Don’t upgrade your Firefox yet

In a report by The Register, the update available to Firefox contains something that is not only unnecessary, but harmful to the internationalization of the world’s DNS systems.

The new Mozilla Firefox release has many great updates and improvements. There are many things about system integration and proper file permissions handling that are definitely useful additions. However, there’s been criticism about one update that removes the ability to use URLs of different languages. This might help to avoid some spoofing, but it’s a step back for localization and de-Westernization.

The Register writes that the ICANN and CENTR have publicly scolded the Mozilla Foundation for this move. The process of removing English as the sole language of the internet is important for all who care about unity or even fairness.

The world’s registrars and registries didn’t agree. CENTR - the Council of European National TLD Registries - called Mozilla’s post a “hasty ill-considered response”. Centr represents “over 98 per cent of domain registrations worldwide” and “believes such strong reactions are heavily detrimental to the effort to introduce non-English languages and scripts to the internet, and could have lasting repercussions on the ongoing effort to internationalise the DNS”.