Kremlin pushes Cyrillic alphabet net

Recently-installed Russian president Dmitry "Vladimir Putin" Medvedev has pressed for internet authorities to change the web's naming system to allow domain names in the Cyrillic alphabet. "We must do everything we can to make sure that we achieve in the future a Cyrillic Internet domain name," Medvedev told journalists in …

[Gordon Pryra]

"It is a symbol of the importance of the Russian language"

ummm, something that is a symbol of their importance are symbols that 90% of the world wouldnt be able to reproduce on their machine, even with a guide

ё ж з

[Richard Tobin]

Top-level domains?

Cyrillic (or general unicode) domain names are all very well, but for a top-level domain? Do the Russians really want to make it difficult for everyone outside Russia to type any of their domains?

[Philip]

What goes on in the Kremlin...

"I like this internet.I buy it... "

[Anonymous Coward]

Might be a bit of a shot in the foot, that one...

...given that it would effectively make a large part of Russian Web sites pretty much inaccessible to a lot of people who do not or cannot read/write the Cyrillic alphabet - including Russians which happen to be using computers with no Cyrillic support. I'm not even going to dwell on the impact such domain names could possibly have on e-mail.

Then again, two domain names - one Latin and one Cyrillic - for each system... Looks like the Russians are trying to double their domain registrars' income!

[Georgi Kodinov]

Not acknowledging existence of more than 1 alphabet is chauvinistic !

Hi,

As a Bulgarian (the homeland of the inventors of the Cyrillic alphabet) I'm sick and tired of having to transliterate my language using the unnatural (for it) latin alphabet.

So I don't see the problem here. My browser supports non-latin DNS names, my OS supports non-latin DNS names, it's only the few chauvinists of the root name server that don't.

[Christian Cook]

I personally...

Would like domains written in wingdings. You could see what a company did a lot quicker then... especially if they sold very fat fountain pens, old-style telephones or US Mailboxes.

[Anonymous Coward]

hehe

What's next, Kanji domain names?

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't be a cunning plan would it?

If they get their cyrillic domains, and then their keyboards get altered, then after a while no-one there has western keyboards, then they wont be able to access those nasty western websites.

And we wont be able to access theirs either.

Sorry, was in 1980's "Reagan" mode there for a second. Forgot about 42 days. Pot, kettle black and all that.

[Anthony Chambers]

Cyrillic

Sure, have your domain names in Cyrillic, so only people with Cyrillic support can get to your website. Way to close yourself off to most of the world! Planks

[Jack Harrer]

Welcome in phishers paradise

Try to explain now to users that they need to check if name of domain claimed by your bank doesn't include some Cyrillic letters that look like Latin ones. Can be fun, as some of them are pretty similar but have totally different character codes. Especially capital ones.

If they limit it only to .ru and .com.ru, no problems, but if they force .com on us, we're screwed... Again.

[ReallyEvilCanine]

Let the games begin

Allowing non-ASCII will set off a few new waves of phishing as fraudsters rush to register "citibаnk.com" (the "a" is Cyrillic -- U+0430), yahоо (Cyrillc "o"s here: U+043E) and so on. First response will be browsers adding a warning box to let you know there are non-ASCII chars in the URL but most people will be completely oblivious to the danger.

[Spiracle]

Island Russia?

He does realise that he's proposing a domain with URLs that nobody with a latin keyboard will be able to type?

Those Russian brides are going to stay lonely.

[Sean Aaron]

Agreed Georgi.

If you don't write or speak the language then it won't affect you to have websites and domain names using it, will it?

It might contribute to fragmentation in the webspace, but failing to do it just means there are lots of people who use languages not written in Roman characters (I can think of a couple of bilion people this is true for) who will not use the net. I think it's clear which is the lesser of two evils here...

[John Savard]

It Seems Reasonable

I wouldn't like it if, in order to use the Internet and access web sites, I would have to switch my keyboard to become a Greek keyboard - or a Chinese one, or a Russian one - because URLs were only in a foreign alphabet.

So, what is true for me is also true for people whose native language is Russian, or Chinese, or Arabic, or Greek, or Ethiopian, or Armenian, or Georgian, or Thai, or Burmese. Fortunately, we have these nice things called Unicode and UTF-8 nowadays, so it's not too impractical.

[Rukario]

Phisher's paradise?

Actually it won't be in .ru domain space at all, but .рф - problem will be if they decide to mirror the old .su domain (which is still out there) - that will be .cc - plenty of room for phishing there!

@Georgi

Agreed also. I find transliteration to and from Bulgarian Cyrillic to be a pain. Why can't the (transliterated) city names on the roads and the train stations be the same?!?

[JohnG]

Maybe they want the Cyrillic domains to be inaccessible

They never said they wanted to do away with the Latin domains, did they. Russian brides and more importantly, Russian gas would continue to be found via .ru. The Cyrillic domains would most likely be for more Slavic-centric topics.

The Chinese have been angling for something in their languuge as transliteration to Latin script is less popular there. Not unreasonable for one fifth of the worlds population.

[Andrew Baines]

What about China

Far more people, let's have mandarin domain names too.

[Anonymous Coward]

re: cunning plan

They already make Cyrillic keyboards. Actually, they have ever since they started making typewriters.

Most Westerners don't realize that much of the world frequently has to switch between their native keyboard and a Latin one. That has become easier with modern operating systems, but can still be annoying.

[Daniel B.]

It has to be said...

In Soviet Russia, DNS resolves YOU!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a symbol of the importance of the Russian language????

I wasn't aware that the Russian language had any importance other than to remind half of Europe what it felt like to be crushed under the heel of Russian Imperialism. Everyone I know who had to learn Russian as kids, because the Russians had invaded their countries, tossed away everything Russian along with the yoke of Russian Imperialism when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Paris - Because she lives in the same fantasy world as Russian politicians.

[Thomas]

Unicode is definitely the answer

Though surely then the "symbol of the importance of the Russian language" would be that it is no more or less important than any other? Though that's probably fair.

[RW]

Variant scripts

""We should do everything possible to get domain names assigned in Cyrillic characters in the future. This is a serious matter."

Ah, but *which* Cyrillic characters? Virtually every language written in Cyrillic has at least a character or two not used in Russian. And there are a lot of languages written in Cyrillic: not just the usual culprits, the Slavic languages of eastern Europe, but a host of languages across the far reaches of the former Soviet Union.

I've read that Abkhaz (the language of the breakaway province of the Republic of Georgia) uses the most variants of any of these.

"Currently all domains are in Latin script."

Precisely the same comment can be made vis a via Latin script. *Which* Latin script? I betcha a jelly donut that you can't have a domain name that includes the barred letter H used in Maltese, the L-slash of Polish, or vowels accented with the Hungarian umlaut.

It seems to me that if internationalization of the domain name system is worth doing, it's worth doing right, allowing any printable character in the Unicode repertoire to be used. Printable, because Unicode includes a fair number of unprintable control characters.

Intertube users in Ceylon, for example, should be able to have domain names in Sinhalese script.

Reference: the usual, Peter Daniel's "The World's Writing Systems"

[Pyros]

People, people...

Don't worry--Art Lebedev (Russian design studio) did put out the Otimus Maximus Keyboard, after all. Need Latin? No problem. Need Cyrillic again? Instant change of the keys.

Too bad about the price tag, but I'm confident it'll go down somehow...

[Vlad]

Nothing but troubles

Last time I checked HTML link tag always allowed me to use UTF characters, and the same was true for Title and all browsers happily show bookmarks in Cyrillic and Chinese and any other language.

The only place where Latin-1 set is used - the location bar in the browser and I do not see the point: why it should support something else? And should I say Firefox3 lets me to type Russian title of the site in location bar and immediately gets correct URL?

So, in my opinion modern browsers virtually made IDN a non issue.

On the other side introduction of Cyrillic-based domain names opens several can of worms - isolation of the part of the net, phishing, endless domain name ownership lawsuits, etc etc

And why nobody cries about Arabic numerals in my phone number? I personally demand support for (antique) Cyrillic numerals for phone numbers too! So call me at +З(ДФЭ)...

[Andrew Punch]

Why shouldn't Russia be allowed to use their own language?

If you were forced to type every english domain in the cyrillic, greek or arabic alphabet you would be upset too.

Domains should be available in native languages. Japanese users should be able to use kanji. Chinese users should be able to use chinese characters.

If the URL is written in another language it is likely the content is in another language too. In addition the current system for representing unicode domains has allowances for ASCII compatibility anyway.

It may be a good idea to segment it (e.g. cyrillic only available for xxxx.ru sites). Those of us in the west must not force our own language preferences on others.

Paris... because she likes going overseas to Canada and Mexico.

-Andrew

[Anonymous Coward]

@"Those of us in the west must not force our own language preferences on others."

Why not? The West (the U.S. to be specific) invented the Internet. Let the Russians "invent" their own. No one (including other Russians) would ever use it.

[Michael Greenhill]

Net segmentation

An even better idea would be for registrars of non Latin domains to require a Latin translation of the Cyrillic/Kanji/whatever language - hence, http://www.российскиеневесты.com.ru would have a Latin translation of http://www.russianbrides.com.ru. Essentially, everyone wins.

[Greg]

Fragmentation is already done by content

People raising the non-issue of segmentation probably never went to a foreign, different alphabet website.

Do you think that being able to type http://hi.baidu.com/baidu/ (biggest chinese portal) in your address bar helps you?

There obviously would be latin-names domains for every site that has any relevance to latin-writing people, and noone would see the difference.

Top-domain name should probably stay the same however (with a possible browser equivalence so that chinese don't have to switch back and for just to type their top level two characters). Then each country can decide what to allow and there's no phishing issue. Yes, you can get phished on yahoo.ru because of cyrillic o, but you can't on yahoo.com nor yahoo.it cos' those only allow latin, and if what the hell would you do on yahoo.ru anyway if it's all cyrillic there...

In the end, non-issue. Let half the world's population get access to their non-latin alphabet, just let it be done well.

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Pointless stupidity

Russian language and computers don't mix. Even the File menu in MS Word in Russian reads like an insult to the intelligence of the user and makes a mockery of the Russian language.

Russians would be much better off if they just learned a few keywords in English instead of trying to catch up with the French with their le compteurs etc.

The French? Isn't that where Messiuer Chauvin came from?

[multipharious]

Why Not!?

I applaud Medvedev for putting some weight behind the goals of I18n effort. We native English/American speakers have a piss poor track record on merely understanding that there are other languages, currencies, and date/time formats out there. I am naturally conflicted by this statement, since centuries of the Imperial legacy has secured a rich future for our diverging mother tongues and the value of native speakers in international business...as well as the our relevance in the World Market.

I used a good example when trying to bring some fellow Americans around to understanding why it was so important to localize. I handed them some BMW Sales Brochures. The reply was, "Cool, but I cannot read it, it's in German." Exactly.

From an idealistic standpoint, I support it wholeheartedly. From a pragmatic standpoint, I have been exposed to localization and internationalization efforts for years now...and it ain't easy since there is so much existing code. No excuse. Got to start somewhere.

[stizzleswick]

@Georgi

"As a Bulgarian (the homeland of the inventors of the Cyrillic alphabet)..."

Actually, Kyril was a Greek...

</pedantry>

[multipharious]

@AC We built it!? WHAT!?

Um. Yeah. First time post there Anonymous Coward?

Do you even understand your statement? The Internet is just a little bigger than the ARPA/DARPA days. Hate to say this, but wake up. Not positive on this, but there is a lot more fiber "out here" than inside the US or the UK, and if there isn't now, there will be.

We as native speakers gain nothing by restricting this resource other than bad blood. It is stupid, obstructionist, and also simply unfair. Your statement is as relevant as saying that if you use a telephone then you must speak American.

Besides, we have other secure and partially open networks that we do completely control.

[Allan Dyer]

Business Trumps Nation Pride?

Imagine you're a business startup, choosing a domain name... which character set will be usable by all potential customers around the world? I guess far-sighted businesses will choose ASCII.

I'm typing this on a Chinese keyboard, Ctrl-Shift can switch me through multiple Chinese input methods and Latin quite quickly, but to use Cyrillic I'd have to install a new input method, and then learn how to use it.

Lowest Common Denominator wins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother?

In 30 years everyone will be speaking English anyway... after the imperial US invades the rest of the world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Decadent Humans

You decadent humans with your alphabets should be made to type numbers for all your Internet sites, and they would be binary numbers if I had it all my own way.

Yours sincerely,

The Robot Overlord

[Georgi Kodinov]

Peace, love and flowers

"

"As a Bulgarian (the homeland of the inventors of the Cyrillic alphabet)..."

Actually, Kyril was a Greek...

</pedantry>"

haha ! They were brothers, man ! It's not really possible one of them to be a greek and the other a Bulgarian ;-) re-check your history book.

And what a typical greek name at that : Kyril !

Now seriously : yes, there will be fragmentation, but as people already said : it's fragmented by content.

Besides : I was forced to learn the latin letters in order to use the Internet (and use sites in English). I just need the same freedom for my native language. And yes, it will require some effort from you to come and visit such sites, but this will be no more than the effort I'm making to go and open e.g. this site, so it should be bearable.

Phishing, yes, that can be a problem, but it will be a problem mainly if the cyrillic is restricted to part of the names. If it's on the whole address you won't have to switch to type it, so you're less exposed to typing errors.

About the Bulgarian<->Latin transliteration : until recently there was no standard transliteration for Bulgarian. There were several tables in place (hence the confusion). And, let's admit it : latin is simply not reach enough of a alphabet to represent all the sounds in the slavic languages (as proved by all these various accented letters found in slavic languages written in latin).

I can imagine there's similar problems with all alphabets (chinese, korean, thai etc.). So let's get on with it and start using Unicode. It's capable of solving a lot of problems.

And the old excuse that it requires more resources is simply not serious in the modern Pentium powered megabyte-measured times.