might have letters like á and å.

This is a great change.
Now finally people can use use the letters they use, not only a very limited number of letters.

JillSwift
October 26th, 2009, 03:40 PM
Wow. It's about time!

tom66
October 26th, 2009, 04:07 PM
Non-Latin characters have been allowed for a while, but only using special encodings (namely PunyCode). And, at the base of it all, it's still a Latin name e (ASCII printable), just using some agreed upon translation into Unicode.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode

But this opens up loads of security issues.

Can you tell the difference from these addresses?

pаypal.com
paypаl.com
pаypаl.com
рayрal.com
paypal.com
рaypal.com
payрal.com

They are all unique. One is the genuine article.

Bölvaður
October 26th, 2009, 06:23 PM
Can you tell the difference from these addresses?

pаypal.com - a¹
paypаl.com - a²
pаypаl.com - a¹ + a²
рayрal.com - p¹ + p¹
paypal.com -
рaypal.com - p¹
payрal.com - p²


the only way there could be security issue is if people see a link that looks like paypal and click it, without scam protection in their webbrowser.

the fix it man
October 26th, 2009, 06:26 PM
Gone all out for this one :p