Because most of the world's people speak a language other than English, there is strong demand for Internet-based communication in a variety of languages. Although the content of a Web site can appear in any language, domain names generally are limited to the characters used in English. Many view this limitation as a significant barrier to Internet use for non-English speaking people.

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) refers to the ability to use characters from any language (e.g., á, ç, è, ñ, ö) in domain names. While there is near-universal agreement that introducing IDNs is a worthwhile objective, there are technical challenges associated with implementing it. For example, some languages read left to right, others right to left. And most languages have regional differences that lead to different spellings and other variations that would affect the uniqueness, and therefore the usefulness, of domain names. In addition, the Domain Name System (DNS), which links text-based Web site names to numeric IP addresses and allows computers to locate Web sites, primarily uses the ASCII character set, which is not designed to support languages other than English.

The issues are complex and important to resolve, and progress has been made with the introduction of IDNs for .ORG in January and July 2005. PIR, its Advisory Council and others are working with standards-setting bodies and the engineering community to introduce effective IDN solutions for .ORG in as many additional languages as possible.