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NLIC pushes local domain system - Korea Herald |
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2007/09/27 |
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Domestic Agency pushes local domain system
(Korea Herald)
A Nonprofit organization has set out to push what is known as a native language domain service in a bid to diversify the access standards for the Web, which now predominately revolves around English.
The bulk of the major internet sites are based on the English domain systems, especially with the dot.com format. Korea, France and other countries are keen to change the monopoly that tends to drive out those who do not use English for internet access.
"Currently, not everyone can use the internet freely. First you have to use English keyboards and English words to search the Web. Those who know English are estimated at 600 million worldwide, which is only 10 percent of the world's population," said Louis Pouzin, chairman of Native Language Internet Consortium, at a news conference in downtown Seoul yesterday.
Pouzin, a renowned internet expert, has taken the chair for NLIC, whose foundation has been spearheaded by Netpia Inc., a Seoul-based native language internet domain service provider which offers its proprietary address services in dozens of countries.
Pouzin said the newly established agency will help the majority of non-English-speaking internet users surf the internet easily by promoting the domain services based on their own language.
The local language domain service is one of the contentious internet issues that pit players against each other to stay ahead. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, controls the English language domain system worldwide, a huge business whose stakes are growing in lockstep with the growth of online business. Netpia and its alliances are claiming that such dominant English-oriented domain system should leave some room for alternatives.
In fact, Netpia's unique business model of allowing Korean internet users to type in just the name of a company in Korean instead of the cumbersome full website address has made headway in the past decade.
The launching of NLIC is part of Netpia's efforts to raise the issue at international conferences and, eventually, expand its services overseas.
The agency, however, is still in its fledgling stage with few visible members from recognizable brand names in the technology sector. Although it has secured Pouzin and other representatives from six countries including Korea, Turkey and Ghana, it remains uncertain how much influence it will exert on the messy internet domain battlefield.
A more ominous challenge is ICANN's latest salvo - a new system that allows users to type in international characters rather than English-only addresses. But Netpia and NLIC claim that such approach does not address the issue properly, and a full local language support should be institutionalized.
The Korean government is also pitching in. The Ministry of Information and Communication, which oversees telecom and internet industries here, gave nongovernmental organization status to NLIC early this month, though its implication is not clear yet.
Netpia, which often clashed with Microsoft Corp. and other English-oriented domain service providers in the past, is now getting ready to beef up its operations. Last Wednesday, Netpia CEO Lee Keum-ryong resigned after a 18-month stint, giving the top post back to Lee Pang-jung, founder of the technology company. Lee Byeong-hoon, who formerly represented both domestic and international operations, is now in charge of overseas business only.
(insight@heraldm.com)
By Yang Sung-jin
2006.06.30
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