Originally posted by gpmgroup
Its one thing telling new.net they can't have .travel or .xxx do you think think ICANN will tell the Chinese Government they can't have .gongsi? or even introduce an "official" ICANN/Verisgn alternative?

New.net was never worth anyone's consideration or notice.

I don't expect anything of the ICANN either.If they're willing to play the part of a UN type Gov. and hand out .Cat to a bunch of Catalan Nationalists then anything can be expected of them without any undue surprise.

This particular news might have been incorrectly reported but the fact that so many instinctively interpreted it the way they did and believed in its veracity is quite telling by itself; may be sub-consciously many feel that such balkanization of the Internet is a real possibility, especially with its ever growing importance and adoption by so many diametrically opposing interests over the globe. In the long run, IMO, such concerns would only serve to strengthen the importance and value of ccTLDs at the cost of gTLDs to varying degrees.

ICANN confirms with CNNIC that this is nonsense:


http://www.computerworld.com.au/inde...8;fp;16;fpid;0


A report on an official Chinese news site that China's government has established its own Internet top-level domain names is not true, according to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

People's Daily Online reported Tuesday that the country's Ministry of Information Industry (MII) had changed China's domain name system effective Wednesday, adding new top-level domains of ".com," ".net" and ".china" in Chinese characters, among other things.

"It means Internet users don't have to surf the Web via the servers under the management of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) of the United States," the report said.

However, ICANN officials contacted the Chinese Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), which oversees the country's .cn top-level domain, after the report was published and were told there are no new Chinese top-level domains. The report may have resulted from a misunderstanding of work already in progress that involves second-level domains, according to Tina Dam, ICANN's chief GTLD (generic top-level domain) registry liaison.

Top-level domain names are the codes at the end of Web addresses, which include identifiers such as .com and .net but also country codes such as China's .cn. All top-level domains today are in Roman characters, but ICANN has been working toward providing top-level domain in different character sets, including Chinese, Dam said. CNNIC is involved in that work, she added. So far technology has been developed for second-level domains in other character sets, but not top-level domains. A program for a top-level domain experiment is being developed now, she said.

There are already domain names available that appear to end in a Chinese-character top-level domain, but they are still under .cn even though that part of the address doesn't appear in the browser, Dam said. This is accomplished using a browser plug-in, she said. The People's Daily Online article may have resulted from a misunderstanding of those domain names, she said.

CNNIC told ICANN representatives that all its work has involved second-level domains, according to Dam. ICANN has not contacted MII on the issue, she said.

The People's Daily report also referred to two new sets of second-level domains. One set includes domains for research institutions, educational institutions, government departments and defense agencies, and the other is for China's provinces, major cities and other localities, the report said. ICANN did not ask CNNIC about the reported new second-level domains, Dam said. Administrators of country top-level domains are free to create new second-level domains under them, she added.

ICANN, which oversees the DNS (Domain Name System) at the heart of the Internet's operation, is an independent organization but is based in Marina Del Rey, California, and has close ties to the U.S. government. It has been at the center of a recent heated debate over control of the Internet. Representatives of China and other countries have voiced concerns about disproportionate U.S. power over the Internet.

"It's not news that there's at least a faction of the Chinese government that is concerned about this," said John Klensin, an independent consultant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was a pioneer in Internet software and has recently worked on internationalization projects. "Whether that faction is representative of the government is a matter of intense speculation, and I don't think anyone outside of China really knows," he said.

good to read this:

All top-level domains today are in Roman characters, but ICANN has been working toward providing top-level domain in different character sets, including Chinese, Dam said. CNNIC is involved in that work, she added. So far technology has been developed for second-level domains in other character sets, but not top-level domains. A program for a top-level domain experiment is being developed now, she said.

so news.com from china would point to their own news page other than the world?

what a power to compete

Originally posted by Bashar
so news.com from china would point to their own news page other than the world?

what a power to compete

No, news.com will still be news.com, what China has created is it's own TLD in Chinese characters, distinct from the .com.

Another take on the last week's news by someone who knows a little better than many....Michael Geist; Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa.

While there remains uncertainty about the implications of the Chinese domain name changes, late last week officials sought to assure the world that it had no intention of creating a separate Chinese Internet......ICANN supporters breathed a sigh of relief.........The relief may be short lived, since a closer examination of this past week's events suggests that, bolstered by the Chinese action, other countries may place increasing pressure for change to the current structure and administration of the Internet........China's ability to implement its own domain name system without ICANN support is likely to serve as a model for many other countries around the world. In the months ahead, look for countries in South America, the Middle East, and other parts of Asia to emulate the Chinese lead by establishing their own national Internet domain names. .....

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...l=969048863851

CNNIC FAQ for Chinese Domain Names

http://www.cnnic.cn/html/Dir/2005/10/11/3218.htm

http://english.people.com.cn/200603/...03_247684.html

everything else is just "speculation"

.com is still .com - IDN.com is IDN.com

and lots of things "could" happen, etc...

...maybe a break off or many break offs will occur, then what?

maybe countries will create duplicates tlds (namely.com - the internet tld) or steer traffic to theirs, or create their own roots/internets - and advertise them in Times Square

Originally posted by generic
http://english.people.com.cn/200603/...03_247684.html

everything else is just "speculation"

.com is still .com ie: IDN.com itself is not going anywhere

and lots of things "could" happen, etc...

...maybe a break off or many break offs will occur, then what?

The link is from March 3rd....pretty old in relation to this particular story....

.Com is .Com...no one is arguing with that...however....there could be a reasonable argument against *everything else is just speculation*...since if the break offs do happen then that would only accelerate the already rising importance and stature of ccTLDs.

the difference is this is an official news link from the Peoples Daily in China correcting an error

what you got there is someones opinion about what could happen if etc

Originally posted by Speculator
since if the break offs do happen then that would only accelerate the already rising importance and stature of ccTLDs.

maybe, maybe not

he's talking alternate internets

Originally posted by Speculator
.since if the break offs do happen then that would only accelerate the already rising importance and stature of ccTLDs.

Splitting the ROOT does not necessarily harm or change a thing -- That's the part than many posters don't seem to be getting, in fact China could being doing it this second and *NOBODY* would know until they carefully looked. There are many *MANY* ROOT servers and China would in effect ust be adding one or dozens more. *NOTHING CHANGES*.

However once one successafully implements and maintains their own ROOT server they are in a position to add new TLDs without anyones permission and then *OTHERS* would "break things" if that did not mirror that new TLD that was not approved by ICANN ... Then ICANN has little power or influence going forward.

this is an interesting article imo:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4767972.stm

It will be interesting to see if they set up other countries IDN ccTLD, and "IDN notTLD" systems and how/if ICANN responds.

In any case I'd still rather have the IDN.com (not that I have many anyways).

Also, alternate internets have to be navigable to have say "increasing value".

And that's where there are lots of if's and but's and who knows imo

Subramanian Subbiah, co-founder of I-DNS.net that has worked with China on the Chinese language domains, said the system has been brought in because the government got fed up waiting for net address overseer Icann to approve an official way of using non-Roman alphabets in domain names.

"The only countries that really care about this are those whose scripts are very different to English," said Mr Subbiah.

He said China had created three domains and when the Chinese characters in them were translated into English they were broadly equivalent to .com (gongsi), .net (wangluo) and China (zhongguo).

I was just playing around with the I-DNS.NET DNS server and it's doing some very interesting things.

Does anybody know of one of these "new" domains cause this might be the DNS server, or test server, they're using.

Bottom line: If you can present me with one of these domains we can see how it's implemented *AND* if it's being implimented in a way that suggests they are "splitting the root".