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Egypt creates first Arabic domain name
Egypt is launching the first internet domain name to use the Arabic script, following ICANN's decision to allow non-Latin top level domains.
The new suffix is pronounced 'masr', meaning 'Egypt'.
The announcement follows the decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to allow fast-track applications for domain names in scripts such as Hindi, Russian and Korean.
Speaking at a meeting of the Internet Governance Forum in Sharm el-Sheikh, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang said that although there are over 300 million Arabic speakers in the world, fewer than one percent of online content is in Arabic.
Egypt currently has just 15 million or so internet users, from a population of 80 million. Internet use is tightly regulated and, it is claimed, heavily censored.
Yesterday, Reporters Sans Frontieres, which campaigns for press freedom, criticised the Egyptian government for internet censorship. According to the group, the country recently arrested and tortured two young bloggers.
"Egypt is one of the enemies of the internet and if internet governance requires a degree of regulation, it should be of a liberal nature and not the kind that the Egyptian government would like to impose," warned Reporters Sans Frontieres.
See Also:
ICANN releases non-Latin domain names
ICANN is broken: they think they have fixed it
johnc52
I was on my Egypt holiday when they created this domain and went down really well with everyone out there.
Yousif (not verified)
Wow, thankyou for proving every stereotype we have of Americans. It lies within and not limited to: Ignorance & Racism. Thankyou Pathetic :)
Egyptian (not verified)
I would just like to correct the misconception that Egypt is censoring information on the internet and limiting access, this is absolutely not true. I am an Egyptian and I use the internet freely to view any website with any type of
content with no fear for my personal security. I have the ability to access blogging websites or media that are famous of opposition in whichever topic that pops in mind (Political, Economic, Religious ...etc) and even pornography is not
censored.
john (not verified)
As a member of the computer security community, and like my peers I recommended all non-Latin domains be blocked, On all home and corporate networks for the time being. from a security standpoint this opens the flood-gates for mass
Phishing attacks. My opinion: I see this change fragmenting the internet as a whole, each community will end up with there own "internet". along the lines of China-net, Arab-net, English-net, etc. So while names are now internationalized the
internet will become nationalized. The tower of babel has fallen again.
Wisam (not verified)
How about to be the first Arabic nation not to regulate the internet? It reminds me of how Arabs are still so far from understanding liberal thoughts, at least on the non-Latin top domain level!
twitter-23595808 (not verified)
Great to see that local goverments are enthusiastic about ICANN´s step to internationalize domain names. For sure non-Latin domains will win importance compared to the Latin ones which they have to accept at the moment.
Yousif (not verified)
"People will no longer be forced to know some of a Latin language to make a domain name or website" Exactly what gives latin languages the priority and right to dominate the internet; a portal used to connect millions accross the globe
daily - noting, a majority of which speak non-latin languages. The world is evolving and with it, need to go old notions such as latin-languages dominating arguably, our lives. With time, come new ideas - this is one, I and many
non-latin-language speakers, agree with.