1 / 11

Multilingual Internet: Enabling Global Communication

Explore the impact of using alphabets beyond Latin on the internet for building a true knowledge society. Discover technical solutions like Unicode for multilingual internet names and the challenges faced regarding access to knowledge and cultural sovereignty.

fwhitcomb
Download Presentation

Multilingual Internet: Enabling Global Communication

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The Use of Alphabets Other Than Latin (Roman) on the Internet and Its Impact on Building a True Knowledge Society Legal Informatics & E-Governance as tools for the Knowledge SocietyLEFIS Seminar, Reykjavik (Iceland), July 12-13, 2007 Oleksandr Pastukhov MPhil (Koretsky Institute) LL.M. (Northwestern)

  2. Introduction • Global Reach: 64.8%of global Internet audience is English-speaking (2004) • comScore Networks: ~14 of the 694 mln Internet users worldwide are in the U.S. (2006), down from ~2/3 a decade ago • 45 mln of ~255 bln people living in the U.S. don’t speak English at home (2000 census) • ITU: 25 of the world’s “wired” population come from China, Japan, India, S. Korea(2006)

  3. Understandable Addresses Needed! • American Standard Code for Information Interchange(ASCII): 26 letters, 10 digits, dot[.] and hyphen [/] • Others: Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Thai, Hindi, Han ideographs, … • Language variations, dialects, reforms • Diacritic signs: [é], [å], [ñ], [ç], [ü], …

  4. Technical Solutions • Unicode: ~1 mln characters – 1991 • Dr. Tan Tin Wee – 1998 • Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC)– June 2000 • VeriSign: IDN Testbed (32 scripts covering 350 languages) – Nov. 2000 • Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF): 4 RFCs – Dec. 2002, March 2003

  5. Unicode 3.2 Cyrillic Fonts

  6. Progress • i-DNS.netand RegTime.netlaunched .ком, .нет, .орг– May 2001 • RegTime.net launched .ру – June 2003; .бг, .уа – coming soon • i-DNS.netand CNNIC launched “.zhongguo” (“.china”),“.gongsi” (“company”), “.wangluo” (“networking”) – Oct. 2004 • ICANN 28th Annual Meeting (San Juan, Puerto Rico) – June 25-26, 2007

  7. Problems • Access to knowledge • Cultural sovereignty/chauvinism • Cultural imperialism & trade expansion • Politics: PRC v. Taiwan & Diaspora • Internet fragmentation: PRC v. ICANN • Cybersquatting: kcepokc.py – xерох.ком • Resolvement – RFCs are not enough

  8. Looking Forward • “Mixed” IDNs: www.mötleycrew.us, www.toysяus.com, www.папараzzи.уа • “Internationalized” e-mail: саша@лекс.бг • Whois operational in any language • Internet governance: the future of ICANN • ADR: UDRP for personal names, trade names, geographical indications?

  9. For more information • www.minc.org • www.cyrlinc.org • www.i-dns.net • www.webnames.ru • www.iname.ua/cyrillic.php • www.icann.org/idn • www.unicode.org

  10. Questions? Comments? alex.pastukhov@clict.net alex.pastukhov@lex.bg

  11. Thank you!

More Related