China Starts Its Own Domain Name System
The Internet domain name system may soon suffer a schism. China's Ministry of Information Industry announced Monday that on March 1st it will start offering four country-code domains. In addition to the dot-cn country code domain, three new Chinese-character domains will be rolled out: dot-China, dot-net, and dot-com (not to be confused with dot.com rendered in Roman alphabet characters). The Chinese press says this means Chinese Internet users will no longer have to surf the Web on servers managed by ICANN. Professor Michael Geist writes, "This week's announcement certainly doesn't mark the end of a global interoperable Internet. It does move one step further toward that path since in Internet governance terms, the credible threat is now real."
