Noton - 4:50 pm on Oct 26, 2009 (gmt 0)

There seems to be some confusion here, httpwebwitch and others you can currently buy .com / .net / .org and others using non-latin characters.

For example httpwebwitch's example of: éxample.com is owned by someone since 2006 and is a working site. There are many of these types of sites all over the Internet. One of the names that I like is: £.com (yes its a working site)

Phishing is a big problem, you can actually buy 100% visually matching domains such as any domain that uses an: a o e and other letters are easily phished with links (even from AdWords) with domains that look 100% perfect but enter them into a broswer and you are taking to other websites.

What ICANN is looking at doing is allowing the TLD part of the domain (.com/.net/.org) to be non-latin. This is like what you get places like China that allow 100% Chinese domain names.

So while people are currently trying to get TLD's like .sex you can if the above happens put in the request to have them setup a .séx TLD

I welcome the idea, but it will get very confusing for some users due to most countries now either becoming used to the .com version of the CCTLD version of a website.

As to date there hasn't been any widespread success with a TLD other then .com but I do see in Europe the .eu coming more and more into play, so it might have a future?