Te Kete o Karaitiana Taiuru (Blog)

Issue 1:
An immediate issue for Māori Language is the use of the umlaut (äëïöü). There are two issues here.
(a) For many years the umlaut was implemented as an alternative for the macron and is widely accepted as a macron. It is quite likely that a user with Māori fonts will use an umlaut or accept an umlaut as an alternative macron.
(b) The use of a Māori font will render the umlaut as a macron. So a viewer with Māori fonts installed as the default font will see www.mäorimacrons.com as www.māorimacrons.com creating possible phishing and other fraudulent activities.

Issue 2:
A registered Māori Language Domain Name could be spelt many different ways. The word Māori can be spelt 40320 various ways by using various patterns of macron and non macron vowels. View the list of variants of the word Māori.

Issue 3:
Cyber squatting or the act of purchasing generic domain names with the intention of reselling them at inflated prices. 1000% higher than the original cost is not uncommon. Cyber squatting was an issue with the launch of .maori.nz and is already an issue with some generic Māori domain names in the .com and .net suffixes. Cyber squatting is already a problem with many Asian and European domain names including from a New Zealand company.

Issue 4:
Intellectual Property has always been an issue with web addresses and Māori Language Domains will be no different.

Issue 5:
The inability to create a macron. Although macron software has been freely available for over 5 years, and New Zealand Microsoft Windows XP and above includes by default free macron software, a small percentage of users may not have macron ability.
A user without macron ability will still be able to visit your site but they will be required to use puny code.
I believe this is a case of implement the new technology for the masses and let the language survive and grow. The small percentage of non-compliancy will soon adapt to change. Much like what happened with the implementation of Unicode macrons for the general usage of written Māori language..
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