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 Shakespeare got it completely wrong when he told us “that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet”.
Experience has shown that people, everywhere, much prefer to be able to refer to things in whatever language they happen to speak, and in whatever script they happen to use – the rose always smells sweeter for being in one’s native tongue.
Well, in truth, people bitch and moan about things NOT being in their native tongues, but all-too-often fail to make the most of a new-found ability to express themselves in said tongue.
When it comes to internationalised domain names, this is a problem, as we’ll see.
The Next Big Thing in localisation, at least for the internet, is set to be Icann’s programme to introduce said internationalised domains (IDNs for short). What this means in practice is that organisations can register – and users can type – internet addresses in a script other than Latin.
This is tremendously exciting, and along with new top-level domain options, is going to open up all sorts of opportunities for brands and marketers, and, well, pretty much everyone. But there are a few problems. Of course.
For those not familiar with Icann’s current efforts, we’ve set out a brief introduction below. If you are familiar, or you don’t care, you can skip ahead.
IDNs and gTLDs: A brief introduction
Using IDNs, Chinese speakers will be able to go to Chinese-addressed websites, Russian-speakers to Russian web addresses – and of course Arabic-speakers to Arabic addresses.
Icann’s IDN programme is running in parallel with its plan to introduce a new system for global top-level domains (gTLDs). Current top-level domains include .com, .net, .biz, and the country-specific codes such as .ae, .uk, or .sa.
What’s different about this latest initiative is that Icann will allow companies to operate registries for (more or less) any TLD they want, and then sell addresses on that domain.
So for example, a company might decide that there’s a large market for web addresses ending in ‘.beer’ – it could apply to Icann to become a registry, and, once approved, sell on addresses under the .beer domain to interested companies or individuals – www.heineken.beer, www.budweiser.beer, or even www.eliot.beer, are all possibilities.
The catch is that companies applying to set up registries – for .beer or anything else – have to pay Icann $185,000, and, more importantly, prove that they have the ability and resources to run a domain, including all of the technical, logistical and long-term business know-how that’s required.
For IDNs, exactly the same option will be available – companies will be able to apply to set up a registry for a new Arabic (or Chinese, or Russian, or whatever) domain, and sell on addresses under that domain.
There’s lots of technical mumbo-jumbo behind all of this, which is not the least bit interesting to anyone except those directly involved – but the practical upshot is that the actual mechanics of IDNs and gTLDs are more or less sorted (everyone hopes).
Right – everyone still with us? Excellent.
As might be appreciated, the scale of the IDN and gTLD projects are massive, in terms of technical complexity, but more importantly, in terms of making them work on a practical level.
One of the big headline issues is trademark protection. Current domains have long had issues with so-called cyber-squatting, where someone might register, say www.emaar-property-sales.com without actually being Emaar. There are now well-defined ways to resolve these situations most of the time, but it’s still a headache, and an expense for legal departments.
Now imagine having to safeguard domains across not just the existing collection of .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, and so on – not to mention the country-code equivalents – but having to do this for any new domain that comes out.
For big global brands such as Microsoft, this is one of the big worries – and it doesn’t stop there. The prospects of new non-Latin domains opens up a whole new vista of complexity.
Baher Esmat, Icann’s manager for regional relations in the Middle East, gives an example: “Imagine that you have a request forwarded to Icann to have ‘.egypt’ in Chinese, and the application is from a Chinese private corporation. So the question is who owns the language, and then who owns the country names, and on the next level, geographic names?”
Ouch.
But beyond these practical wrangles, there are also higher matters – almost philosophical, in a way. Some see the move to IDNs as the start of segregation of the internet, perhaps where individual ethic or national groups are kept neatly confined to their respective sets of domains.
Icann’s representatives are quick to reject this out of hand.
“One of the key advantages of the internet is that it’s always been based on standards, when it comes to protocols, and so on. So without IDNs... there have been companies which have developed proprietary solutions to overcome the problem of not having IDNs. So if you want to maintain the one single interoperable internet, that’s based on standards, you’d better go with solutions, you’d better go with IDNs, that will work globally, and won’t lead to exclusion,” says Esmat.
And on the idea that the increased complexity of new IDNs and gTLDs might alienate people, Brad White, Icann’s director of media affairs is dismissive: “Giving potential complexity as a reason to exclude people who speak Chinese, or Arabic, is a pretty poor reason. May there be some confusion? Probably, there’s confusion in most things. But I don’t think that’s a very good reason to exclude people from the global internet. The rule of thumb should be inclusion, not exclusion.
“A buddy of mine brought it home to me: imagine when you’re typing in an address, but after the dot, you have to type in Kiswahili. Maybe it won’t resonate with others, but it resonated with me,” he adds.
Unsurprisingly, the Icann people are very firm on the idea that IDNs and gTLDs are on the whole A Good Thing – and we’d tend to agree with them. They are, however, very realistic about the challenges that both Icann and the rest of the internet community will have with the new reality, when it finally becomes real.
For the Arabic web, one worry is content. One of the common moans regionally is that there’s simply not enough Arabic content, and what there is is often not of good quality.
“My personal opinion on this point is that IDNs won’t succeed without content. If we’re talking about Arabic domain names, they won’t succeed without content in Arabic. That’s why, when people talk about whether IDNs are going to succeed, first of all that’s not Icann’s problem,” says Esmat.
“Icann’s duty is to make IDNs available. If you look at China and other countries, yes, I’m pretty sure IDNs are going to succeed in those countries. When it comes to the Arab region, it all depends on the content part, and content is a key element. Without it, I don’t think IDNs will ever fly in Arabic. We still need to put more effort into content,” he adds.
If we’re being generous, we might entertain the possibility that new Arabic domains might inspire the region to produce some more stuff for the web, but we’re not convinced on this one.
Another Arabic issue, as we’ve touched on before, is the lack of a clear Arabic equivalent for .com. This raises the possibility that several domains might arise and compete – yet more complexity.
“So ‘com’ is not a word, so there’s no translation. It could be a translation of ‘company’, a translation of ‘commercial’, it could be ‘tejari’, whatever,” says Esmat.
But Arabic users will be able to take advantage of something of a soft landing, without having to wait for someone to risk $185k and their livelihood on an experimental Arabic domain, thanks to Arabic country-level domains.
Esmat explains: “For the UAE, it might be something like .imarat [in Arabic]. So a company could register its name under .imarat, in Arabic. This will be under the fast-track process for IDN ccTLDs.”
Fast-track in this case means that the current registrars for country-level domains such as .ae or .sa will get access to Arabised (or Sinofied or whatever) versions quicker, possibly as soon as the first quarter of 2010.
Regional telecoms regulators are already testing internationalised domains – and indeed Icann has already set up a few IDN test addresses on its wiki, such as: http://مثال.إختبار/
or http://उदाहरण.परीक्षा/.
In practical terms, this means regional brands might be able to register web addresses in Arabic as early as the middle of next year, being realistic. This should allow brands to get used to the idea of the new domains, before canny firms start trying to make Arabic-domain landgrabs (at $185k a time) a little later on.
For those with regional concerns, Icann is still eager to hear about them. Originally we were all supposed to be getting to grips with registering new gTLDs and IDNs round about now, but Icann has extended the consultation process, primarily at the behest of the Big Beasts of international trademarks.
“For the past few months, most of the vocal organisations have been the big North American brands, so it would be good to get feedback from regional brands. Then they should be aware of the process that will be in place to protect their brands,” says Esmat.
The debate around IDNs and gTLDs has been so protracted, and so caught up with legal worrying about trademark protection, practical worrying about who controls what, and technical worrying about everything else, that the scale and possibilities of the projects are often overlooked.
Icann’s staff are understandably anxious to try and emphasise this side of things – Esmat for example talks about how Microsoft’s marketing department sent in a response to the gTLD plans, which was markedly in contrast to the one sent in by the software giant’s legal team.
Regional brands are fortunate, in that they can ignore most of the trademark hell that will mire many brands’ experience of the new domain regime – although some, such as Emirates Airline, for example, will likely have some big decisions to make.
But as of now, they need to be planning what they’ll do with regional domains, and how they’ll handle Arabic script – or even if they’ll plan on buying up their own little slice of the new Arabic web, and set up an IDN registry.
This could be fun...
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