The state of IDN at the start of 2007

[Edwin]

I guess beyond a certain point it's impossible to convince everyone, so I'll stop here as I've already explained the keyboard situation and shown how locals would type in Japanese. You're certainly entitled to your opinion.

Fortunately, potential customers for IDN.com won't need any convincing, since they're already used to doing things in their own language The primary challenge is finding those customers and explaining the IDN concept to them as it's not yet something which is widely known or understood.

BTW, as a little aside, the online advertising market in Japan is predicted to hit the yen equivalent of US$6.7 billion by 2010, up from US$3.2 billion in 2006. (Source: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/9407.asp ) A large part of that money will be spent on PPC ads, just like in the US or Europe, which bodes well for domain parking.

 

[stuff]

I guess beyond a certain point it's impossible to convince everyone, so I'll stop here as I've already explained the keyboard situation and shown how locals would type in Japanese. You're certainly entitled to your opinion.

Fortunately, potential customers for IDN.com won't need any convincing, since they're already used to doing things in their own language The primary challenge is finding those customers and explaining the IDN concept to them as it's not yet something which is widely known or understood.

BTW, as a little aside, the online advertising market in Japan is predicted to hit the yen equivalent of US$6.7 billion by 2010, up from US$3.2 billion in 2006. (Source: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/9407.asp ) A large part of that money will be spent on PPC ads, just like in the US or Europe, which bodes well for domain parking.

But please try to convince me, I have no problems with it.
Just I simply don´t see how they could work. Your points in this moment ar not very convincing. As I already did know that You can type in japanese and other languages, for me its hard do unerstand that people really change language or keyboards between typing address to address bar

 

[Edwin]

Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do to convince you since I can't find any other videos that show people typing and you don't accept (without additional "evidence") my first-hand experience gained from 11 years living in Japan.

Perhaps somebody else can find a more persuasive argument, but from my point of view it's a "fact" that people can and do type in the way that I explained every single day.

 

[bwhhisc]

Ok, I know that You can type in Japanese. That is not tht point! I am just saying IDN.com too much trouble

How much trouble is it to have to use a dictionary to look up a word in your native language, see what the equivalent is in English and type <that> word in?

IDN is all about "rebranding" existing websites to Native languages, and then having URLs in which everyone in that country can read, understand and remember. They have taken polls in Japan, and overwhelmingly people prefer to use native language urls.

If you were an advertiser in the US to English reading audience would you rather advertise:

клавиатуры.com OR Keyboards.com

европа.com OR Europe.com

ипотеки.com OR Mortgages.com

Now imagine seeing the word on a "Roadside" Billboard. How many people would know what it means?

How many non-Russian speakers would even be able to remember word, if they wanted to look it up later to even see what it means? If you were spending advertising $$$ would this be a good investment.

Now flip that around to easy to remember website names words people CAN read, understand and most important REMEMBER. Now you have something worth adverti$ing.

Up until now... there were ZERO options to use foreign language URLs and everyone had to use English, even though it took you to a "foreign language" website. In many cases people don't know what the URL means, they just see it as 'English letter' that takes them to a site in their native language.

There is virtually no "Type In" in most foreign languages because of these reasons. Most everything is bookmarked so they can find it. Hopefully with IDN we will see type-in become a part of their search habits.

 

[ChinaStar]

If I might be of any help whatsoever.

I work for a multinational Japanese based retailer at the moment and toggling between languages is a must because there is terminology at work that requires 4 character sets:

1. Katakana: English loaned words that are phonetically pronounced and spelled

2. Hiragana: Traditional Japanese alphabet (Phonetic) character sets

3. Kanji: Chinese based characters

4. English

To change between Japanese and English, like earlier said, is a capslock-like function that is located on all Japanese keyboards. It is one button.

To shift between the 3 types of Japanese character sets, is another button.

These buttons are usually located on the side of the space bar.

http://www.atmancomputer.com/catalog/images/Japanese-Keyboard_l.jpg

I understand it is difficult to understand how ingrained this process is in daily work life in Japan, but toggling between languages to us is about the same as how English speakers would toggle between caps and non caps.

This is almost the same for the Chinese keyboards, although it is simpler as there is only one set of native characters.

Naturally a DNAME solution however, would be best.

 

[Explorer]

But please try to convince me, I have no problems with it.
Just I simply don´t see how they could work. Your points in this moment ar not very convincing. As I already did know that You can type in japanese and other languages, for me its hard do unerstand that people really change language or keyboards between typing address to address bar

Q: How do the Japanese, Russians, Chinese, Koreans, etc email each other?

1. All of them speak perfect English, so all the emails are in English.
2. They don't use emails.
3. They switch keyboards because the email address is in "latin" and their email message is in native language. Been doing that for years. Got used to it by now.
4. They are not allowed to use email.

 

[DNWizardX9]

But please try to convince me, I have no problems with it.
Just I simply don´t see how they could work. Your points in this moment ar not very convincing. As I already did know that You can type in japanese and other languages, for me its hard do unerstand that people really change language or keyboards between typing address to address bar

Japanese people already have to keyboard switch constantly to switch between the three major writing systems. Adding .com to the end isn't such a biggie ;-)

 

[stuff]

That is nice.
But year after year you say it will start next year. SO far I have not seen anything that would back it up. Or have You?

 

[DNWizardX9]

Most of us started in Jan 2006 - What do you mean year after year? We have been claiming 2007 and beyond from the start.

 

[Bramiozo]

I have seen this ones.
Please tell me a normal guy who first changes keyboard language to IDN then he types in the word, then he has to change the language back to ACII and type in .com. Its too much trouble. Thats why it can`t work. Or am I wrong. I am just viewing it from my side. I would not to it.

AND that all for just one address to type in

Isn't it better to assume that a japanese speaker has his keyboard "set" to japanese by default, it would leave you with just one switch ?

I think we should not underestimate the effect of a negative outcome of the idn.idn testbed, negative as in the current names are not grandfathered in, although unlikely for practical reasons this uncertainty is imo a real barrier for current investors. A second but very important reason is the lack of idn-jurisprudence, just how current idn's are treated legally with regard to ascii-counterparts is unknown to a large extent and that also contributes to the popular notion that an idn-investment is still just a bet.

Unknown status of ownership in the near future and unknown legal status with regard to ascii-counterparts, this is a real problem and I don't think we should expect major activity in the aftermarket before anyone of these is resolved. The uncertainty in UDRP's is probably of lesser importance for the aftermarket for the simple reason that udrp's are vague by nature, you win some, you lose some.

I think these 2 idea's put the most pressure on healthy speculation, healthy as we saw with .mobi.

Sidestepping a bit, on idnforums we discussed the importance of insight in domain performance trends for the foundation of speculatory prices, to the end of creating a more consistent level of pricing. What's your opinion on that ?

 

[Manolete]

Good thread Edwin but please don't forget Spanish IDNs when you talk about major languages ;-)

 

[Edwin]

I think we should not underestimate the effect of a negative outcome of the idn.idn testbed, negative as in the current names are not grandfathered in, although unlikely for practical reasons this uncertainty is imo a real barrier for current investors. A second but very important reason is the lack of idn-jurisprudence, just how current idn's are treated legally with regard to ascii-counterparts is unknown to a large extent and that also contributes to the popular notion that an idn-investment is still just a bet.

Unknown status of ownership in the near future and unknown legal status with regard to ascii-counterparts, this is a real problem and I don't think we should expect major activity in the aftermarket before anyone of these is resolved. The uncertainty in UDRP's is probably of lesser importance for the aftermarket for the simple reason that udrp's are vague by nature, you win some, you lose some.

I agree that IDN.IDN adds some uncertainty, but even if it's introduced IDN.com will continue to work - it just won't be the only game in town any more.

On the legal side of things, that's another place where there's a need to break down the universe of IDN into smaller units, by language. For languages that have no character set overlap with ASCII in everyday use (Korean, Thai, Chinese, Japanese etc.) it's almost inconceivable that there could be a legal issue, because there is no "ASCII equivalent" but at best a poor "ASCII transcription" of a native term.

For languages such as French, German or Spanish, which differ only by a few accents or special characters, it is at least possible to make a credible argument for there still being some current uncertainty. This will no doubt be resolved after a few test cases (involving generics, not obvious TM infringements) make their way through the dispute resolution system and we all have a chance to gauge which way the wind is blowing.

Ironically, it's the languages with the most traffic that have the most potential legal issues. Because you can type a word in French already (if you ignore the accents and cedilla) the French are somewhat used to the concept of "typeins" and hence French IDNs get decent traffic. But to some degree that also gives credibility to the concept of "potential for confusion" between such IDN and their pure ASCII equivalents.

Again, please let me stress that these are POTENTIAL problems, not ACTUAL problems. There's no way to judge whether this will become an issue until there's more case law to look at so I don't want to speculate either way.

SUMMARY
- Pure non-ASCII character set languages should have no legal issues (from ASCII "hijacking" anyway; TM and other issues won't magically go away when you change languages) but have relatively low IDN traffic currently
- Semi-ASCII character set languages are seeing the best IDN traffic right now but may have some legal issues which still need to be explored

 

[DomainEngineer]

This discussion is boring without RD.

Come on RD, where are you?

 

[DNWizardX9]

If RD responds this thread will make it to 20 pages within 48 hours

Back to the topic. There is a need for different language URLS. Who should have to learn english to use the internet?

 

[acesfull]

This discussion is boring without RD.

Come on RD, where are you?

I know. You like the controversy. It is amusing at times, but that crap has gotten real fu**ing old, and does nothing good to promote IDNs. So, please... don't encourage any more.

 

[touchring]

I know. You like the controversy. It is amusing at times, but that crap has gotten real fu**ing old, and does nothing good to promote IDNs. So, please... don't encourage any more.

Not promoting IDN is the best way to help IDN.

The last thing we need is incessant speculation like .mobi and a million domain in every major language registered.

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[Sarcle]

I am particularly interested in the application of DNAME to make IDN.com into IDN.IDN.

I recall a discussion of testing DNAME, which was suppose to be done in the past few months, or in the near future. And that DNAME implementation may happen near the end of 2007.

There are 265 total extensions managed now by Icann?

I think of it this way. There are 6,912 known languages in the world. According to Ethnologue.com. I believe I read somewhere there are around 2,900 languages that have a written system.

To .com every single one of them out to a seperate root would be an incredible feat. by the end of 2007. Not to mention the .net and .org and any additional extensions they can think of. Considering that for every new extension added it has to be heard by the board considered and voted on. Don't think that's going to happen by the end of 2007 if Dname itself doesn't happen. Of course these are just my views on how I see it.

Then of course you would have to think if .com .net and .org are seperate roots and not Dnamed. International corporations are going to have a hell of a fun time with cybersquatters sitting on their names. The fees alone to own them all in seperate extensions would be outragous not to mention the lawsuits.

I personally cannot see any other logical way than Dname implementation to get IDN.IDN by 2007 and without causing an undue burden on multinational corporations.

 

[burnsinternet]

That is nice.
But year after year you say it will start next year. SO far I have not seen anything that would back it up. Or have You?

Two things:

First, we get plenty of type-in traffic now to Cyrillic IDN dot coms. Empirically, no problem.

Second, Ctrl Shift Enter is another method to get around typing '.com' if needed.

Do you really stop to think about using the Shift key or Control key in Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V? Think about it.

 

[StockDoctor]

Great thread Edwin. I finally have a clue on these IDNs. Thanks

 

[acesfull]

I think of it this way. There are 6,912 known languages in the world. According to Ethnologue.com. I believe I read somewhere there are around 2,900 languages that have a written system.

To .com every single one of them out to a seperate root would be an incredible feat. by the end of 2007. Not to mention the .net and .org and any additional extensions they can think of.

Verisign originally rolled out specific languages at different times. In November 2000, CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) IDNs were made available. Then others in early 2001, etc. They could also roll out DNAME incrementally, with the most popular languages first.

We could discuss what could be, what's likely to be, what the problems are, and so on. Right now, I don't know if anyone knows how or when IDN.IDN will be implemented for every language. I think it would be best to wait for official word, because continued posting of theories may just create more confusion.

For people new to IDNs, who would like to learn more, I would like to point out a couple of links to IDN related information, which some may find helpful, or, at least interesting...

http://www.circleid.com/posts/internationalizing_the_internet/

http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-14mar06.htm