On 9 May 2014 00:09, Rinalia Abdul Rahim <rinalia.abdulrahim@gmail.com>wrote:
The challenge for ICANN is that it doesn't deal with application level problems.
Why not? ICANN's mandate is to promote acceptance of all TLDs. What's the point of rolling them out if the public can't access them and registrants can't maximize use of them? Actually, ICANN has already answered that question through the priorities embedded in the design of the new-gTLD program. If the primary goal of the expansion is to sell domains -- whether they are useful or not -- then support of application-level access is an afterthought. Which is exactly the case. So far within ICANN, "acceptance" has meant "acquisition" and little more. It is IMO *fully* within ICANN's remit to take responsibility for domain-access issues at every level, including (arguably ESPECIALLY including) application-level. However, one might not get that impression given ICANN's moves to reduce the influence of the technical community<http://atlarge.icann.org/correspondence/correspondence-14mar14-en.htm>in its activities. The application-level problems regarding IDNs etc should have been anticipated and addressed by ICANN long ago. Instead of concentrating all of its road-show efforts on enticing new TLD applicants, it should have been also soliciting the global developer community with more than a half-hearted marketing campaign<https://community.icann.org/display/TUA/TLD+Universal+Acceptance+Home>(that just started this year!!). Compare the efforts made to promote IPV6 to all levels (by a different corner of ICANN, with the help of ISOC) to the effort made to implement cross-level support for all TLDs and all scripts. And now, ICANN is reaping what it has(n't) sown. The IDN support program should have been done completely independently from the general TLD expansion, but instead was wrapped into it and has been unfortunately affected by that action. IDNs from ccTLD registries have now been adversely impacted because of the way the gTLD expansion unfolded.
Nevertheless, the successful adoption of IDN TLDs is arguably a success measure for ICANN's TLD programme, so ICANN has a stake in seeing IDNs succeed.
The goal of the gTLD program has been to maximize sales of domains, which to some eyes sufficiently constitutes adoption. Whether these domains are actually usable to end-users or useful to information providers has tended to be an incidental, almost accidental objective. (Were end-users or registrants ever surveyed in advance to find whether a TLD expansion was even necessary, let alone their needs from it?) Anyone following the gTLD program from the At-Large PoV has surely seen this emphasis throughout the program's development and rollout. So "success" depends upon how you measure it. By measures important inside the ICANN bubble, contracted parties having sold thousands upon thousands of useless, speculative, defensive and confusing domains constitutes success. It certainly constitutes revenue. It is quite possible that the lack of concern for new gTLDs shown by the application-development community reflects a broader public indifference to the gTLD expansion that ICANN never really sought to discover (let alone address). And this indifference has affected the uptake in IDNs. One wonders what kind of remedial measures can make up for such a large strategic oversight. It may be up to groups like APTLD to take on the challenge ICANN has not. Or at very least take the leadership role that has been lacking to date. - Evan