Egypt Grabs First Arabic Domain Name

posted on: Nov 16, 2009

On the first day that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers opened registration for non-Latin script domains, Egypt says it has seized the opportunity to register the first all-Arabic domain name.

Information Technology Minister Tarek Kamel said at a U.N. sponsored Internet conference that his government had filed an application to register the domain “.masr” – or “.Egypt” — written entirely in Arabic, according to the Associated Press. ICANN chief executive Rod Beckstrom said so far six countries submitted applications for domains in three languages, AP reports.

Not everyone thinks the groundbreaking move deserves fanfare — Reporters Without Borders said it finds it “surprising and disturbing” that Egypt is playing host to the Internet Governance Forum. “It is astonishing that a government that is openly hostile to Internet users is assigned the organisation of an international meeting on the Internet’s future,” the advocacy group said in a statement.

While opening the internet to users unfamiliar with Latin characters has long been a hot-button topic, it took six years of discussions and technical work to get ICANN to the point of approval. The body voted on Oct. 30 to allow for Web addresses be expressed in characters other than those of the Roman alphabet.

For now, registration is limited to domains controlled by national governments, with endings like .us or .cn or .uk, which account for about 40% of all Web sites around the world.

ICANN is a private, non-profit entity that, along with a similar Internet Engineering Task Force, strives to create rules to protect the universality of the data network.

Cassandra Vinograd
Wall Street Journal