Kanji extensions for internet domains: .日本 from 2009

The Asahi Shimbun had an article this morning about the introduction of non-alphabet internet domain extensions. In response to demands from countries where the roman alphabet is not used, ICANN decided in November last year on a policy allowing non-alphabetic extensions. The example given in the article was kanji: from 2009 it will be possible to have a URL which looks like this:

http://OOOOOOO.日本

Since 2001 it has been possible to use non-alphabetic characters for domains, eg:

http://日本.com

So from 2009 this will be possible:

http://日本.日本

The details of the policy will be hammered out this year. Though the article focused on Japanese, naturally these changes will also allow the use of Arabic, Devanagari etc.

NB According to the TV news, Japanese seniors will find the changes helpful, as they haven't really taken to those newfangled roman letters.

Comments

[Alex]

I'm torn by the chic factor of having a domain name in Japanese, and the complete non-utility of it for anyone outside of Japan.

勝利の説明書.日本 would be so cool instead of just victorymanual.com, but there's no way my friends and family back in the States could navigate their way to that!

[claytonian]

ultimately, I think this is a bad idea. It's only going to erect barriers in the last place that needs them.

[Will]

I'm guessing that the niche market in Japan will be seniors and the like - lots of them on the horizon. Those over the age of sixty at the moment would much prefer to deal only with kanji. Similarly for Arabic pages - the people with the Arabic extensions won't be aiming at the whole world - just the Arab speaking market.

On the plus side, think of the business opportunities - get paid to look up domains that people in Eigoken can't read!

[Bruce Smith]

It's a backwards step.

[Gabuchan]

I think this is an awesome idea for a specific target you are trying to reach with a website. You want your site to stand out, then this is it. Why is this a bad thing?

[goodmachine]

its awesome and it sucks at the same time because it will hasten the fracturing of the net. Honestly ICANN had no choice china has been threatening to do it on their own and that would have caused tonnes of TLD problems so a formal structure is palatable IMHO

[Jake]

Interesting stuff. I actually read an article that said this will be replacing the .jp domains. Any idea if that is true? I was thinking about registering a .jp domain, but if current .jp domains will be changed to .日本 domains, I don't really see the point.

[Jordan]

Very interesting. I can see how one would take this as nationalizing cyberspace, but its already been nationalized for the longest time anyways. For that matter, I don't think this will change the game that much. For example, people who can't speak Arabic usually don't go to Arabic speaking sites anyways. I think that the end of the monopoly roman characters have had on urls and domains should have been seen as inevitable.