Sunday, January 1, 2012

.CA domains going IDN? Round Two in January

DomainReport.ca

Just catching up this morning on some December emails I filed away for reading later, and one was a newsletter from the .ca registry CIRA.  Part of the newsletter dealt with the coming IDN features to .ca domains.  They are in discussion right now, and have a second round of input planned for this month.

IDN domains have importance in Canada because French is one of the two official languages, and many french words have accents on one or more of the letters.

My main wish if IDN comes to .ca is to allow existing holders of .ca domains that should have accents to claim the IDN version.  For example, if you owned evenements.ca, you should have first crack at getting événements.ca (which is the correct french spelling with accents)

From what I've seen with my domains, french internet searches sometimes contain the letters with accents, and sometimes don't.  I have french IDN .com's that get traffic.  If IDN is brought to .ca, I think it would be used by many french people.  For me, french is a second language so I'd love to hear what french people think of this.

Below is the section of the newsletter regarding the .ca IDN process:
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CIRA received a tremendous amount of feedback in the first round of its public consultation
on the planned launch of French character Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs).
Over the last few months, we received approximately 350 comments on the online forum
and more than 50 formal submissions.
The first round of the consultation is now closed. CIRA will receive a report summarizing
the feedback received in late December, which will inform revisions to the IDN policy.
The public will get a chance to have a say on the revised policy during the second round
of the consultation set for January.
CIRA would like to thank everyone who participated in the first round of the public
consultation. The feedback received from .CA Members like you, as well as our Registrants
and Registrars, will help us shape a final IDN launch policy that best meets the needs of
all our stakeholders.
For updates on the launch of the second round of the IDN consultation,
please visit www.idnconsultation.ca/community/en/.
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2 comments:

  1. We applaud this at European Domain Centre, however CIRA should first make it possible for trademark holders OUTSIDE Canada to register .ca. There is no reason why a canadian cybersquatter should have more rights to register the domain name of an international trademark holder

    ReplyDelete
  2. European Domain Centre

    A can of worms of which you have no understanding whatsoever

    ReplyDelete

Thank you!