China to compete in dot-com domains

[ZuraX]

China to compete in dot-com domains
1:33 PM EST ON 28/02/06
JACK KAPICA
Globe and Mail Update

In a move that ignores the U.S. stranglehold on domain names, China has
announced it will start its own domain-name system beginning tomorrow,
reports the People's Daily Online.

China's Ministry of Information Industry plans to add three top-level
domain names: dot-net, and dot-com and dot-net.

The on-line newspaper says that this 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 of the
United States."

The decision will affect China's 110 million Internet users, more
than any country except for the United States.

The move puts the Ministry of Information Industry in competition
with ICANN for the dot-com domain, although China will use a
different character set.

Under dot-cn, two types of second-level domain names (categorized
domain names and those for administrative regions) will be added
as well, and seven categories: dot-ac for research institutions;
dot-edu for Chinese educational institutions; dot-gov for Chinese
government departments and dot-mil for Chinese defence
departments.

There will also be 34 domain names for the organizations of
China's provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities directly
under central government, and special administrative regions,
the Preople's Daily reported. These names will be composed of
the first letters of the Romanized spelling of the names of the
regions- Beijing's domain name will be dot-bj and Shanghai's
will be dot-sh.

Fully story:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060228.gtchina0228/BNStory/Technology/home

also
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060301-6293.html

So there will be 2 of every domain? I think this is a bad idea but can be good for people who dont have a need for chinese traffic...

 

[obvio]

What do you mean it can be good for people who dont have a need for chinese traffic?

 

[ZuraX]

Like some affiliate places that are USA/CA only... This will also help most PPC search engines...

 

[billinchina]

This could get very comfusing!

Here's a better article. I think the move makes sense for China. I get frustrated typing in Chinese IDNs and then having to switch to an English input program to type the .com on the end of the IDN in English. ICANN was too slow to catch this opportunity I guess...

http://www.circleid.com/posts/chinas_new_domain_names_lost_in_translation/

 

[Sarcle.com]

This news was already shot to hell yesterday. It's false. China didn't do anything out of the ordinary. but they did prove the importance of idn.

http://www.IDNF/forums/1209-icann-denies!-a.html

 

[Anthony]

This news was already shot to hell yesterday. It's false. China didn't do anything out of the ordinary. but they did prove the importance of idn.

http://www.IDNF/forums/1209-icann-denies!-a.html

Thanks for the news check!

 

[sker]

It looks like china wanted to form itd own root unlike the EU wanted One rule governed by the UN.

Tomorrows world we're going to see oligopoly market. The US,The US,Russia & China.

2 democratic nations & 2 non-Democratic nation.

 

[Kate]

IMO the Chinese move has a lot to do with the ability to control and censor more than they can at the moment. Now the authorities will have a tighter grip on their national network.
Certainly not good news for Chinese Internet users.

 

[edwinfelix]

Definitely good news for IDN, I strongly support it.