ajg: China has established three top-level domains that will use Chinese characters, thereby allowing the Chinese to surf the web using their own language and bypass servers managed in the US by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Because most Western name servers will be unable to resolve domain names created using an extended Chinese character set, red authorities will largely be in position to limit web access to servers controlled in-country, excluding access to external websites by simply refusing to resolve non-Chinese character sets.

While some swoon over the freedom offered by typing URLs in one of China’s myriad dialects, many of those surrounded by the new linguistic walls will soon find themselves yearning for the URL-istic inconveniences provided by an otherwise open Western world.

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