IDN Jargon Buster #2

In our previous article, we explained the essential concepts and terms related to Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs). As part of our IDN Jargon Buster series, we would like to bring you further to the essential knowledge of IDNs.

This second article of IDN Jargon Buster aims to inform you about general information on organizations and actors involved in the domain name and IDN environments. This is equally important with our previous information about general terms as these organisations and actors play significant roles not only in ensuring the governance of domain names but more importantly, they play substantial roles in enabling a critical function for the internet world as we know it now. Understanding the organizations and actors related to IDN, therefore, is crucial to understanding how the internet world operates.

Explaining ICANN

We’ll start the jargon buster by explaining ICANN as we briefly mentioned in our previous article. ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). ICANN’s mission is to ensure the stable and secure operation of the Internet’s unique identifier systems, and thus it plays a crucial role in global internet governance. ICANN’s functions include, but are not limited to: coordinating the allocation of the internet’s unique identifiers, such as IP addresses, accreditation of generic top-level domain (gTLD) registrars, and developing internet policy so that the Internet’s unique identifier systems continue to be secure, stable, and interoperable.

ICANN is a multistakeholder organization. Multistakeholder here means that its processes are inclusive, involving different actors from many countries, ranging from experts, individuals, business sectors, non-commercial interests and governments. All stakeholders participate on an equal level, based on consensus-driven decision making. In relation to ICANN, there are several terms and actors that you need to know:

IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) is a technical function managed by ICANN that maintains the single, authoritative ‘root’ database, including, but not limited to internet numbers, maintains domain names, and delegates registries.

Registry is an organization delegated by IANA (ICANN) to manage the administrative and technical works for the Top-Level Domains. A registry is also responsible for managing the database of TLDs. It is also important to note that registry is interchangeable with registry operator or registry manager. Typically, there is one registry for one country-code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) like .uk, .in, .fr, etc. For example, EURid is the registry manager of .eu, .ευ and .ею, DENIC is the registry manager of .de, Nominet UK is the registry manager of .uk. A registry is also responsible for the accreditation of registrars.

Registrar is an organization accredited by a TLD registry to provide registration of domain names and associated services for registrants.

Registrant is an individual/business/organization who has the right over a domain name that is registered to a registrar.

Apart from ICANN and its related actors, there are essential organizations directly related to the United Nations (UN) and global internet governance.

UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) is a UN specialized agency that seeks to build peace through international cooperation in education, sciences, and culture. In relation to IDNs, UNESCO is responsible for reporting on the implementation of WSIS action line C8 (Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content), and adopted the Recommendation concerning the promotion and use of multilingualism and universal access to cyberspace (2003), and is one of the founding partners of the IDN World Report.

IGF (Internet Governance Forum) is the UN-established multistakeholder group for policy dialogue on issues related to the internet governance. IGF aims to bring dialogues, debates, and discourses among stakeholders through their annual event. The stakeholders include experts, businesses groups, governments, civil society, and academia.

The establishment of IGF is an important milestone in internet governance as it shapes influential discussions about internet governance since its establishment. New developments in the internet governance generally appear in IGF, including ones related to IDN. These new developments and other historical milestones will be explained further in our next article on IDNWorldReport Jargon Buster #3!

IDN Jargon Buster #1

Understanding the topics related to Internationalised Domain Names (IDN) can be challenging for new readers, especially ones without a technical background. Technical terms, abbreviations, and acronyms can deter readers from learning further about IDNs despite their significance.

Beyond technical communities

The importance of IDN topics has permeated beyond technical communities related to internet governance since it involves a wide array of stakeholders, ranging from academia, civil society, business, policymakers, to individuals. It signifies the multi-scope of IDN issues beyond merely the internet community. IDNs already affects the state of internet affairs given their capacity to include and exclude internet coverage and inclusivity. With global uptake of IDNs, there will be an opportunity to benefit the everyday life of the global population as the future of the world economy, politics, and socio-culture will be embedded with the digital transformation. Hence, the discussion about IDNs can no longer be exclusive to technical communities.

The purpose of the IDN World Report

The IDN World Report intends to not only document progress towards Universal Acceptance (UA) in IDNs, but more importantly, to inform a wider audience about IDNs themselves. The better participation of IDN discussions necessitates a better-informed audience on this topic. This article marks the first of a series of IDN Jargon Buster that aims to explain IDN related terms in a more understandable way for the general public. The IDN Jargon Buster series consists of three articles: a) The General Terms; b) Actors and Institutions; and c) Historical Milestones. This first article will explain the glossary of basic concepts and general terms related to the IDN topic.

Glossary of basic concepts

Domain Name is one of the Internet’s system of unique identifiers. A domain name can be used as the address of one’s website (or URL (Uniform Resource Locator) or an email address. A domain name provides a translation between numeric IP addresses and is more memorable to people than long strings of numbers that comprise IP addresses. In this way, a domain name locates one’s website or email address to be accessible and meaningful, and memorable for internet users . For example: https://idnworldreport.eu/

Top-Level Domain (TLD) is the part of the domain name that is situated after the final dot. In https://idnworldreport.eu/, the Top-Level Domain is .eu Second-Level Domain (SLD or 2LD) is the part of the domain name that comes before the final dot. In https://idnworldreport.eu/, the Second-Level Domain is idnworldreport.

Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) is a specific TLD for countries and territories, such as uk, id, de, fr, jp, id, and others that are contained within the ISO 3166-1 list of two letter country-codes.

Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) is a generic TLD. It is intended for general internet users, such as com, biz, org, regardless of their geographic location.

Internationalised Domain Names (IDN) is a domain name containing internationalised character sets. It is because the domain names (and internet, in general) have been historically limited to a subset of or ASCII characters, namely the Latin script a-z, 0-9 and the hyphen.

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is the standard used by the internet community to represent digital coding on the internet. This standard uses a to z, 0 to 9 and the hyphen. This restricted character set is known as LDH (Letters, Digits and Hyphen) within the technical community.

Universal Acceptance (UA) is the idea that domain names and all email addresses should work in all software applications. It is intended to make the use of the internet more inclusive for broader populations, especially those using non-Roman/Latin scripts.

Unicode is an ASCII coding standard used by the technical community to convert non-Roman/Latin scripts into readable characters for the machine/computer/internet. Non-Roman/Latin scripts are converted into LDH (Letters, Digits and Hyphen).

Punycode is a way of translating non-ASCII characters/words to be read by Unicode ASCII coding. Unicode is the standard encoding in ASCII, while punycode is the way to translate non-ASCII into ASCII.

Domain Name System (DNS) is a naming database for Domain Names. This system translates the domain name to IP address and vice versa when one accesses the internet. This system is coordinated by ICANN.

ICANN is an essential institution that is situated in the centre of internet governance. Understanding ICANN will lead to understanding the bigger picture of the internet governance and IDN topics. We’ll explain ICANN and other related institutions and actors in the next article of the IDN World Report Jargon Buster!

.eu IDNs increase during 2020

Since the launch of .ευ in Greek script in 2019 which created a full complement of IDNs supporting all 24 languages of the European Union in their native scripts, the number of IDNs managed by EURid has increased by 4500 within the year of 2020. Registrations of IDNs has continued to rise since the end of 2019 by the close of 2020 with almost 41,000 registrations compared to just over 36,000 in 2019.

.eu IDN Numbers and analysis of web content in IDNs

2020 has seen the number of registrations of .eu IDNs increase across all .eu, .ευ and .ею. The number of .eu IDNs by the end of 2020 closed out at 41,647.

When drilling down further, the language of website content associated with Greek script .ευ showed a high proportion in Greek language with 40% in Greek. In addition, the analysis of the language of web content of .ею IDNs shows a high proportion associated with the Bulgarian language with over 50% (53%) in Bulgarian and 27% in English.

Analysis of web content of .eu IDNs show a large number of Latin-based European languages. German shows the highest percentage at 37% then Polish at 27%, English at 15% and Czech at 5%, Swedish at 4%.

Active or high-quality websites

When low quality (parking) content is removed from the analysis set, the proportion of English language websites decreases. This suggests that websites with content not in English may be more likely to be of a higher quality. As our methodology explains, we remove low quality, suspected parking sites from our data sample before undertaking the language analysis. Consistent in our findings for CENTR study in 2019, English language is more likely to be associated with low quality content. Once parking pages are removed from .eu, .ею and .ευ IDN sample, the prevalence of English language drops.

Redirects, Cyrillic and Greek Script

When looking at the number of Redirects for Cyrillic script, a time series showing the proportion of active and redirected top level IDNs in the .ею show that the number of active websites has slightly increased from 2019, as well as the number of redirects which as increased by just over 5% since 2019. Similarly, the number of Redirects in Greek script shows a very slight increase.

The proportion of IDNs registered across the three scripts supported by .EU TLDs (.eu, ею and .ευ)

EU Latin makes up 90% of the IDNs registered across the three scripts. .ευ in Greek makes up 7% - Greek. .ею in Cyrillic makes up 3%,

When looking at IDNs as a whole, after Han, Cyrillic is the second most common script of IDNs of all top level IDNs suggesting that there could be room for uptake of particularly .ею in Cyrillic.

An analysis of the language of Latin Script .eu IDNs show a large number of Latin script-based European languages with German at 37%, Polish at 27% and English at 15%.

Overall, the number of .eu IDNs across all .eu, ею and .ευ TLDs has increased over the course of 2020, with a general projection to increase further.