Confusion over China’s domain names
Thursday, March 2nd, 2006
A few days after China announced new domain names there are still lingering questions.
New reports suggest that China isn’t creating a new domain name system outside of the existing one. They blame an english language story in China’s People’s Daily for creating the confusion. The question is whether the new domain extensions will operate under the existing .cn extension.
Although the new media reports suggest China is not creating an alternate route system, I’m not completely convinced that it isn’t mean to create confusion with the ICANN system. I read the official statements on the China Ministry of Information Industry web site. It was translated into english, somewhat choppily, so it was hard to understand. But it sounded like, even if the new domains are really second level domains under .CN, users would be able to go directly to the new URLs simply by typing a different character between the name and the “com”.
Perhaps this controversy was a good wake up call to what can happen if there’s a fractured internet. If nothing else, this is a good exercise to consider the implications.
Further Reading:
Hi Andrew
Can you give me the URL link for the original article (Chinese Version). I may give you some clues about the facts.
I can’t find it on the Information Ministry web site anymore, and People’s Daily has edited their original story.