The Weaknesses of Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)


Background

The recent Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meeting in Korea (26-30 October 2009) was a milestone in IDN TLD development. The ICANN Board approved the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process. The process was opened on 16th November, 2009(00:00UTC). The first IDN cc TLD domain names would be available as early as the first half of 2010.


General Definition


At present, the internet world is comprised of the domain name system (DNS) and American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII).

Domain name system (DNS)

Domain name system resolves and identifies the address and points a browser to a particular computer containing the users requested data.
Inside the system, a domain name consists of both low level and top-level domain (TLD) name components. In the domain name “toyota.com.tw”, the low level domain name is “toyota”, whilst the top level domain is “.com” and “.tw”. There are different types of top-level domain names; generic TLDs (gTLD) such as .org, .com, .info, and country code TLD (ccTLD) such as .tw (Taiwan), .jp (Japan).


American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII)

The ASCII characters are Latin or Roman language characters with a maximum of 128 defined alpha, numeric and special characters.

Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)

Internationalized domain names(IDNs) are domain names represented by local language characters. Such domain names could contain letters or characters from non-ASCII scripts (for example, Arabic or Chinese).


The IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process

This process enables the governments and administrations of countries and territories listed in the ISO 3166-1 standard (such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan) to submit requests on IDN based on the following requirements:

1.The scripts used to represent the IDN ccTLDs must be non-Latin;
2.The languages used to express the IDN ccTLDs must be official in the corresponding country or territory;
3.A specific set of technical requirements must be met ( as evaluated by an external DNS Stability Panel comprised of DNS and IDN experts)

The request and evaluation processes are comprised of three steps:

1.Preparation (by the requester in the country / territory): Community consensus and supporting documentation are assembled for the IDN ccTLD: what string to request, how the TLD is operated, and which organization will be running it, along with preparing and gathering all the required supporting documentation.
2.String Evaluation: requests for IDN ccTLDs are evaluated in accordance with the criteria described above. i.e., the technical and linguistic requirements for the IDN ccTLD string(s). Applications and supporting materials are received through an online system, http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/.
3.String Delegation: requests which successfully meet string evaluation criteria are eligible to apply for delegation following the same ICANN IANA process as is used for ASCII based ccTLDs. String delegation requests are submitted to IANA root zone management function.

Weaknesses of Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)

Weaknesses of IDN can be classified as the follows and be further explained one by one:
1.Registration problem
2.Possible variant IDN
3.Limited usability
4.Inconsistency of browser operation
5.Increase in the difficulty of combating cyber crime
6.Increase in the difficulty of differentiating junk mails from mail boxes

1.Registration problem
Registration for IDN would be a problem for governments or corporations around the world. Take for an example, when a Chinese corporation needs to register a Chinese IDN, it needs to register 2 domain names, one is for Traditional Chinese domain name and the other one is for Simplified Chinese domain name. Comparing to having a current Roman domain name, the registration expenses of IDN would be doubled. Conflicts for intellectual property in trade names, trademarks and brands would be possibly held among the corporations and governments.

2.Possible variant IDN
Variant characters occur where a single character has two or more representations, which may or may not look visually similar. Variant IDNs are those which contain one or more characters that have variant characters. Allowing variant IDNs may result in user confusion.

http://図書館.政府 (Japanese)
http://圖書館.政府 (Traditional Chinese)
http://图书馆.政府 (Simplified Chinese)

From the above examples, Japanese kanji is similar to Chinese characters. When some netizens see the above IDN, they may be confused about which website is a Japanese website or Taiwanese website.

As Zhang Jian, the Chinese expert of ICANN said, the IDN of Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese can be switched automatically. It may arouse more conflicts between Mainland China, Hong Kong ,Taiwan and Singapore and cause possible inconvenience among netizens. Like the above example, if netizens type in http://圖書館.政府 and they want to go to see what books are in the Hong Kong libraries. With the function mentioned by Zhang Jian, would netizens reach http://图书馆.政府 and see the information that they do not want?

3.Limited usability
The usability of IDNs may be limited, as not all application software is capable of working with IDNs. It is up to each application developer to decide whether or not they wish to support IDNs. This can include, for example, browsers, email clients, and sites where you sign up for a service or purchase a product and in that process need to enter an email address. ICANN , the advocator of IDN , is not able to enforce or require those browsers and email clients to use IDN.

4.Inconsistency of browser operation
Although most of browsers (like Firefox, IE7 and IE8) support IDN,the required extensions to browser operations and syntax are not standardized and not consistent across all applications. It means different users may receive different results depending on which tools they are using.

5.Increase in the difficulty of combating cyber crime
The possibility of confusion between phonetically similar or visually similar IDNs may be used for phishing and cyber-squatting. Phishing is the practice of trying to trick people into giving secret financial information by sending e-mails that look as if they come from a bank. The details are then used to steal people’s money, or to steal their identity in order to commit crimes. Cyber-squatting, on the other hand, involves buying an Internet domain name that might be wanted by another person, business, or organization with the intention of selling it to them and making a profit. While such practices are possible within the LDH DNS, recently cyber criminals have taken advantage of the increased vulnerability in IDNs and the IDN system to confuse users regarding which web address or web page they are visiting.

6.Increase in the difficulty of differentiating junk mails from mail boxes

Currently, the junk mail filtering software cannot differentiate mails sent
from IDN as junk mails or not.





Arguments: the Superficial Benefits
The Chinese expert of ICANN, Zhang Jian said that using IDN could bring the following benefits:

1.People can type their websites in their native language;
2.More able to reflect the global nature of internet ;
3.People (especially from the developing countries) would be more able to remember the website and use IDN for doing local business.

Unfortunately, underlying drawbacks can be found among these benefits. Here is the explanation:

1.Possibly leads to internet fragmentation

Instead of reflecting the global nature of internet, I think that using IDN would possibly lead to internet fragmentation. There are two main reasons. First of all, it seems that people need to know different kinds of language before they type the websites of other countries. Take for an example; if one wants to read one Japanese singer’s blog, he/she seems to need to know Japanese and type the Japanese website right. For some people who only know how to type English, he/she could not enter the websites and get any information from them. It shows that using IDN could create some blockages for netizens from visiting websites freely.

Additionally, people especially from the developing countries could use IDN for doing local business. It implies that the internet world would be divided into groups. These groups are grown based on the same languages shared by the group members. However, the communication between these groups may be limited. It is because of the difference in language use and willingness from group members.

2.Difficult to memorize

I do not agree that people would be more able to remember the IDN than the current Roman websites. Other than some famous websites like “yahoo.com” and “google.com”, memorizing the current Roman website and IDN is still a difficult case for netizens.



Suggested Solutions

As IDN has many weaknesses, developing advanced search engines, multilingual websites and UNICODE technology should be suggested as the alternate ways. These developments would be more beneficial to the internet development and worldwide netizens.

Developing advanced search engines

John C Klensin and Patrik Fältström, the computer science professionals said that URLs were not, and could not be made, user-friendly. Internationalized and generalized forms of URL, known as IRIs would not improve things significantly since they preserved the same basic syntax. The addition of more domain names, especially at the top level, would make name-guessing harder. Name-guessing would also become more dangerous in the presence of phishers, spyware-installers, virus-spreaders, and so on.
Both of them suggested continuing to develop the advanced search engines. Probably more keyword systems and more intentionally-populated directories with or without associated portals and electronic business cards would be seen. The reasons for it would be simple usability by users who, on average, would be less technically sophisticated and careful as the Internet grows:

Developing multilingual websites

At present, some websites are multilingual. It means that the domain names of the websites are in Roman scripts. People can choose various versions of languages (like Traditional Chinese, Korean or Japanese) inside the web pages. It helps people to find their information right based on languages they are mostly familiar with.

http://www.narita-airport.jp/jp/

This website can be shown as an example and people can see various language versions are offered at the top right hand side.

Developing UNICODE technology

UNICODE, a globally uniform encoding system used to assign domain names to the numbered Internet Protocol addresses should be further developed. UNICODE is continuously expanding to include the characters of more languages and its expansion should take place using a globally uniform methodology. Unicode allows strings to
be represented in multiple forms and consolidates these strings into a preferred form that can make comparisons and indexing simpler.

Reference

Klensin, J. & Fältström,P. Internationalization of Domain Names: A history of technology development. Retrieved May 2, 2010, from Internet Society website: http://www.isoc.org/pubpolpillar/docs/i18n-dns-chronology.pdf

Laan, M. (2006, July 7). Fragmented domain names could destabilize Internet, ICC warns. Retrieved May 3, 2010, from International Chamber of Commerce website: http://www.netcasearbitration.org/policy/ebitt/id8142/index.html

Ghazaleh,T. (2006,July 7). Issues Paper on Internationalized Domain Names. Retrieved from May 3, 2010, from International Chamber of Commerce website:
http://www.intgovforum.org/Substantive_1st_IGF/Issues%20Paper%20on%20Internationalized%20Domain%20Names.pdf

CCTV reporters(2009, November 14). 網民最早明年初可用純中文域名上網. Retrieved May 3,2010, from CCTV website:
http://big5.cctv.com/gate/big5/news.cctv.com/china/20091114/100903.shtml