Helping firms occupy more 'Yellow Pages'

The CEO of DotAsia, the registry operator of the '.Asia' generic top-level domain (gTLD), reasons that having an open auction for domain names that have more than one application attract potential owners with genuine interest.

The third and last phase of the '.Asia' registration phase, also known as "Landrush", attracted over half a million applications between February and March this year, and auctions are now ongoing. The first two phases for the Asian gTLD involved governments and trademark owners.

Chung, also the vice chair for the Internet Society Hong Kong, shared with ZDNet Asia why cyber real estate is increasingly important, and the value that '.Asia' brings to businesses.

Q: The '.eu', also a top-level domain, was first introduced in late 2005. Is '.Asia' late into the game?
Chung: It's about time Asia has its own cyberspace.

Most businesses already have country-level domains, such as '.sg' or '.cn'. What value does '.Asia' bring for them?
We understand the value of ".Asia" not as a substitute but as complementary or an addition to the local domains.

There are companies that have Web sites for, say, China, Singapore or Japan. But what about Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia or other countries around Asia? They might not have presence for every one of them. What .Asia provides is a portal or gateway to all the dedicated sites and the rest of Asia…a strong identity online for Asian companies to expand to the region, and also for U.S. and European companies looking to expand into Asia.

One example that I'm quite excited about is www.keepwalking.asia--Johnnie Walker just launched a campaign which I believe is Asia-wide. It captures the kind of value that we want to represent--there are campaigns that are launched across Asia and it addresses the kinds of audience and market that businesses are looking for.

'.Asia' is not meant for everyone, then?
Asia is the world today. We're trying to break the myth of one Web site and one domain. If you look at the trends in domain registration, large corporations are realizing that, and [contemplating] how to increase their footprint on the Internet.

Having a relevant domain name, anticipating what people would type in the search bar and having that exact match for your domain name naturally increases your footprint and your visibility online. Therefore, having a portfolio of domains that point back to your site or point to different parts of your site creates that increased footprint.

Asia is a term that is well-known and most importantly in terms of the Internet, it's a highly searched keyword. When [people] search for things on the Internet, you want them to find [your business]. Having a ".Asia" domain naturally increases your ranking on, say, Google, and hence increases your footprint. This is the reason we're calling it cyber real estate--it's a little bit more than having an address…think of it as almost having a retail store and then occupying a larger portion of the Yellow Pages.

Asia is known to be diverse in culture and language. How does ".Asia" reach out to all the different markets?
English is the working language, but that doesn't mean we're not catering to the different languages and communities. We're looking to provide multilingual domain names--Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Tamil. Our proposal is, as we roll out, we're not just looking ".Asia" but also ".yazhou" in Chinese characters for example, and also other Asian languages.

How close are we to achieving these internationalized domain names (IDNs)?
I'm actually on a number of working groups that are talking about this, but it's not just a technical issue, it's also a lot to do with policies or even politics. I really hope to see something happen early next year, and it's possible.

It takes a lot of international coordination…there are real issues, for example, there's simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese--do you consider them the same character or a different character.

Today when you take domains for example, a capital letter and small letter are considered to be the same, but traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese are not considered to be the same. When you register a domain you have to register many multiples of it to make sure that other people don't [squat], and that's the problem. I'm just illustrating one very obvious issue, but there are many, many of these issues in different languages to deal with as well and that's why it's taking so long.

1999 was the year when IDNs were first discussed; hopefully in 2009 we will see it happen.

Some have associated IDNs with Web site spoofing. What are your thoughts on that?
It's not that IDNs make it easier [for Web site spoofing]. I believe the value outweighs the risks. [It goes back to] the issue of traditional and simplified Chinese--if techno-policies are not put in place it may end up with the mixed version being held by somebody else and [used as] a phishing site.

A famous example is PayPal, where the "a" in PayPal is actually the Russian Cyrillic "a" rather than the English alphabet "a" and they look exactly the same. For the machine, it's two different characters and so it would treat it as two different domains.

These are the types of policies that are being discussed and addressed to avoid the spoofing issues. Yes, if it's just free flow--every character in the world can be used--it would create these problems, but these are the kinds of things that registries like us and other registries around the world address in terms of techno-policy arrangements. When you register a name, we not only check that machine-wise, it's unique and you can register it but also in terms of context, language, characters, variance issues.

I don't really agree that [IDNs create] much more risk. The risk is still the same, like a typo [error]--you can say you have more opportunities to do that but the nature is the same.

The policies are put in place--for example, simplified and traditional Chinese characters are mapped together. You can say it's even more secure than situations like "color" and "colour", where two different owners are running the domain.