Other Alphabets Coming To The Internet
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is meeting this week in Seoul, South Korea, and is all but sure to approve international domain names - i.e., domain names that can be written in alphabets other than the one English uses. ICANN is the "not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world ... [that] develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers." In other words, it's the closest thing the lawless Internet has to a governing body. Formed in 1998, ICANN coordinates the creation of ISPs and domains so that people can actually find what they're looking for. While it can't "control" the Internet, it does force some sort of organization on the online world.
Internationalized Domain Names could come to the Internet by year's end, ICANN said, which could vastly increase the number of users in areas outside the Western world, particularly.
So don't be surprised if, soon, you start seeing web addresses you can't even type into your browser because your keyboard doesn't have the characters. Cut and paste should work just fine for those, though.