<nettime> fred baker on international domain naming

["nettime's_roving_reporter" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>]

<http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/01/27/forget.asci.idg/index.html>   

The perils and promise of international domain naming

   January 27, 2000
   Web posted at: 9:54 a.m. EST (1454 GMT)
   
   by Fred Baker
   From...
   Network World Fusion 
   
   (IDG) -- This past week has seen a number of changes that could affect
   the Internet. Time-Warner and AOL have decided to combine content with
   delivery. Bill Gates is set to do what he really enjoys - making
   software products. And the market concluded that Y2K was not an issue
   by the time the date rolled around and is moving on. But the most
   important car in the Internet roller coaster may be rattling along
   half a world away.
   
   Several name registrars have decided that they are tired of trying to
   live with standard U.S. ASCII characters in domain names. At the same
   time, a grass-roots effort within the Internet Engineering Task Force
   hopes to develop an internationalized Domain Name System (iDNS).
   
   In Sweden, a service is selling domain names that use Swedish
   characters - the standard Roman alphabet plus a few extras with
   umlauts over them or slashes through them. In the People's Republic of
   China, two registrars are handing out Chinese character domain names
   using a proprietary format. For the locals in both places, this is a
   very desirable and important service. However, it has the insidious
   effect of isolating them just when communication technology promises
   to make traditional international barriers obsolete.
   
   The Chinese use a symbol for "crisis" that melds the characters for
   "danger" and "opportunity." What one makes of that is perhaps up to
   the person in the crisis: It is an opportunity for danger to have its
   way, or an opportunity to master danger by doing the right thing when
   the chips are down. Applied to the development of the
   internationalization of the DNS system, it's easy to see there is
   danger as well as vast opportunity.
   
   Let's talk about the dangers first. There are at least three
   categories: technical, market and legal. Technically, people using the
   Internet can communicate because computers can communicate. If the
   computers cannot communicate, the people can't talk. Legal issues
   arise because they expect to be able to talk. Market issues arise
   because when they cannot talk, they cannot participate in each other's
   economies.
   
   The domain name system - the distributed lookup scheme that allows us
   to have names such as "microsoft.com" and "intersim.co.uk" - works out
   for most of us primarily because all of our computers use it. You can
   send mail to me because your computer and mine both understand how to
   ask a common name service where to send the message. When the name
   servers stop understanding each other, those simple capabilities break
   down. If my name translates to my address, but my name server doesn't
   talk with yours, you can no longer access my Web site, send mail to
   me, open a voice-over-IP telephone call to me, or interact with me in
   any way. For you, I don't exist. This may not be a problem for you,
   but if I am trying to make my content available to you, to exchange
   mail with you or to offer you a service, it is a severe problem for
   me.
   
   Now, maybe you represent a market I don't want to participate in. If
   so, that's fine - we can't talk and we don't want to. But suppose
   someone does want to talk? My wife is planning a combined vacation and
   business trip to the South Pacific and needs to talk with travel
   consultants and tourist sites there. If they happen to be running a
   name service that serves them well but doesn't serve my wife, we will
   very likely not wind up spending money on the resorts and other
   services that use that name service. Why are they in business, if not
   to relieve us of some cash? Who does this serve? I have colleagues in
   Pacific Rim and Asian countries with whom I correspond regularly. If
   their names become inaccessible to me, does this promote cultural
   exchange?
   
   And then there are the legal difficulties these services represent to
   their customers that they have lost nothing and gained everything in
   going this route, and that their ideas will be accepted as
   international standards in the IETF. However, for the most part they
   are not talking with the IETF, or the folks who operate the name
   service. Proposals are on the table, and the discussion of an
   Internationalized DNS is moving along, but the promoters may or may
   not be a part of it, or aware of it. For the people who have purchased
   their names from these registrars, this constitutes a scam more than a
   service.
   
   Now let's talk about the vision. The biggest problem here is that, in
   some sense, these registrars are right. Their clients are already
   disenfranchised in some sense because they cannot correctly spell
   their own names using the standard name service. Providing these
   parties a way to name themselves in their own language and alphabet
   offers them the opportunity to join the global village on equal
   footing and communicate in languages that interest them with
   communities that interest them. They complain that the Internet is
   U.S.-centric, and in this sense, they are correct. Their primary
   markets are not necessarily global, but local, and being able to
   communicate locally helps them to promote local business relationships
   and personalities. For them to have to use the international standard
   name service is irksome. For me "pepsi.com" is very meaningful - it
   may be where I go when I want to know about Pepsi. For them, it is
   just as much an incoherent scribble as Chinese characters are for me.
   Why should they not be able to write names equally meaningful to them,
   their correspondents and their customers?
   
   The Internet is a global village, not just tearing down communication
   barriers, but disregarding them and blowing right past. Joining the
   global village is good, and customizing the village to its expanding
   set of occupants is important. What we need to do, however, is do this
   in a way that builds the whole village, rather than Balkanizing it
   into alleys and ghettos which do not understand each other and cannot
   communicate. The road forward for a working Internet is to decide
   together how to expand the domain name system and work together to
   make it happen. The road to chaos - I should say "the freeway" - is to
   force the issue using private schemes. We stand at the junction.
   
   
   � 2000 Cable News Network. All Rights Reserved.

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