Couldn't there be a prefix to the domain name transmitted to the DNS to specify "this sequence of bytes represents Unicode text, not ASCII", to allow any unicode text to be used as a domain name. Existing ASCII records would need to be converted to Unicode, but that would be a trviial change, except for the added disk space required to store the larger text strings.

Personally, i think that gTLDs hould be scrapped altogether, witht eh exception of .ORG, and .ARPA. a .UN TLD can be used for all UN sites. Every other site would be under a ccTLD, and operates soley under that countrys laws. THus any business which is conducted on a .RU domain which contravenes US law but is legal in Russia is legal no matter where the the person on either end might physically be lcated, because they would be considered to have temporarily teleported to the country where the domain name is registered to sign any contracts made. if goods are purchased, the position should be the same as if I had gone to, Country A to place a contract with a person from Country B to supply me with goods from the Country C, for which I will pay by transferring money from my bank account in counrty D to his in Country E. This solves issues of juristiction in internet crimes and civil matters such as IP violations. It also sorts out taxation and otehr government regulation of web activity.

The last bit is a good idea but because to many lawers in the us would have nothing to do then it would never get approved in any way shape or form. Although it would solve the online gambling problem for a lot of yank's

|333173|3|_||3 has a fair point, but scrapping gTLDs like .com .net .eu is well.. unlikely. I personally favour a free for all. Bagsy .Dorey and .oil and .bank, erm dot slash too :0/

Prefixing was indeed part of the solution I proposed and patented back in 1997.

This trivial change has impacts on the internet applications, programming languages and even operating systems, in order to support the display and handling of characters from Unicode. This trivial change has taken over ten years to get to where it is now.

There was an idea back in 1992/3 to migrate .com into .com.us, but to retain .INT is for INTernational treaty organisations including UN.INT. This would have meant trademark law in each country would govern domain name disputes within that country.

To see how internationalised top level country code domain names would look, visit http://super.name.