Asia's multilingual mess on the Net

ICANN's reluctance to address Asian language domain names has created a tongue-tied Net

By Kristie Lu Stout
CNN.com Writer

SINGAPORE (CNN) -- A Singapore-based non-governmental group is out to unite the increasingly fragmented Asian-language Internet.

Formed last June, the Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC) promotes an Asian-friendly Net that does not compromise the Internet's core values of universal reach and a globally united infrastructure.

The group has their work cut out for them as top Internet-address authorities and Net registries race to take a piece of the Asian-language domain name market, threatening prospects of a multilingual Internet that works.

Multilingual confusion

MINC has close ties with the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) -- a group historically seen as the central authority in the Internet domain name space.

However, ICANN's reluctance to address a multilingual Internet has created confusion for both Internet surfers and Web-site owners as a wide and disparate array of technologies for translating Internet addresses emerged.

"The problem here now is everybody wants to do their own thing," says Tan Tin Wee, a biochemist at the Naitonal University of Singapore and MINC founder.

"This may break the integrity of the Internet as a unified, integrated, global uniquely named domain name space. So it absolutely critical for us right now that they don't go on a different tangent."

In 1998, MINC shared early versions of a multilingual domain name technology with the Internet-address authorities of various Asian countries including China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea.

The technology was initially rejected and then later appropriated as the proprietary systems for use by the China Network Information Center (CNNIC) and Taiwan Network Information Center (TWNIC) within their own borders.

The network information centers or NICs are the bodies that administer country-code domain names such as .cn for China and .jp for Japan.

Top Internet-address authorities in Japan and Korea as well as U.S-based Internet registries like Registrar.com and Network Solutions followed suit, afraid of losing the Asian market to local competition.

Last November, Internet Names World Wide division (INWW) of Australia's Melbourne IT began registering domain names using Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters.

"What we see here is a multiplicity of technology solutions that originated from our Asia Pacific testbed which I initiated in the region," says Tan.

QUOTE "China's government can not govern every Internet domain entity in the Chinese language." - Y.J. Park. MINC Deputy CEO and ICANN member

MINC hopes that it can at least provide a common platform for the multitude of standards it had inadvertently spawned 3 years ago.

"So the different languages now have to communicate with each other, saying: 'ok, I'm occupying this name space and I hope this doesn't interfere with your name space,'" says Tan.

Internet governance

Technical issues aside, MINC must also navigate through the sensitive area of Internet governance: who is in charge of administering central registries for these new addresses, to set policy and guard against address duplication?

MINC believes that country NICs may not be the most suitable domain-name administrators. Chinese-speaking Internet users in the West, for example, may not agree with the group's policies.

Rather, the consortium believes that each linguistic group, and not each nation, is the rightful owner of its language. "China's government can not govern every Internet domain entity in the Chinese language. There is a lot of Chinese speaking people elsewhere with different views on how it should be handled," says Y.J. Park, MINC Deputy CEO and ICANN member.

However, the Chinese Internet authorities demand and insist that they are the lawful administrators of all Chinese-character addresses.

Last November, China's Ministry of Information Industry banned China-based address registrars from logging Chinese-character Web addresses on behalf of any foreign registrar without approval.

"For the Internet, where is the power? The power is from the people. China has 1 billion. That's why they want to do it on their own," says Park.

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