Thread: IGF 2008, Hyderabad

India will be hosting the third Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting in Hyderabad between 3 - 6 December, 2008 at the HICC. The overall theme of the meeting is 'internet for all.'

I see from the schedule that there are quite a few interesting workshops:

Workshop 4. Internationalized Domain Names: Myths and Opportunities
Proposal Detail

Workshop 13. Legal Challenges Before Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)
Proposal Detail

Workshop 25. Steps toward an Internet that is multilingual, yet remains global
Proposal Detail

Best Practice Forum Self Regulatory Approach to Data Security and Privacy in India
Proposal Detail

The host country website can be found at: IGF 2008, Hyderabad

Interesting topics!

For those interested, you can listen to live webcasts of IGF 2008 via Audio and video feeds. If you see a blank screen, it means the live session has ended.

Alternatively, you can submit comments and views via the IGF's YouTube channel: YouTube - igf's Channel

Does "Internet for all" require larger variety of languages?

The vice chair of the Governmental Advisory Committee of ICANN told attendees at the IGF meeting that:

"Internet for all" means going beyond those who speak English and should encompass content, hardware, software and internationalized domain names.

Search engines, in particular, should support multiple languages, said Ismail, as it is the way most people navigate the Internet. In July this year, Google launched a Maori version of the search engine, a language spoken by just 150,000 or so people living mainly in New Zealand.

However, the CEO of Rediff.com raised doubts as to whether there is a large enough demand for using the internet in local languages. He stated that:

higher education in India, for example, is predominately in English and becoming an "aspirational" language.

Even if English is an "aspirational" language in India, people still prefer to read and navigate the web in their first language. English is usually a secondary language.

It's just a matter of time before more of India's population access the internet. I would think they'd prefer to access the internet in their first language, rather than access the internet via a second language.

There is an interesting issue here. How can we maintain the globalization with local languages started dominating the web. I am sure replica of information or duplication of information will increase with no increase in the content. This will lead to a stagnation. There will be many ready to copy and translate the same news into different languages.

Originally Posted by cogbuddy

There is an interesting issue here. How can we maintain the globalization with local languages started dominating the web. I am sure replica of information or duplication of information will increase with no increase in the content. This will lead to a stagnation. There will be many ready to copy and translate the same news into different languages.

I kind of agree with you here..publishing content in regional languages might go against the globalisation motive of the Internet..it might increase the overall usage though

Originally Posted by cogbuddy

There is an interesting issue here. How can we maintain the globalization with local languages started dominating the web. I am sure replica of information or duplication of information will increase with no increase in the content. This will lead to a stagnation. There will be many ready to copy and translate the same news into different languages.

cogbuddy, I agree that there will be a lot of duplication of content when it comes to translating from one language to another.

However, if more people can access the internet because of this, wouldn't these users have the potential to contribute new content to the internet, and therefore it wouldn't lead to a stagnation?