Web address revolution ends Latin-alphabet monopoly

nternet regulators today heralded a new era of international web use that will no longer be dominated by the Latin alphabet.

The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) voted unanimously to allow Hebrew, Hindi and scores of other scripts to be allowed as domain names.

Until now Chinese, Russian and Arabic computer users have been among the billions who are forced to contend with letters and characters not used in their own languages in order to navigate the internet.

Today’s decision comes after years of debate and testing on the future of domain names, the addresses that define websites often ending “.com” or “.co.uk”.

Portions of internet addresses have been allowed to use non-Latin scripts in the past but, until now, the final suffixes had to use those 37 characters.

That limit meant users with little or no knowledge of English had to struggle with Latin characters even to access web pages that were written entirely in other scripts such as Chinese or Arabic.

Although search engines can sometimes help users reach those sites, companies still need to include Latin characters on posters and other advertisementsUnder the new rules, countries can only request one suffix for each of their official languages, and the suffix must somehow reflect the name of the country or its abbreviation.

Non-Latin versions of the dominant “.com” and “.org”, however, will not be permitted for at least a few more years while Icann considers broader implications such as whether the incumbent operator of a “.com” domain should automatically get a Chinese version. Beijing is lobbying for a system that does not have any automatic crossover rights.