One of the most important topics of discussion at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) event, taking place in Brazil, concerns internationalised domain names (IDNs), says Steven Lang, editor of the Highway Africa News Agency.
The meetings, which are free and open to any interested person, are part of the three annual conferences that the organisation holds around the world.
These meetings constitute an essential part of ICANN's global consensus-development and outreach efforts, the organisation says.
Lang, who is attending the event, notes that when the Internet was initially set up, addresses could only use the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, the numbers from zero to nine and a hyphen. The system is known as letters, digits and hyphen (LDH), he says.
The challenge, however, is that in countries where English is not a common language, the system can create a lot of confusion, Lang adds.
"The LDH system ignores character sets used by billions of people in countries such as China, Ethiopia, Japan, Egypt and Russia," he says.
There is also a serious risk of confusion when an individual letter is pronounced differently in diverse languages, he notes.
Development, content, security
Internet Service Providers' Association regulatory advisor and ICT lawyer Michael Silber says the IDNs are not a big issue in SA, as the country's 11 languages mostly use the Latin alphabet.
However, SA is closely monitoring developments in the IDN space, as the issue has relevance due to its developmental impact on African society, the creation of localised content, as well as ICT security, he adds.
In the past, fluency in the English language was assumed as a basic requirement for using the Internet, he says. However, with the Internet being seen as a potential tool and strategies being put in place to bridge the digital divide, that has changed.
Silber notes that IDN is the first step in creating geographically-relevant content. Communities need to find content that is relevant to their country and culture, and domain names should be in a format that fits in with this agenda, he says.
"We are monitoring IDNs to see what is happening in African countries where the alphabet may differ from the Latin format to see how we can learn from them, or if there is anything we can do to help."
The use of IDNs also raises security concerns, as it would be difficult for traditional Ascii readers to determine whether domain names written in different character sets are legitimate.
Another potential danger is that hackers and phishers may hide a character that is not part of the domain name so that users think they are on the intended Web site, when they have actually been redirected elsewhere, Silber says.
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