Paul Twomey, ICANN’s default CEO, warns about the imminent collapse of the Internet.

“The internet is like a fifteen story building, and with international domain names what we’re trying to do is change the bricks in the basement,” he said.

“If we change the bricks there’s all these layers of code above the DNS … we have to make sure that if we change the system, the rest is all going to work.”

[This could] break the whole internet.”

As an ingenious twist on the classic “Internet Breakdown Gambit” (new top-level domains will destroy the Internet), this “Twomey Variation” is an instant classic in the annals of ICANN FUD.

And of course Twomey’s “The Internet Is Made Out of Bricks” quip gives Ted Steven’s “The Internet is Made Out of Tubes” its first real competition in the Astonishingly Dumb Internet Metaphors department.

I don’t deny that IDNs can cause problems. I wrote a long article about it some months ago. Twomey recylces many of these arguments — for instance, phishing by using identical-looking characters from different character sets. IDNs are complex even to think about, let alone implement.

But will IDNs break the Internet? Considering that they have existed for years, and that the Internet already has (non-ICANN-approved) IDN-only top-level domains, I think not.

Most of the world does not use the standard roman alphabet currently used by the domain name system, and ICANN is supposed to represent the interests of the entire Internet. People want domain names in their own language, and if ICANN is to be an international body (instead of one that just flies around to meetings in exotic locales), it needs to make that happen.

Twomey’s Ted-Stevens-worthy FUD is the opposite of that mandate, and will encourage those who, seeing IDNs already working, would create their own private Internets.

Will IDNs break the Internet? A better question: will ICANN under Paul Twomey break the Internet?

Update: Although Twomey thinks the Internet may be in mortal peril, we can breathe a huge sigh of relief to learn that he is confident that ICANN’s future is not in danger.

Update and Question: A correspondent tells me that Twomey was recently given a new term because there just isn’t a viable alternative. I find that hard to believe, though I couldn’t come up with one on the spot. Please send in any suggestions…

Tags: Twomey, IDN, internationalized domain name, ICANN, FUD

Posted by Antony in: Domains