IDNs make perfect sense, but I for one don't fancy sending my mates a text saying "hey check out the new PS4 on www. ummmm....how the hell do I do Kanji on my phone?"

Let's be honest, sending *anything* by text is a triumph of the will over a wholly inadequate input device. Anyway, *you* won't have to. The people with Kanji URLs in their address book will be "foreigners" and will probably have a phone with a Kanji keyboard.

I'm struggling to see the "news" in this story, though. It appears that 99% of those who signed up for the IDN beta are folks who don't use a Latin alphabet. Well bugger me with a pitchfork. Who'd have guessed?

My concern is not with the idea of International Domain Names, but with the real possibility of setting up ghettos on the Internet -- one for each language. This leads to the reinvention of the Tower of Babel and all its inherent problems. The huge advantage of everyone speaking the same language, on-line at least, means that the ideas and contributions have no borders or boundaries.

Another concern is that IDN allows for easier government censorship.