Vint Cerf explains why ICANN is messing with the Net

A point is in there somewhere

Originator of TCP/IP, hero of the Internet and the bearded, Vint Cerf took time out from his bureaucratic job as chairman of ICANN to talk to Business 2.0.

The publication's "Five Questions with Vint Cerf" is exactly that. Vint is his usual brutally honest self.

So, Vint, some people are livid that ICANN has screwed up the new TLDs, can you justify the board's behaviour at all? "I think we should have consistent domain name practices wherever possible and I think that ICANN is a reasonable source for the development of consensus on best practices in domain name matters."

ICANN doesn't seem to realise that people speak any languages but American. They're not too happy, are they? What you gonna do? "ICANN has set up an ad hoc committee to review the technical side effects of proposed new internationalized domain names. This committee will help ICANN Board members appreciate the significant technical challenges posed by efforts to internationalize domain names - efforts to internationalize the domain name system have a great deal of value for many Internet users who would like to use their native languages in interaction with the Internet. At the same time, it is also clear that much of the ease of use of the Internet has been a side effect of its very simple use of a limited set of ASCII characters. We still have a great deal of work to do to understand and analyze the alternatives."

That's about it, really. If you want to read the three other insightful answers, click here to see Business 2.0's article. ®