"Arab information technology experts have welcomed a recent development
in internet governance that could allow the use of Arabic script
website addresses, saying it will help to protect Arabic culture,
remove the language barrier and reduce the digital and knowledge gap
between the Arab world and the developed countries. However, they
raised some intellectual property considerations as well as technical
and cyberspace security concerns." The article is by William New.
The article talks to several people with experience of the internet in
Arabic-speaking countries and notes the introductions of Arabic IDNs is
one step in addressing the digital divide. "This decision will ease
people's digital language access in an increasingly on-line world as
improving access to internet does little if its users can't use it to
communicate in native languages," Amin Kalak of the Tunisia-based Arab
League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO) told
Intellectual Property Watch. The article notes "[a]bout billion people
use Arabic script, but only about 35 percent of them speak Arabic as
Arabic script has been used to represent languages such as Farsi, Urdu,
and Sindhi."To read this article in Intellectual Property Watch, see ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=1215.