An important aspect with respect to my region is the computer or technical literacy of people to actually type in the IDN in the local language or persian script. It is much easier for persian fluent countries like Afghanistan and Iran to type in persian script IDNs but for Pakistan its a different case. Pakistan came out of a colonial British India and thus had a tradition of using English and Urdu however, with the adoption of technology and widespread proliferation of English as a second official language, the majority use English as the language of communication or Urdu typed in English and thus the majority of use so far is in English. I just came back from the Asia Internet Symposium yesterday organized by ISOC and ISOC Islamabad Chapter in Islamabad where one of the issues discussed was that the high levels of illiteracy also contribute to lack of efforts towards digital literacy so in short, IDNs may be very slow in starting in this part of the world however they may have strong use in the Persian and Arabic fluent countries leaving out Pakistan. On the other hand, the situation will also be different for India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka where they have local language fluency to a great degree. The issue of linguistic diversity per se is not in ICANN's agenda but to increase the level of acceptance of IDNs definitely is. This stands as a major issue with respect to user rights. On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 7:10 AM, Hong Xue <hongxueipr@gmail.com> wrote:
The application and acceptance of IDNs, including IDN TLDs, are, in a large part, dependent on the technical development and deployment of the relevant language community. The domain name resolution and email application for Chinese-character IDN and TLDs are working fine in the big Chinese communities . It is true it is not "universally" accepted in any part of world, but IDNs are primarily for the use within the relevant language community. Of course, ICANN should, firstly, support the language community bottom-up initiatives, and secondly, stimulate the universal acceptance in the one world one Internet. I'm not sure whether all the IDNs are mature in the second phase.
Hong
Professor Dr. Hong Xue Director of Beijing Normal University Institute for Internet Policy & Law (IIPL) Co-Director of UNCITRAL-BNU Joint Certificate Program on International E-Commerce Law http://www.iipl.org.cn/ 19 Xin Jie Kou Wai Street Beijing 100875 China
On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 2:27 AM, Vanda Scartezini <vanda@uol.com.br> wrote:
I am with Evan in this approach. In my view, if IDN are having problems to reach the users, hence not generating competition, ICANN should engage to see if there is a technical or competitive problem and both are , to my view, inside the role of ICANN. My 0.2 cents.
Vanda Scartezini Polo Consultores Associados Av. Paulista 1159, cj 1004 01311-200- Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil Land Line: +55 11 3266.6253 Mobile: + 55 11 98181.1464
On 5/9/14, 3:11, "Evan Leibovitch" <evan@telly.org> wrote:
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-e n.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 _______________________________________________ IDN-WG mailing list IDN-WG@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/idn-wg
IDN WG Wiki: https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+IDN+Policy
_______________________________________________ IDN-WG mailing list IDN-WG@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/idn-wg
IDN WG Wiki: https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+IDN+Policy
_______________________________________________ APAC-Discuss mailing list APAC-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/apac-discuss
Homepage for the region: http://www.apralo.org
-- Regards. -------------------------- Fouad Bajwa ICT4D and Internet Governance Advisor My Blog: Internet's Governance: http://internetsgovernance.blogspot.com/ Follow my Tweets: http://twitter.com/fouadbajwa