Hi all I have attended the UA Days in Belgrade. I am taking the opportunity of a delay in my flight back to drop some notes. The meeting was very interesting. We had a full house in the morning, with numbers decreasing in the afternoon. I don’t know about the online participation. Please find the programme here: https://uaday.rs/program/?lang=en The first panel was about multilingualism, Sally Costerton was among the speakers. It seems that the concept that the ultimate goal is multilingualism in the Internet is taking speed. To be noted that Anil Kumar Jain, UASG Chair, mentioned the four “pillars” among which there is no mention of the role of the user community. Interesting contribution by Leonid Todorov, arguing that we will have a stronger push to UA readiness from places and people that are more disadvantaged rather than from places and people that are better aware - in an intellectual way - about the need for equality of opportunities in internet access. The second panel featured some registries that have been active in achieving results in term of UA readiness. I was the last speaker, and brought the point of view of the users, who are the most affected by lack of UA, making also a couple of examples. The good news is that my contribution was well received, the bad news is that I made the point that the user community should play a role - I argued that it should be the “fifth pillar” in the UA strategy - as users can put pressure on the providers that are not UA ready, proposing that we have a paradigm shift from “providers will graciously become UA compliant as a bonus for the users” to “users worldwide have the right to demand that all users have the same Internet experience regardless their language or script they use”. The bad news is in the fact that I have proposed that the user community - and At-Large at the forefront - use their footprint in the wider community to build awareness of the user rights and produce pressure - also in collaboration with governments - to providers to be UA compliant. That means a call for action for At-Large. In summary, we need to move from being spectators, waiting for things to happen, for the technical community to provide solutions, for providers to deploy UA-compliant services, to an active part of the community to demand and obtain the same level of service for all Internet users, regardless language, script, physical location, or other factors. Cheers, Roberto
A proposition worthy of our support, especially from those of us that are still concerned with equitable Internet access! An insightful view of how a change in the conversation could positively impact the lowly end user. Many thanks Roberto. Carlton ============================== *Carlton A Samuels* *Mobile: 876-818-1799Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround* ============================= On Fri, 29 Mar 2024 at 11:23, Roberto Gaetano via At-Large < at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
Hi all
I have attended the UA Days in Belgrade. I am taking the opportunity of a delay in my flight back to drop some notes.
The meeting was very interesting. We had a full house in the morning, with numbers decreasing in the afternoon. I don’t know about the online participation. Please find the programme here: https://uaday.rs/program/?lang=en
The first panel was about multilingualism, Sally Costerton was among the speakers. It seems that the concept that the ultimate goal is multilingualism in the Internet is taking speed. To be noted that Anil Kumar Jain, UASG Chair, mentioned the four “pillars” among which there is no mention of the role of the user community. Interesting contribution by Leonid Todorov, arguing that we will have a stronger push to UA readiness from places and people that are more disadvantaged rather than from places and people that are better aware - in an intellectual way - about the need for equality of opportunities in internet access.
The second panel featured some registries that have been active in achieving results in term of UA readiness. I was the last speaker, and brought the point of view of the users, who are the most affected by lack of UA, making also a couple of examples. The good news is that my contribution was well received, the bad news is that I made the point that the user community should play a role - I argued that it should be the “fifth pillar” in the UA strategy - as users can put pressure on the providers that are not UA ready, proposing that we have a paradigm shift from “providers will graciously become UA compliant as a bonus for the users” to “users worldwide have the right to demand that all users have the same Internet experience regardless their language or script they use”. The bad news is in the fact that I have proposed that the user community - and At-Large at the forefront - use their footprint in the wider community to build awareness of the user rights and produce pressure - also in collaboration with governments - to providers to be UA compliant. That means a call for action for At-Large.
In summary, we need to move from being spectators, waiting for things to happen, for the technical community to provide solutions, for providers to deploy UA-compliant services, to an active part of the community to demand and obtain the same level of service for all Internet users, regardless language, script, physical location, or other factors.
Cheers, Roberto
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I would add, however, the observation that a large amount of internet traffic does not involve humans at all. Rather it is device-to-device traffic. I work with trying to test and improve the resilience of devices to real or potential, but usually inadequately tested conditions. Many devices wobble or simply fail when they face conditions beyond the nice, calm networks of their developers. Those conditions may be caused by natural conditions or otherwise. I have, for example, seen how the introduction of new devices, that may speak a slightly different (but fully RFC compliant) version of a protocol can knock-out what were previous stable devices on the network. One of favorite examples comes from the days when we still had TCP/IP bakeoffs when the introduction of a single PC using FTP Software's stack could crash any and every instance of machines running one of the their competitor's protocol stacks - the cause was simply that they they sent a sequence of IP fragments with the last fragment first (which allows the receiver to better optimize its buffer space). That's 100% RFC legitimate, but it crashed other devices. Back to UA - We usually forget that anything beyond the most basic cases will be mis- or weakly implemented and inadequately tested - and thus potentially subject to outages due to "unusual" network traffic. I have fear that the "U" part in "UA" efforts will drive the addition of that kind of mis- or weakly implemented UA code in devices that almost always will not have any operational reason to go beyond classic ASCII. Such devices may be in critical roles - self driving vehicles, power plant controls, etc etc. (An appropriate protective strategy for such devices might simply be for them to silently reject and drop anything that is not ASCII rather than trying to deal with it.) I have a Tesla automobile. It is already filled with some really badly designed and badly written code. Automobiles are already speaking TCP/IP on automotive Ethernets that are sometimes connected to the outside world. A typical vehicle of today may have hundreds of processors attached-to and chatting-on those internet networks. I fear further risks should, hypothetically, should something like a Unicode string get onto a controller net in a car and cause something like a brake anti-lock/stability-control processor to go awry. (I've already experienced what can happen when a stability control system goes bad - it can be a shockingly terrifying experience, especially if it happens on a crowded highway downhill curve at high speed.) (And I am reminded of the fate of the Mars Climate Orbiter when a mismatch between US measurements [inches, feet] and metric measurements caused the probe to crash.) As a kid I worked with my grandfather and father repairing TVs - ones with vacuum tubes! Those boxes were very sensitive to less-than usual operating conditions - like being used on the same power circuit as a refrigerator that had a motor that generated noise onto the utility power wiring in a house. In those days there was a joke that was quite applicable: A person goes to a Doctor and says it hurts when I do this (and demonstrates some activity that constitutes "this"). The Doctor's reply is: Then stop doing that. Same for UA. Perhaps the "Universal" part needs to be de-emphasised by a recognition that there will be large parts of our internet for which that is not necessary, could add costs, and, worse, could create risks. --karl-- On 3/29/24 9:51 AM, Carlton Samuels via At-Large wrote:
A proposition worthy of our support, especially from those of us that are still concerned with equitable Internet access! An insightful view of how a change in the conversation could positively impact the lowly end user.
Many thanks Roberto.
Carlton
============================== /Carlton A Samuels/ /Mobile: 876-818-1799 Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround/ =============================
On Fri, 29 Mar 2024 at 11:23, Roberto Gaetano via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
Hi all
I have attended the UA Days in Belgrade. I am taking the opportunity of a delay in my flight back to drop some notes.
The meeting was very interesting. We had a full house in the morning, with numbers decreasing in the afternoon. I don’t know about the online participation. Please find the programme here: https://uaday.rs/program/?lang=en
The first panel was about multilingualism, Sally Costerton was among the speakers. It seems that the concept that the ultimate goal is multilingualism in the Internet is taking speed. To be noted that Anil Kumar Jain, UASG Chair, mentioned the four “pillars” among which there is no mention of the role of the user community. Interesting contribution by Leonid Todorov, arguing that we will have a stronger push to UA readiness from places and people that are more disadvantaged rather than from places and people that are better aware - in an intellectual way - about the need for equality of opportunities in internet access.
The second panel featured some registries that have been active in achieving results in term of UA readiness. I was the last speaker, and brought the point of view of the users, who are the most affected by lack of UA, making also a couple of examples. The good news is that my contribution was well received, the bad news is that I made the point that the user community should play a role - I argued that it should be the “fifth pillar” in the UA strategy - as users can put pressure on the providers that are not UA ready, proposing that we have a paradigm shift from “providers will graciously become UA compliant as a bonus for the users” to “users worldwide have the right to demand that all users have the same Internet experience regardless their language or script they use”. The bad news is in the fact that I have proposed that the user community - and At-Large at the forefront - use their footprint in the wider community to build awareness of the user rights and produce pressure - also in collaboration with governments - to providers to be UA compliant. That means a call for action for At-Large.
In summary, we need to move from being spectators, waiting for things to happen, for the technical community to provide solutions, for providers to deploy UA-compliant services, to an active part of the community to demand and obtain the same level of service for all Internet users, regardless language, script, physical location, or other factors.
Cheers, Roberto
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Hi Karl I am not sure to understand correctly. Are you saying that farmers in Bangladesh, as an example, should not have access to the Internet in their language and script because of some bad code in Tesla cars? I hope I have misunderstood, please clarify. Cheers, Roberto Inviato da iPad Il giorno 29.03.2024, alle ore 18:36, Karl Auerbach <karl@cavebear.com> ha scritto: I would add, however, the observation that a large amount of internet traffic does not involve humans at all. Rather it is device-to-device traffic. I work with trying to test and improve the resilience of devices to real or potential, but usually inadequately tested conditions. Many devices wobble or simply fail when they face conditions beyond the nice, calm networks of their developers. Those conditions may be caused by natural conditions or otherwise. I have, for example, seen how the introduction of new devices, that may speak a slightly different (but fully RFC compliant) version of a protocol can knock-out what were previous stable devices on the network. One of favorite examples comes from the days when we still had TCP/IP bakeoffs when the introduction of a single PC using FTP Software's stack could crash any and every instance of machines running one of the their competitor's protocol stacks - the cause was simply that they they sent a sequence of IP fragments with the last fragment first (which allows the receiver to better optimize its buffer space). That's 100% RFC legitimate, but it crashed other devices. Back to UA - We usually forget that anything beyond the most basic cases will be mis- or weakly implemented and inadequately tested - and thus potentially subject to outages due to "unusual" network traffic. I have fear that the "U" part in "UA" efforts will drive the addition of that kind of mis- or weakly implemented UA code in devices that almost always will not have any operational reason to go beyond classic ASCII. Such devices may be in critical roles - self driving vehicles, power plant controls, etc etc. (An appropriate protective strategy for such devices might simply be for them to silently reject and drop anything that is not ASCII rather than trying to deal with it.) I have a Tesla automobile. It is already filled with some really badly designed and badly written code. Automobiles are already speaking TCP/IP on automotive Ethernets that are sometimes connected to the outside world. A typical vehicle of today may have hundreds of processors attached-to and chatting-on those internet networks. I fear further risks should, hypothetically, should something like a Unicode string get onto a controller net in a car and cause something like a brake anti-lock/stability-control processor to go awry. (I've already experienced what can happen when a stability control system goes bad - it can be a shockingly terrifying experience, especially if it happens on a crowded highway downhill curve at high speed.) (And I am reminded of the fate of the Mars Climate Orbiter when a mismatch between US measurements [inches, feet] and metric measurements caused the probe to crash.) As a kid I worked with my grandfather and father repairing TVs - ones with vacuum tubes! Those boxes were very sensitive to less-than usual operating conditions - like being used on the same power circuit as a refrigerator that had a motor that generated noise onto the utility power wiring in a house. In those days there was a joke that was quite applicable: A person goes to a Doctor and says it hurts when I do this (and demonstrates some activity that constitutes "this"). The Doctor's reply is: Then stop doing that. Same for UA. Perhaps the "Universal" part needs to be de-emphasised by a recognition that there will be large parts of our internet for which that is not necessary, could add costs, and, worse, could create risks. --karl-- On 3/29/24 9:51 AM, Carlton Samuels via At-Large wrote: A proposition worthy of our support, especially from those of us that are still concerned with equitable Internet access! An insightful view of how a change in the conversation could positively impact the lowly end user. Many thanks Roberto. Carlton ============================== Carlton A Samuels Mobile: 876-818-1799 Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround ============================= On Fri, 29 Mar 2024 at 11:23, Roberto Gaetano via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org<mailto:at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org>> wrote: Hi all I have attended the UA Days in Belgrade. I am taking the opportunity of a delay in my flight back to drop some notes. The meeting was very interesting. We had a full house in the morning, with numbers decreasing in the afternoon. I don’t know about the online participation. Please find the programme here: https://uaday.rs/program/?lang=en The first panel was about multilingualism, Sally Costerton was among the speakers. It seems that the concept that the ultimate goal is multilingualism in the Internet is taking speed. To be noted that Anil Kumar Jain, UASG Chair, mentioned the four “pillars” among which there is no mention of the role of the user community. Interesting contribution by Leonid Todorov, arguing that we will have a stronger push to UA readiness from places and people that are more disadvantaged rather than from places and people that are better aware - in an intellectual way - about the need for equality of opportunities in internet access. The second panel featured some registries that have been active in achieving results in term of UA readiness. I was the last speaker, and brought the point of view of the users, who are the most affected by lack of UA, making also a couple of examples. The good news is that my contribution was well received, the bad news is that I made the point that the user community should play a role - I argued that it should be the “fifth pillar” in the UA strategy - as users can put pressure on the providers that are not UA ready, proposing that we have a paradigm shift from “providers will graciously become UA compliant as a bonus for the users” to “users worldwide have the right to demand that all users have the same Internet experience regardless their language or script they use”. The bad news is in the fact that I have proposed that the user community - and At-Large at the forefront - use their footprint in the wider community to build awareness of the user rights and produce pressure - also in collaboration with governments - to providers to be UA compliant. That means a call for action for At-Large. In summary, we need to move from being spectators, waiting for things to happen, for the technical community to provide solutions, for providers to deploy UA-compliant services, to an active part of the community to demand and obtain the same level of service for all Internet users, regardless language, script, physical location, or other factors. Cheers, Roberto _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org<mailto:At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on. _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org<mailto:At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
No, what I am saying is that things like embedded device controllers ought not to be forced (or even socially coerced) to bear the risks of running UA code that will almost certainly (for those devices) almost never tested and may create vulnerabilities. Our internet is already dangerously vulnerable and brittle, we don't need to make it worse in the areas that we least see (such as the area of device controllers.) --karl-- On 3/29/24 11:01 AM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
Hi Karl
I am not sure to understand correctly. Are you saying that farmers in Bangladesh, as an example, should not have access to the Internet in their language and script because of some bad code in Tesla cars?
I hope I have misunderstood, please clarify.
Cheers, Roberto
Inviato da iPad
Il giorno 29.03.2024, alle ore 18:36, Karl Auerbach <karl@cavebear.com> ha scritto:
I would add, however, the observation that a large amount of internet traffic does not involve humans at all. Rather it is device-to-device traffic.
I work with trying to test and improve the resilience of devices to real or potential, but usually inadequately tested conditions. Many devices wobble or simply fail when they face conditions beyond the nice, calm networks of their developers. Those conditions may be caused by natural conditions or otherwise.
I have, for example, seen how the introduction of new devices, that may speak a slightly different (but fully RFC compliant) version of a protocol can knock-out what were previous stable devices on the network. One of favorite examples comes from the days when we still had TCP/IP bakeoffs when the introduction of a single PC using FTP Software's stack could crash any and every instance of machines running one of the their competitor's protocol stacks - the cause was simply that they they sent a sequence of IP fragments with the last fragment first (which allows the receiver to better optimize its buffer space). That's 100% RFC legitimate, but it crashed other devices.
Back to UA - We usually forget that anything beyond the most basic cases will be mis- or weakly implemented and inadequately tested - and thus potentially subject to outages due to "unusual" network traffic.
I have fear that the "U" part in "UA" efforts will drive the addition of that kind of mis- or weakly implemented UA code in devices that almost always will not have any operational reason to go beyond classic ASCII. Such devices may be in critical roles - self driving vehicles, power plant controls, etc etc. (An appropriate protective strategy for such devices might simply be for them to silently reject and drop anything that is not ASCII rather than trying to deal with it.)
I have a Tesla automobile. It is already filled with some really badly designed and badly written code. Automobiles are already speaking TCP/IP on automotive Ethernets that are sometimes connected to the outside world. A typical vehicle of today may have hundreds of processors attached-to and chatting-on those internet networks. I fear further risks should, hypothetically, should something like a Unicode string get onto a controller net in a car and cause something like a brake anti-lock/stability-control processor to go awry. (I've already experienced what can happen when a stability control system goes bad - it can be a shockingly terrifying experience, especially if it happens on a crowded highway downhill curve at high speed.) (And I am reminded of the fate of the Mars Climate Orbiter when a mismatch between US measurements [inches, feet] and metric measurements caused the probe to crash.)
As a kid I worked with my grandfather and father repairing TVs - ones with vacuum tubes! Those boxes were very sensitive to less-than usual operating conditions - like being used on the same power circuit as a refrigerator that had a motor that generated noise onto the utility power wiring in a house. In those days there was a joke that was quite applicable: A person goes to a Doctor and says it hurts when I do this (and demonstrates some activity that constitutes "this"). The Doctor's reply is: Then stop doing that.
Same for UA. Perhaps the "Universal" part needs to be de-emphasised by a recognition that there will be large parts of our internet for which that is not necessary, could add costs, and, worse, could create risks.
--karl--
On 3/29/24 9:51 AM, Carlton Samuels via At-Large wrote:
A proposition worthy of our support, especially from those of us that are still concerned with equitable Internet access! An insightful view of how a change in the conversation could positively impact the lowly end user.
Many thanks Roberto.
Carlton
============================== /Carlton A Samuels/ /Mobile: 876-818-1799 Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround/ =============================
On Fri, 29 Mar 2024 at 11:23, Roberto Gaetano via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
Hi all
I have attended the UA Days in Belgrade. I am taking the opportunity of a delay in my flight back to drop some notes.
The meeting was very interesting. We had a full house in the morning, with numbers decreasing in the afternoon. I don’t know about the online participation. Please find the programme here: https://uaday.rs/program/?lang=en
The first panel was about multilingualism, Sally Costerton was among the speakers. It seems that the concept that the ultimate goal is multilingualism in the Internet is taking speed. To be noted that Anil Kumar Jain, UASG Chair, mentioned the four “pillars” among which there is no mention of the role of the user community. Interesting contribution by Leonid Todorov, arguing that we will have a stronger push to UA readiness from places and people that are more disadvantaged rather than from places and people that are better aware - in an intellectual way - about the need for equality of opportunities in internet access.
The second panel featured some registries that have been active in achieving results in term of UA readiness. I was the last speaker, and brought the point of view of the users, who are the most affected by lack of UA, making also a couple of examples. The good news is that my contribution was well received, the bad news is that I made the point that the user community should play a role - I argued that it should be the “fifth pillar” in the UA strategy - as users can put pressure on the providers that are not UA ready, proposing that we have a paradigm shift from “providers will graciously become UA compliant as a bonus for the users” to “users worldwide have the right to demand that all users have the same Internet experience regardless their language or script they use”. The bad news is in the fact that I have proposed that the user community - and At-Large at the forefront - use their footprint in the wider community to build awareness of the user rights and produce pressure - also in collaboration with governments - to providers to be UA compliant. That means a call for action for At-Large.
In summary, we need to move from being spectators, waiting for things to happen, for the technical community to provide solutions, for providers to deploy UA-compliant services, to an active part of the community to demand and obtain the same level of service for all Internet users, regardless language, script, physical location, or other factors.
Cheers, Roberto
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
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Agreed, Karl. No one should have code foisted upon them. The code is optional. The social coercion is simply to get systems capable of handling both longer and IDN TLDs. That's browsers, email, websites, etc. I doubt it would ever include embedded code. I guess if your Tesla asked you for an email address because it's sends you emails when warning lights come on, it would ideally be able to handle all email addresses. The code is there to help you but you or I could write our own code in an afternoon to be sure of what we were including. Jonathan ________________________________ From: At-Large <at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org> on behalf of Karl Auerbach via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Friday, March 29, 2024 11:33 AM To: Roberto Gaetano <roberto_gaetano@hotmail.com> Cc: At Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org>; EURALO Discuss <euro-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Subject: Re: [At-Large] UA Days No, what I am saying is that things like embedded device controllers ought not to be forced (or even socially coerced) to bear the risks of running UA code that will almost certainly (for those devices) almost never tested and may create vulnerabilities. Our internet is already dangerously vulnerable and brittle, we don't need to make it worse in the areas that we least see (such as the area of device controllers.) --karl-- On 3/29/24 11:01 AM, Roberto Gaetano wrote: Hi Karl I am not sure to understand correctly. Are you saying that farmers in Bangladesh, as an example, should not have access to the Internet in their language and script because of some bad code in Tesla cars? I hope I have misunderstood, please clarify. Cheers, Roberto Inviato da iPad Il giorno 29.03.2024, alle ore 18:36, Karl Auerbach <karl@cavebear.com><mailto:karl@cavebear.com> ha scritto: I would add, however, the observation that a large amount of internet traffic does not involve humans at all. Rather it is device-to-device traffic. I work with trying to test and improve the resilience of devices to real or potential, but usually inadequately tested conditions. Many devices wobble or simply fail when they face conditions beyond the nice, calm networks of their developers. Those conditions may be caused by natural conditions or otherwise. I have, for example, seen how the introduction of new devices, that may speak a slightly different (but fully RFC compliant) version of a protocol can knock-out what were previous stable devices on the network. One of favorite examples comes from the days when we still had TCP/IP bakeoffs when the introduction of a single PC using FTP Software's stack could crash any and every instance of machines running one of the their competitor's protocol stacks - the cause was simply that they they sent a sequence of IP fragments with the last fragment first (which allows the receiver to better optimize its buffer space). That's 100% RFC legitimate, but it crashed other devices. Back to UA - We usually forget that anything beyond the most basic cases will be mis- or weakly implemented and inadequately tested - and thus potentially subject to outages due to "unusual" network traffic. I have fear that the "U" part in "UA" efforts will drive the addition of that kind of mis- or weakly implemented UA code in devices that almost always will not have any operational reason to go beyond classic ASCII. Such devices may be in critical roles - self driving vehicles, power plant controls, etc etc. (An appropriate protective strategy for such devices might simply be for them to silently reject and drop anything that is not ASCII rather than trying to deal with it.) I have a Tesla automobile. It is already filled with some really badly designed and badly written code. Automobiles are already speaking TCP/IP on automotive Ethernets that are sometimes connected to the outside world. A typical vehicle of today may have hundreds of processors attached-to and chatting-on those internet networks. I fear further risks should, hypothetically, should something like a Unicode string get onto a controller net in a car and cause something like a brake anti-lock/stability-control processor to go awry. (I've already experienced what can happen when a stability control system goes bad - it can be a shockingly terrifying experience, especially if it happens on a crowded highway downhill curve at high speed.) (And I am reminded of the fate of the Mars Climate Orbiter when a mismatch between US measurements [inches, feet] and metric measurements caused the probe to crash.) As a kid I worked with my grandfather and father repairing TVs - ones with vacuum tubes! Those boxes were very sensitive to less-than usual operating conditions - like being used on the same power circuit as a refrigerator that had a motor that generated noise onto the utility power wiring in a house. In those days there was a joke that was quite applicable: A person goes to a Doctor and says it hurts when I do this (and demonstrates some activity that constitutes "this"). The Doctor's reply is: Then stop doing that. Same for UA. Perhaps the "Universal" part needs to be de-emphasised by a recognition that there will be large parts of our internet for which that is not necessary, could add costs, and, worse, could create risks. --karl-- On 3/29/24 9:51 AM, Carlton Samuels via At-Large wrote: A proposition worthy of our support, especially from those of us that are still concerned with equitable Internet access! An insightful view of how a change in the conversation could positively impact the lowly end user. Many thanks Roberto. Carlton ============================== Carlton A Samuels Mobile: 876-818-1799 Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround ============================= On Fri, 29 Mar 2024 at 11:23, Roberto Gaetano via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org<mailto:at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org>> wrote: Hi all I have attended the UA Days in Belgrade. I am taking the opportunity of a delay in my flight back to drop some notes. The meeting was very interesting. We had a full house in the morning, with numbers decreasing in the afternoon. I don’t know about the online participation. Please find the programme here: https://uaday.rs/program/?lang=en The first panel was about multilingualism, Sally Costerton was among the speakers. It seems that the concept that the ultimate goal is multilingualism in the Internet is taking speed. To be noted that Anil Kumar Jain, UASG Chair, mentioned the four “pillars” among which there is no mention of the role of the user community. Interesting contribution by Leonid Todorov, arguing that we will have a stronger push to UA readiness from places and people that are more disadvantaged rather than from places and people that are better aware - in an intellectual way - about the need for equality of opportunities in internet access. The second panel featured some registries that have been active in achieving results in term of UA readiness. I was the last speaker, and brought the point of view of the users, who are the most affected by lack of UA, making also a couple of examples. The good news is that my contribution was well received, the bad news is that I made the point that the user community should play a role - I argued that it should be the “fifth pillar” in the UA strategy - as users can put pressure on the providers that are not UA ready, proposing that we have a paradigm shift from “providers will graciously become UA compliant as a bonus for the users” to “users worldwide have the right to demand that all users have the same Internet experience regardless their language or script they use”. The bad news is in the fact that I have proposed that the user community - and At-Large at the forefront - use their footprint in the wider community to build awareness of the user rights and produce pressure - also in collaboration with governments - to providers to be UA compliant. That means a call for action for At-Large. In summary, we need to move from being spectators, waiting for things to happen, for the technical community to provide solutions, for providers to deploy UA-compliant services, to an active part of the community to demand and obtain the same level of service for all Internet users, regardless language, script, physical location, or other factors. Cheers, Roberto _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org<mailto:At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on. _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org<mailto:At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). 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I certainly agree that nobody should have code "foisted upon them". That said, one significant impediment to UA can be a simple inability (or lack of resources) to create the necessary code. Sometimes that will, as noted, result in bad/unreliable code. Sometimes, it will result in no code at all -- not from unwillingness to implement UA, but from simple inability. The obvious solution would be for ICANN to make available basic UA modules. We couldn't cover every coding language, of course. But we could hit the major ones. If we don't have the necessary expertise in house, rent-a-coders are dirt cheap. Bill Jouris Yahoo Mail: Search, Organize, Conquer On Fri, Mar 29, 2024 at 11:42 AM, Jonathan Zuck via At-Large<at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote: _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
I was following UASG from its initial days I am wholeheartedly agree with the feeling that Users/ At-Large should be a key point in it's focus And while mentioning it I like to point 2 trends I observed On initial focus , developer adoption to programming languages and platforms was a focus with a clear plan around open source systems compatibility with UA . But somehow over a period leadership focus shifted to building a CXO agenda around UA I think essentially this gap still exists , adoption in programming languages and platforms is still minimal , and the ongoing AI rush is making it difficult to At-Large adoption , since AI tokenization is going to be costly in complex script low resource world languages in East Asia, South Asia , Central Asia , Africa and Uralic languages in Europe And while we mention users, the maker vs consumer divide exists So far user/at-large focus on UA day was more on consumer side while Developer/maker adoption is lagging . this is because the community came up on UA was mostly user adoption focused . I think there is a need of a fresh look and prioritization if we need to fast-track UA. In addition more tech side issues exists like IDNA2008 adoption (which will change a lot if existing technical specs around LGRs due to shaping characters coming as identifiers ) , but there is a lack of attention or expertise I can see in this domain I know this mail will be little off-topic, but developer adoption(Maker side of Users At-Large) bigger lagging ground for UASG these days Anivar On Sat, 30 Mar, 2024, 10:59 Bill Jouris via At-Large, < at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
I certainly agree that nobody should have code "foisted upon them". That said, one significant impediment to UA can be a simple inability (or lack of resources) to create the necessary code. Sometimes that will, as noted, result in bad/unreliable code. Sometimes, it will result in no code at all -- not from unwillingness to implement UA, but from simple inability.
The obvious solution would be for ICANN to make available basic UA modules. We couldn't cover every coding language, of course. But we could hit the major ones. If we don't have the necessary expertise in house, rent-a-coders are dirt cheap.
Bill Jouris
Yahoo Mail: Search, Organize, Conquer <https://mail.onelink.me/107872968?pid=NativePlacement&c=Global_Acquisition_Y...>
On Fri, Mar 29, 2024 at 11:42 AM, Jonathan Zuck via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote: _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
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Karl, You bring important points to the discussion. Our daily internet use hides a bustling world of devices talking to each other, from smart thermostats to fitness trackers. This device-to-device communication (D2D) is essential, but challenges arise. Devices might not be fully tested for real-world internet quirks, and slight variations in how they speak the same language can cause problems. Efforts to make devices accept all information can be risky for critical systems like cars or medical equipment. Just like ensuring smooth conversations between people, we need to make sure these silent exchanges run safely to keep our devices working as expected. Your statement argues against forcing embedded device controllers to run Universal Acceptance (UA) code for several reasons: - *Security Risks:* Embedded devices often control critical functions and are rarely tested for complex code like UA. Running UA code on them significantly increases the risk of vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers. - *Unnecessary Burden:* Most embedded devices have limited functionality and don't need to understand a wide range of information. UA forces them to handle potentially risky data they're not designed for. - *Fragile Infrastructure:* The internet is already vulnerable, and adding complexities like untested UA code on embedded devices only makes it more fragile and prone to widespread disruptions. If it is dangerous to make these essential, often unseen devices handle complex tasks they're not built for, this could create new security holes and make the entire internet infrastructure even more vulnerable, especially when these devices have an international/global purpose. My 2cents! [image: photo] [image: photo] Alfredo Calderon eLearning Consultant aprendizajedistancia.blogspot.com calderon.alfredo@gmail.com | wiseintro.co/alfredocalderon | Alfredo_1212 | Virtual School on Internet Governance | https://virtualsig.org [image: facebook] <https://facebook.com/calderon.alfredo> [image: linkedin] <https://pr.linkedin.com/in/acalderon52> [image: twitter] <https://twitter.com/acalderon52> [image: pinterest] <http://www.pinterest.com/acalderon/> [image: slideshare] <http://www.slideshare.net/acalderon> [image: twitter] <https://twitter.com/virtualschoolIG> [image: wiseintro] <https://wiseintro.co/alfredocalderon> IMPORTANT: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential. They are intended for the named recipient(s) only. If you have received this email by mistake, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to anyone or make copies thereof. Create your WiseStamp email signature <https://www.wisestamp.com/lp/promo/professional-email-signature?utm_source=p...> [image: __tpx__] On Fri, Mar 29, 2024 at 2:33 PM Karl Auerbach via At-Large < at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
No, what I am saying is that things like embedded device controllers ought not to be forced (or even socially coerced) to bear the risks of running UA code that will almost certainly (for those devices) almost never tested and may create vulnerabilities.
Our internet is already dangerously vulnerable and brittle, we don't need to make it worse in the areas that we least see (such as the area of device controllers.)
--karl-- On 3/29/24 11:01 AM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
Hi Karl
I am not sure to understand correctly. Are you saying that farmers in Bangladesh, as an example, should not have access to the Internet in their language and script because of some bad code in Tesla cars?
I hope I have misunderstood, please clarify.
Cheers, Roberto
Inviato da iPad
Il giorno 29.03.2024, alle ore 18:36, Karl Auerbach <karl@cavebear.com> <karl@cavebear.com> ha scritto:
I would add, however, the observation that a large amount of internet traffic does not involve humans at all. Rather it is device-to-device traffic.
I work with trying to test and improve the resilience of devices to real or potential, but usually inadequately tested conditions. Many devices wobble or simply fail when they face conditions beyond the nice, calm networks of their developers. Those conditions may be caused by natural conditions or otherwise.
I have, for example, seen how the introduction of new devices, that may speak a slightly different (but fully RFC compliant) version of a protocol can knock-out what were previous stable devices on the network. One of favorite examples comes from the days when we still had TCP/IP bakeoffs when the introduction of a single PC using FTP Software's stack could crash any and every instance of machines running one of the their competitor's protocol stacks - the cause was simply that they they sent a sequence of IP fragments with the last fragment first (which allows the receiver to better optimize its buffer space). That's 100% RFC legitimate, but it crashed other devices.
Back to UA - We usually forget that anything beyond the most basic cases will be mis- or weakly implemented and inadequately tested - and thus potentially subject to outages due to "unusual" network traffic.
I have fear that the "U" part in "UA" efforts will drive the addition of that kind of mis- or weakly implemented UA code in devices that almost always will not have any operational reason to go beyond classic ASCII. Such devices may be in critical roles - self driving vehicles, power plant controls, etc etc. (An appropriate protective strategy for such devices might simply be for them to silently reject and drop anything that is not ASCII rather than trying to deal with it.)
I have a Tesla automobile. It is already filled with some really badly designed and badly written code. Automobiles are already speaking TCP/IP on automotive Ethernets that are sometimes connected to the outside world. A typical vehicle of today may have hundreds of processors attached-to and chatting-on those internet networks. I fear further risks should, hypothetically, should something like a Unicode string get onto a controller net in a car and cause something like a brake anti-lock/stability-control processor to go awry. (I've already experienced what can happen when a stability control system goes bad - it can be a shockingly terrifying experience, especially if it happens on a crowded highway downhill curve at high speed.) (And I am reminded of the fate of the Mars Climate Orbiter when a mismatch between US measurements [inches, feet] and metric measurements caused the probe to crash.)
As a kid I worked with my grandfather and father repairing TVs - ones with vacuum tubes! Those boxes were very sensitive to less-than usual operating conditions - like being used on the same power circuit as a refrigerator that had a motor that generated noise onto the utility power wiring in a house. In those days there was a joke that was quite applicable: A person goes to a Doctor and says it hurts when I do this (and demonstrates some activity that constitutes "this"). The Doctor's reply is: Then stop doing that.
Same for UA. Perhaps the "Universal" part needs to be de-emphasised by a recognition that there will be large parts of our internet for which that is not necessary, could add costs, and, worse, could create risks.
--karl-- On 3/29/24 9:51 AM, Carlton Samuels via At-Large wrote:
A proposition worthy of our support, especially from those of us that are still concerned with equitable Internet access! An insightful view of how a change in the conversation could positively impact the lowly end user.
Many thanks Roberto.
Carlton
============================== *Carlton A Samuels*
*Mobile: 876-818-1799 Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround* =============================
On Fri, 29 Mar 2024 at 11:23, Roberto Gaetano via At-Large < at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
Hi all
I have attended the UA Days in Belgrade. I am taking the opportunity of a delay in my flight back to drop some notes.
The meeting was very interesting. We had a full house in the morning, with numbers decreasing in the afternoon. I don’t know about the online participation. Please find the programme here: https://uaday.rs/program/?lang=en
The first panel was about multilingualism, Sally Costerton was among the speakers. It seems that the concept that the ultimate goal is multilingualism in the Internet is taking speed. To be noted that Anil Kumar Jain, UASG Chair, mentioned the four “pillars” among which there is no mention of the role of the user community. Interesting contribution by Leonid Todorov, arguing that we will have a stronger push to UA readiness from places and people that are more disadvantaged rather than from places and people that are better aware - in an intellectual way - about the need for equality of opportunities in internet access.
The second panel featured some registries that have been active in achieving results in term of UA readiness. I was the last speaker, and brought the point of view of the users, who are the most affected by lack of UA, making also a couple of examples. The good news is that my contribution was well received, the bad news is that I made the point that the user community should play a role - I argued that it should be the “fifth pillar” in the UA strategy - as users can put pressure on the providers that are not UA ready, proposing that we have a paradigm shift from “providers will graciously become UA compliant as a bonus for the users” to “users worldwide have the right to demand that all users have the same Internet experience regardless their language or script they use”. The bad news is in the fact that I have proposed that the user community - and At-Large at the forefront - use their footprint in the wider community to build awareness of the user rights and produce pressure - also in collaboration with governments - to providers to be UA compliant. That means a call for action for At-Large.
In summary, we need to move from being spectators, waiting for things to happen, for the technical community to provide solutions, for providers to deploy UA-compliant services, to an active part of the community to demand and obtain the same level of service for all Internet users, regardless language, script, physical location, or other factors.
Cheers, Roberto
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You are a wonderful voice of sanity and respect for humankind. thank you Roberto Christian Roberto Gaetano via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> writes:
Hi all
I have attended the UA Days in Belgrade. I am taking the opportunity of a delay in my flight back to drop some notes.
The meeting was very interesting. We had a full house in the morning, with numbers decreasing in the afternoon. I don’t know about the online participation. Please find the programme here: https://uaday.rs/program/?lang=en
The first panel was about multilingualism, Sally Costerton was among the speakers. It seems that the concept that the ultimate goal is multilingualism in the Internet is taking speed. To be noted that Anil Kumar Jain, UASG Chair, mentioned the four “pillars” among which there is no mention of the role of the user community. Interesting contribution by Leonid Todorov, arguing that we will have a stronger push to UA readiness from places and people that are more disadvantaged rather than from places and people that are better aware - in an intellectual way - about the need for equality of opportunities in internet access.
The second panel featured some registries that have been active in achieving results in term of UA readiness. I was the last speaker, and brought the point of view of the users, who are the most affected by lack of UA, making also a couple of examples. The good news is that my contribution was well received, the bad news is that I made the point that the user community should play a role - I argued that it should be the “fifth pillar” in the UA strategy - as users can put pressure on the providers that are not UA ready, proposing that we have a paradigm shift from “providers will graciously become UA compliant as a bonus for the users” to “users worldwide have the right to demand that all users have the same Internet experience regardless their language or script they use”. The bad news is in the fact that I have proposed that the user community - and At-Large at the forefront - use their footprint in the wider community to build awareness of the user rights and produce pressure - also in collaboration with governments - to providers to be UA compliant. That means a call for action for At-Large.
In summary, we need to move from being spectators, waiting for things to happen, for the technical community to provide solutions, for providers to deploy UA-compliant services, to an active part of the community to demand and obtain the same level of service for all Internet users, regardless language, script, physical location, or other factors.
Cheers, Roberto
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-- Christian de Larrinaga
Dear Roberto, thank you very much for the report, your point which made such great twist in the discussion (we were especially looking forward to it in Euralo). I support your point of view: the proactivity of users + active supporting role of At-Large, which have links on the ground, points of presence in different regions. It have to become an another big step forward! Safe flight home🌟 Best, Natalia пт, 29 мар. 2024 г., 19:23 Roberto Gaetano via At-Large < at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org>:
Hi all
I have attended the UA Days in Belgrade. I am taking the opportunity of a delay in my flight back to drop some notes.
The meeting was very interesting. We had a full house in the morning, with numbers decreasing in the afternoon. I don’t know about the online participation. Please find the programme here: https://uaday.rs/program/?lang=en
The first panel was about multilingualism, Sally Costerton was among the speakers. It seems that the concept that the ultimate goal is multilingualism in the Internet is taking speed. To be noted that Anil Kumar Jain, UASG Chair, mentioned the four “pillars” among which there is no mention of the role of the user community. Interesting contribution by Leonid Todorov, arguing that we will have a stronger push to UA readiness from places and people that are more disadvantaged rather than from places and people that are better aware - in an intellectual way - about the need for equality of opportunities in internet access.
The second panel featured some registries that have been active in achieving results in term of UA readiness. I was the last speaker, and brought the point of view of the users, who are the most affected by lack of UA, making also a couple of examples. The good news is that my contribution was well received, the bad news is that I made the point that the user community should play a role - I argued that it should be the “fifth pillar” in the UA strategy - as users can put pressure on the providers that are not UA ready, proposing that we have a paradigm shift from “providers will graciously become UA compliant as a bonus for the users” to “users worldwide have the right to demand that all users have the same Internet experience regardless their language or script they use”. The bad news is in the fact that I have proposed that the user community - and At-Large at the forefront - use their footprint in the wider community to build awareness of the user rights and produce pressure - also in collaboration with governments - to providers to be UA compliant. That means a call for action for At-Large.
In summary, we need to move from being spectators, waiting for things to happen, for the technical community to provide solutions, for providers to deploy UA-compliant services, to an active part of the community to demand and obtain the same level of service for all Internet users, regardless language, script, physical location, or other factors.
Cheers, Roberto
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Thanks Roberto, good notes. It might be interesting to look back, how it all started and compare it with current situation. I assume majority will agree - we see UA progress. From the end user perspective today local scripts just work and supported in domains, web, social networks and other popular apps. Except emails, but this seems to be non technical problem. I was never convinced this is the must in the past and today younger generation perfectly operate without IDN emails. As a summary should I say this is an example of evolutionary process rather then revolutionary. It took us 10+ years. -- {ak} Пт, 29 марта 2024 г. в 19:23, Roberto Gaetano via At-Large < at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org>:
Hi all
I have attended the UA Days in Belgrade. I am taking the opportunity of a delay in my flight back to drop some notes.
The meeting was very interesting. We had a full house in the morning, with numbers decreasing in the afternoon. I don’t know about the online participation. Please find the programme here: https://uaday.rs/program/?lang=en
The first panel was about multilingualism, Sally Costerton was among the speakers. It seems that the concept that the ultimate goal is multilingualism in the Internet is taking speed. To be noted that Anil Kumar Jain, UASG Chair, mentioned the four “pillars” among which there is no mention of the role of the user community. Interesting contribution by Leonid Todorov, arguing that we will have a stronger push to UA readiness from places and people that are more disadvantaged rather than from places and people that are better aware - in an intellectual way - about the need for equality of opportunities in internet access.
The second panel featured some registries that have been active in achieving results in term of UA readiness. I was the last speaker, and brought the point of view of the users, who are the most affected by lack of UA, making also a couple of examples. The good news is that my contribution was well received, the bad news is that I made the point that the user community should play a role - I argued that it should be the “fifth pillar” in the UA strategy - as users can put pressure on the providers that are not UA ready, proposing that we have a paradigm shift from “providers will graciously become UA compliant as a bonus for the users” to “users worldwide have the right to demand that all users have the same Internet experience regardless their language or script they use”. The bad news is in the fact that I have proposed that the user community - and At-Large at the forefront - use their footprint in the wider community to build awareness of the user rights and produce pressure - also in collaboration with governments - to providers to be UA compliant. That means a call for action for At-Large.
In summary, we need to move from being spectators, waiting for things to happen, for the technical community to provide solutions, for providers to deploy UA-compliant services, to an active part of the community to demand and obtain the same level of service for all Internet users, regardless language, script, physical location, or other factors.
Cheers, Roberto
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Thanks very much, Roberto, for your boots-on-the-ground report from the global UA event. I fully support your call for At-Large--the fifth pillar as you have mentioned--to exert its influence to persuade all stakeholders to achieve UA compliance. With kind regards satish On Fri, Mar 29, 2024, 21:53 Roberto Gaetano via At-Large < at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
Hi all
I have attended the UA Days in Belgrade. I am taking the opportunity of a delay in my flight back to drop some notes.
The meeting was very interesting. We had a full house in the morning, with numbers decreasing in the afternoon. I don’t know about the online participation. Please find the programme here: https://uaday.rs/program/?lang=en
The first panel was about multilingualism, Sally Costerton was among the speakers. It seems that the concept that the ultimate goal is multilingualism in the Internet is taking speed. To be noted that Anil Kumar Jain, UASG Chair, mentioned the four “pillars” among which there is no mention of the role of the user community. Interesting contribution by Leonid Todorov, arguing that we will have a stronger push to UA readiness from places and people that are more disadvantaged rather than from places and people that are better aware - in an intellectual way - about the need for equality of opportunities in internet access.
The second panel featured some registries that have been active in achieving results in term of UA readiness. I was the last speaker, and brought the point of view of the users, who are the most affected by lack of UA, making also a couple of examples. The good news is that my contribution was well received, the bad news is that I made the point that the user community should play a role - I argued that it should be the “fifth pillar” in the UA strategy - as users can put pressure on the providers that are not UA ready, proposing that we have a paradigm shift from “providers will graciously become UA compliant as a bonus for the users” to “users worldwide have the right to demand that all users have the same Internet experience regardless their language or script they use”. The bad news is in the fact that I have proposed that the user community - and At-Large at the forefront - use their footprint in the wider community to build awareness of the user rights and produce pressure - also in collaboration with governments - to providers to be UA compliant. That means a call for action for At-Large.
In summary, we need to move from being spectators, waiting for things to happen, for the technical community to provide solutions, for providers to deploy UA-compliant services, to an active part of the community to demand and obtain the same level of service for all Internet users, regardless language, script, physical location, or other factors.
Cheers, Roberto
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Many thanks Roberto for the useful summary. You raise valid points, great to see ccTLDs at the forefront of Championing Universal Acceptance. Considering the fact that most of them implement the 3 R model, the role of end users as meaningful actors is key. Best Regards On Fri, Mar 29, 2024 at 7:23 PM Roberto Gaetano via At-Large < at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
Hi all
I have attended the UA Days in Belgrade. I am taking the opportunity of a delay in my flight back to drop some notes.
The meeting was very interesting. We had a full house in the morning, with numbers decreasing in the afternoon. I don’t know about the online participation. Please find the programme here: https://uaday.rs/program/?lang=en
The first panel was about multilingualism, Sally Costerton was among the speakers. It seems that the concept that the ultimate goal is multilingualism in the Internet is taking speed. To be noted that Anil Kumar Jain, UASG Chair, mentioned the four “pillars” among which there is no mention of the role of the user community. Interesting contribution by Leonid Todorov, arguing that we will have a stronger push to UA readiness from places and people that are more disadvantaged rather than from places and people that are better aware - in an intellectual way - about the need for equality of opportunities in internet access.
The second panel featured some registries that have been active in achieving results in term of UA readiness. I was the last speaker, and brought the point of view of the users, who are the most affected by lack of UA, making also a couple of examples. The good news is that my contribution was well received, the bad news is that I made the point that the user community should play a role - I argued that it should be the “fifth pillar” in the UA strategy - as users can put pressure on the providers that are not UA ready, proposing that we have a paradigm shift from “providers will graciously become UA compliant as a bonus for the users” to “users worldwide have the right to demand that all users have the same Internet experience regardless their language or script they use”. The bad news is in the fact that I have proposed that the user community - and At-Large at the forefront - use their footprint in the wider community to build awareness of the user rights and produce pressure - also in collaboration with governments - to providers to be UA compliant. That means a call for action for At-Large.
In summary, we need to move from being spectators, waiting for things to happen, for the technical community to provide solutions, for providers to deploy UA-compliant services, to an active part of the community to demand and obtain the same level of service for all Internet users, regardless language, script, physical location, or other factors.
Cheers, Roberto
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-- Barrack O. Otieno +254721325277 +254733206359 Skype: barrack.otieno PGP ID: 0x2611D86A
I have long maintained that UA is little more than a poorly executed marketing campaign, created to address ICANN's impotence at enforcing its decisions outside its bubble. Nothing in this discussion challenges that view. The ALAC take on this issue is rather focused, or at least it ought to be. We need to take the point of view of the Internet consumer whose point of entry (for the purposes of explicitly typing domain memorable names in any language) is almost always browsers or mobile apps. IDNs may indeed provide value to people who wish to use them to reach Internet destinations in their own language. But I'm still wary of any great effort to push them out to an Internet world that may neither want nor need them anymore. At most they are an add-on rather than necessity, since existing global Internet destinations (and the people who seek them) have had to figure out other ways so far (like the use of all-numeric domain names or QR codes). IDNs could have been world-changing a decade or more ago, now they're just late to the game and most of the world has moved on. Since it has no treaty or other enforcement mechanism, ICANN now has to rely on promotion. And UA days, nights, weeks and months of talking to ourselves are not going to do it. Social coercion? Really? That's just an unfunny joke. Is the plan to SHAME people into using IDNs? Good luck with that. That any within the ICANN community consider outreach to browser makers to be out of scope is just astounding; they are EXACTLY the entities most needed onboard if there are to be IDN buyers as well as sellers. In the absence of such outreach, browser makers aren't moving because browser USERS aren't asking for it; many other demands such as speed and security, ease-of-use and now AI assistants take priority. That's the problem with ICANN's IDN development process, which has been top-down -- driven by domain sellers -- rather than bottom-up, driven by domain users (registrants and Internet consumers). It's no surprise that the UASG does not consider end-users a pillar. As a result I really don't know if the idea has now gone past its expiration date, becoming a solution looking for a problem that no longer exists. As AI and NLP and voice recognition find their way ever deeper into apps and browsers, IDNs become less necessary to end-users by the day. I'm not convinced that the developed world really cares about (let alone knows) what the non-developed world really NEEDS, but we have this scheme that involves revenue from domain selling so OK! Having said all this, ALAC's mandate remains to present the PoV of end-users -- not domain sellers -- and we can assume that there are at least some that might still want IDNs. IMO, in their support, ALAC should be calling on ICANN to eliminate the useless and self-serving UA program and allocate those resources towards: 1. Appropriate market research so that we can all honestly determine whether IDNs have enough *end-user* and *registrant* demand to justify additional resources and indeed new IDN registries. 2. Explicit outreach and resource support to the developers of app makers and browsers (and any other end-user-facing Internet interfaces) because without them onboard most of the rest is pointless 3. IF the market research confirms demand, create a browser/app IDN certification program and promote that to the public, to drive bottom-up demand. Cheers, - Evan PS: @Alfredo ... given that embedded devices don't need to use "memorable" or even human-parsable domain names, I'm not sure how IDNs serve IoT at all, indeed their support adds needless complexity when code space is minimal. Besides, in its current state ICANN is in no position to force anyone (outside of contracted parties) to do anything. @Roberto, I want to actually hear from those farmers in Bangladesh, not anyone pretending to guess their needs. Do they really need IDNs or are we just projecting? Are there better solutions? I might suggest that many are doing just fine on the Internet of today without IDNs, thanks to search engines and other innovations. I had some very eye-opening experiences when working a few years at UNHCR, that taught me how how resourceful and innovative people can be in the tightest of circumstances. I would not presume to know anyone's actual needs without asking them. And tweaked Internet domain names are not the only, or even the best, answer to remote accessibility challenges.
Evan, IDNs are good for outdoor, TV and radio ads. Also search engines handle IDN pretty well. It means good business for domain sellers, brands and SMEs. End users, especially in developing countries, carry their smartphones with helpful apps (multiple reports available). They might not know what the domain name is. Should they? ) --andrei On Mon, Apr 1, 2024 at 1:11 PM Evan Leibovitch via At-Large < at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
I have long maintained that UA is little more than a poorly executed marketing campaign, created to address ICANN's impotence at enforcing its decisions outside its bubble. Nothing in this discussion challenges that view.
The ALAC take on this issue is rather focused, or at least it ought to be. We need to take the point of view of the Internet consumer whose point of entry (for the purposes of explicitly typing domain memorable names in any language) is almost always browsers or mobile apps.
IDNs may indeed provide value to people who wish to use them to reach Internet destinations in their own language. But I'm still wary of any great effort to push them out to an Internet world that may neither want nor need them anymore. At most they are an add-on rather than necessity, since existing global Internet destinations (and the people who seek them) have had to figure out other ways so far (like the use of all-numeric domain names or QR codes). IDNs could have been world-changing a decade or more ago, now they're just late to the game and most of the world has moved on. Since it has no treaty or other enforcement mechanism, ICANN now has to rely on promotion. And UA days, nights, weeks and months of talking to ourselves are not going to do it.
Social coercion? Really? That's just an unfunny joke. Is the plan to SHAME people into using IDNs? Good luck with that.
That any within the ICANN community consider outreach to browser makers to be out of scope is just astounding; they are EXACTLY the entities most needed onboard if there are to be IDN buyers as well as sellers. In the absence of such outreach, browser makers aren't moving because browser USERS aren't asking for it; many other demands such as speed and security, ease-of-use and now AI assistants take priority. That's the problem with ICANN's IDN development process, which has been top-down -- driven by domain sellers -- rather than bottom-up, driven by domain users (registrants and Internet consumers). It's no surprise that the UASG does not consider end-users a pillar. As a result I really don't know if the idea has now gone past its expiration date, becoming a solution looking for a problem that no longer exists. As AI and NLP and voice recognition find their way ever deeper into apps and browsers, IDNs become less necessary to end-users by the day. I'm not convinced that the developed world really cares about (let alone knows) what the non-developed world really NEEDS, but we have this scheme that involves revenue from domain selling so OK!
Having said all this, ALAC's mandate remains to present the PoV of end-users -- not domain sellers -- and we can assume that there are at least some that might still want IDNs. IMO, in their support, ALAC should be calling on ICANN to eliminate the useless and self-serving UA program and allocate those resources towards:
1. Appropriate market research so that we can all honestly determine whether IDNs have enough *end-user* and *registrant* demand to justify additional resources and indeed new IDN registries. 2. Explicit outreach and resource support to the developers of app makers and browsers (and any other end-user-facing Internet interfaces) because without them onboard most of the rest is pointless 3. IF the market research confirms demand, create a browser/app IDN certification program and promote that to the public, to drive bottom-up demand.
Cheers, - Evan
PS: @Alfredo ... given that embedded devices don't need to use "memorable" or even human-parsable domain names, I'm not sure how IDNs serve IoT at all, indeed their support adds needless complexity when code space is minimal. Besides, in its current state ICANN is in no position to force anyone (outside of contracted parties) to do anything.
@Roberto, I want to actually hear from those farmers in Bangladesh, not anyone pretending to guess their needs. Do they really need IDNs or are we just projecting? Are there better solutions? I might suggest that many are doing just fine on the Internet of today without IDNs, thanks to search engines and other innovations. I had some very eye-opening experiences when working a few years at UNHCR, that taught me how how resourceful and innovative people can be in the tightest of circumstances. I would not presume to know anyone's actual needs without asking them. And tweaked Internet domain names are not the only, or even the best, answer to remote accessibility challenges. _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
-- Andrey Kolesnikov IOTAS.RU
Without doing much analysis, there are hundreds of places in the world that require IDN. And precisely those places are the most populated in the world and where the vast majority are "disconnected." There is no AI there. And if the rest of the world is not interested, at least they are interested so they can communicate with each other. And they are end users. These regions are so large and without available technology, that conducting a needs survey or justification of the need for IDN would be much more expensive than implementing IDN. Greetings Alberto De: At-Large <at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org> En nombre de Andrei Kolesnikov via At-Large Enviado el: lunes, 1 de abril de 2024 11:02 Para: Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> CC: EURALO Discuss <euro-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org>; At Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Asunto: Re: [At-Large] UA Days Evan, IDNs are good for outdoor, TV and radio ads. Also search engines handle IDN pretty well. It means good business for domain sellers, brands and SMEs. End users, especially in developing countries, carry their smartphones with helpful apps (multiple reports available). They might not know what the domain name is. Should they? ) --andrei On Mon, Apr 1, 2024 at 1:11 PM Evan Leibovitch via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> > wrote: I have long maintained that UA is little more than a poorly executed marketing campaign, created to address ICANN's impotence at enforcing its decisions outside its bubble. Nothing in this discussion challenges that view. The ALAC take on this issue is rather focused, or at least it ought to be. We need to take the point of view of the Internet consumer whose point of entry (for the purposes of explicitly typing domain memorable names in any language) is almost always browsers or mobile apps. IDNs may indeed provide value to people who wish to use them to reach Internet destinations in their own language. But I'm still wary of any great effort to push them out to an Internet world that may neither want nor need them anymore. At most they are an add-on rather than necessity, since existing global Internet destinations (and the people who seek them) have had to figure out other ways so far (like the use of all-numeric domain names or QR codes). IDNs could have been world-changing a decade or more ago, now they're just late to the game and most of the world has moved on. Since it has no treaty or other enforcement mechanism, ICANN now has to rely on promotion. And UA days, nights, weeks and months of talking to ourselves are not going to do it. Social coercion? Really? That's just an unfunny joke. Is the plan to SHAME people into using IDNs? Good luck with that. That any within the ICANN community consider outreach to browser makers to be out of scope is just astounding; they are EXACTLY the entities most needed onboard if there are to be IDN buyers as well as sellers. In the absence of such outreach, browser makers aren't moving because browser USERS aren't asking for it; many other demands such as speed and security, ease-of-use and now AI assistants take priority. That's the problem with ICANN's IDN development process, which has been top-down -- driven by domain sellers -- rather than bottom-up, driven by domain users (registrants and Internet consumers). It's no surprise that the UASG does not consider end-users a pillar. As a result I really don't know if the idea has now gone past its expiration date, becoming a solution looking for a problem that no longer exists. As AI and NLP and voice recognition find their way ever deeper into apps and browsers, IDNs become less necessary to end-users by the day. I'm not convinced that the developed world really cares about (let alone knows) what the non-developed world really NEEDS, but we have this scheme that involves revenue from domain selling so OK! Having said all this, ALAC's mandate remains to present the PoV of end-users -- not domain sellers -- and we can assume that there are at least some that might still want IDNs. IMO, in their support, ALAC should be calling on ICANN to eliminate the useless and self-serving UA program and allocate those resources towards: 1. Appropriate market research so that we can all honestly determine whether IDNs have enough end-user and registrant demand to justify additional resources and indeed new IDN registries. 2. Explicit outreach and resource support to the developers of app makers and browsers (and any other end-user-facing Internet interfaces) because without them onboard most of the rest is pointless 3. IF the market research confirms demand, create a browser/app IDN certification program and promote that to the public, to drive bottom-up demand. Cheers, - Evan PS: @Alfredo ... given that embedded devices don't need to use "memorable" or even human-parsable domain names, I'm not sure how IDNs serve IoT at all, indeed their support adds needless complexity when code space is minimal. Besides, in its current state ICANN is in no position to force anyone (outside of contracted parties) to do anything. @Roberto, I want to actually hear from those farmers in Bangladesh, not anyone pretending to guess their needs. Do they really need IDNs or are we just projecting? Are there better solutions? I might suggest that many are doing just fine on the Internet of today without IDNs, thanks to search engines and other innovations. I had some very eye-opening experiences when working a few years at UNHCR, that taught me how how resourceful and innovative people can be in the tightest of circumstances. I would not presume to know anyone's actual needs without asking them. And tweaked Internet domain names are not the only, or even the best, answer to remote accessibility challenges. _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on. -- Andrey Kolesnikov IOTAS.RU <http://IOTAS.RU>
On Mon, Apr 1, 2024 at 10:18 AM <alberto@soto.net.ar> wrote:
Without doing much analysis, there are hundreds of places in the world that require IDN.
Sorry, but I do not take such an assertion at face value, and neither should anyone here. *What is the evidence?* All I encounter is guesswork and wishful thinking. The preface "without doing much analysis" speaks volumes about acting on faith rather than fact. Said analysis is desperately needed. And precisely those places are the most populated in the world and where
the vast majority are "disconnected." There is no AI there.
I do not understand this assertion, it seems to me outrageous and likely ill-informed. If you have Internet, you have access to AI. (And, more ominously, it has access to you -- but that's a very different discussion.) If you don't have Internet, the problem is not domain names but lack of physical infrastructure -- cables, towers, satellite receivers, affordable devices, etc. Let's please be accurate here; domain names are an insignificant component of connecting the unconnected. For two years I had a UN contract where the job task was literally connecting the unconnected. In that time I observed that many in the barely-connected world have access to little more than Facebook and WhatsApp, which meet many needs in local languages. This situation, not without controversy, is accelerated by initiatives such as Meta's Free Basics <https://www.facebook.com/connectivity/solutions/free-basics/> which provide funding for physical infrastructure in return for monopolizing the user experience of those connected. Mobile money and microfinance are more likely to be done by SMS than Internet. In these environments knowledge of domains -- ASCII or IDN -- is absolutely irrelevant. I witnessed this myself first-hand in environments where many tens of thousands of people had to share a single 3G cell tower. I invite you to *prove* me wrong. Sure there is use for IDNs, but framing them as an international development issue is IMO disingenuous and not backed by evidence. - Evan
Evan, I didn't want to go into details. The majority of those disconnected are in countries that at some point were called third world. Many without access, others with very poor access where it does not matter if there is AI or not. And there are many millions of end users. I'm not supposed to prove you wrong, nor am I saying you're misinformed. I am pragmatic and I believe that time should not be wasted. Greetings Alberto De: Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> Enviado el: lunes, 1 de abril de 2024 13:25 Para: alberto@soto.net.ar CC: Andrei Kolesnikov <andrei@rol.ru>; EURALO Discuss <euro-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org>; At Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Asunto: Re: [At-Large] UA Days On Mon, Apr 1, 2024 at 10:18 AM <alberto@soto.net.ar <mailto:alberto@soto.net.ar> > wrote: Without doing much analysis, there are hundreds of places in the world that require IDN. Sorry, but I do not take such an assertion at face value, and neither should anyone here. What is the evidence? All I encounter is guesswork and wishful thinking. The preface "without doing much analysis" speaks volumes about acting on faith rather than fact. Said analysis is desperately needed. And precisely those places are the most populated in the world and where the vast majority are "disconnected." There is no AI there. I do not understand this assertion, it seems to me outrageous and likely ill-informed. If you have Internet, you have access to AI. (And, more ominously, it has access to you -- but that's a very different discussion.) If you don't have Internet, the problem is not domain names but lack of physical infrastructure -- cables, towers, satellite receivers, affordable devices, etc. Let's please be accurate here; domain names are an insignificant component of connecting the unconnected. For two years I had a UN contract where the job task was literally connecting the unconnected. In that time I observed that many in the barely-connected world have access to little more than Facebook and WhatsApp, which meet many needs in local languages. This situation, not without controversy, is accelerated by initiatives such as Meta's Free Basics <https://www.facebook.com/connectivity/solutions/free-basics/> which provide funding for physical infrastructure in return for monopolizing the user experience of those connected. Mobile money and microfinance are more likely to be done by SMS than Internet. In these environments knowledge of domains -- ASCII or IDN -- is absolutely irrelevant. I witnessed this myself first-hand in environments where many tens of thousands of people had to share a single 3G cell tower. I invite you to prove me wrong. Sure there is use for IDNs, but framing them as an international development issue is IMO disingenuous and not backed by evidence. - Evan
On Mon, Apr 1, 2024 at 12:44 PM <alberto@soto.net.ar> wrote:
Evan, I didn't want to go into details.
That's because none exist. The majority of those disconnected are in countries that at some point were
called third world.
What they're called is irrelevant. Many without access, others with very poor access where it does not matter
if there is AI or not. And there are many millions of end users.
I'm not supposed to prove you wrong, nor am I saying you're misinformed. I am pragmatic and I believe that time should not be wasted.
There is nothing pragmatic about the status quo, it is a guaranteed path to wasted money and a complete failure to accomplish objectives. Consider how little has been accomplished to date, given Hank's experience -- talk about wasted time! I still await evidence that the current path is founded on anything beyond projection and wishful thinking, guessing what unconnected users need from a detached reality away.. Cheers, - Evan
Dear all, I would like to start by making clear what I believe marks the difference between my Weltanschauung and Evan’s, before trying to find where there is room for a constructive discussion. I have tried what I could, from taking a deep breath, counting to 10 - 100 or 1000, let the matter aside and come back to the email a couple of hours later, but I can’t help being deeply annoyed by statements made by people interacting with the Internet - as tool as well as community - in their comfort zone, using their mother tongue and their script, about how this is not a problem for who does not have this luxury because there are workarounds that they can use. As I have stated many times, I believe that “Internet is for everyone” means that everybody should have the same ease of use and interaction regardless the difference they have from the dominant model. This includes the right of having their digital identity - like a web site or an email address - being usable and accessible regardless the fact that there are other possibilities or turnarounds, or even other ways to assert their digital identity. This is my red line, that I will never cross. Going to a possible constructive discussion, I do agree with Evan that money could be spent in a better way. It is true that I have taken for granted - many years ago - that the introduction of IDNs would have been the panacea to the inequalities in the Internet world. Of course, we all knew that there are bigger problems, like accessibility, costs, speed, material, etc., but at least I thought we could move in the good direction. I agree that we need to rethink the strategy, I find the three points listed by Evan are at least worth a discussion within At-Large - I paste them here for convenience: 1. Appropriate market research so that we can all honestly determine whether IDNs have enough end-user and registrant demand to justify additional resources and indeed new IDN registries. 2. Explicit outreach and resource support to the developers of app makers and browsers (and any other end-user-facing Internet interfaces) because without them onboard most of the rest is pointless 3. IF the market research confirms demand, create a browser/app IDN certification program and promote that to the public, to drive bottom-up demand. This said, I maintain that in the meantime there is room for At-Large to get organised to put pressure on providers to become UA-ready. I don’t think that the two actions are mutually exclusive, quite the contrary: on one hand to correct what is a current dysfunction of the system and on the other hand to work on the strategy for the next phase. Best regards, Roberto PS: the Bangladesh farmer was an example I used to make sure I did not misunderstood Karl’s point. As it turned out, I did in effect misunderstand - now it is all set. This said, I do not know farmers in Bangladesh, but have often spoken to people in underserved communities and, although they might have even bigger problem, often the language and script limitations are indicated as one. And I don’t feel like dismissing them just because they can survive anyway. On 01.04.2024, at 12:10, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote: I have long maintained that UA is little more than a poorly executed marketing campaign, created to address ICANN's impotence at enforcing its decisions outside its bubble. Nothing in this discussion challenges that view. The ALAC take on this issue is rather focused, or at least it ought to be. We need to take the point of view of the Internet consumer whose point of entry (for the purposes of explicitly typing domain memorable names in any language) is almost always browsers or mobile apps. IDNs may indeed provide value to people who wish to use them to reach Internet destinations in their own language. But I'm still wary of any great effort to push them out to an Internet world that may neither want nor need them anymore. At most they are an add-on rather than necessity, since existing global Internet destinations (and the people who seek them) have had to figure out other ways so far (like the use of all-numeric domain names or QR codes). IDNs could have been world-changing a decade or more ago, now they're just late to the game and most of the world has moved on. Since it has no treaty or other enforcement mechanism, ICANN now has to rely on promotion. And UA days, nights, weeks and months of talking to ourselves are not going to do it. Social coercion? Really? That's just an unfunny joke. Is the plan to SHAME people into using IDNs? Good luck with that. That any within the ICANN community consider outreach to browser makers to be out of scope is just astounding; they are EXACTLY the entities most needed onboard if there are to be IDN buyers as well as sellers. In the absence of such outreach, browser makers aren't moving because browser USERS aren't asking for it; many other demands such as speed and security, ease-of-use and now AI assistants take priority. That's the problem with ICANN's IDN development process, which has been top-down -- driven by domain sellers -- rather than bottom-up, driven by domain users (registrants and Internet consumers). It's no surprise that the UASG does not consider end-users a pillar. As a result I really don't know if the idea has now gone past its expiration date, becoming a solution looking for a problem that no longer exists. As AI and NLP and voice recognition find their way ever deeper into apps and browsers, IDNs become less necessary to end-users by the day. I'm not convinced that the developed world really cares about (let alone knows) what the non-developed world really NEEDS, but we have this scheme that involves revenue from domain selling so OK! Having said all this, ALAC's mandate remains to present the PoV of end-users -- not domain sellers -- and we can assume that there are at least some that might still want IDNs. IMO, in their support, ALAC should be calling on ICANN to eliminate the useless and self-serving UA program and allocate those resources towards: 1. Appropriate market research so that we can all honestly determine whether IDNs have enough end-user and registrant demand to justify additional resources and indeed new IDN registries. 2. Explicit outreach and resource support to the developers of app makers and browsers (and any other end-user-facing Internet interfaces) because without them onboard most of the rest is pointless 3. IF the market research confirms demand, create a browser/app IDN certification program and promote that to the public, to drive bottom-up demand. Cheers, - Evan PS: @Alfredo ... given that embedded devices don't need to use "memorable" or even human-parsable domain names, I'm not sure how IDNs serve IoT at all, indeed their support adds needless complexity when code space is minimal. Besides, in its current state ICANN is in no position to force anyone (outside of contracted parties) to do anything. @Roberto, I want to actually hear from those farmers in Bangladesh, not anyone pretending to guess their needs. Do they really need IDNs or are we just projecting? Are there better solutions? I might suggest that many are doing just fine on the Internet of today without IDNs, thanks to search engines and other innovations. I had some very eye-opening experiences when working a few years at UNHCR, that taught me how how resourceful and innovative people can be in the tightest of circumstances. I would not presume to know anyone's actual needs without asking them. And tweaked Internet domain names are not the only, or even the best, answer to remote accessibility challenges.
Echoing some of what Evan said a worthwhile role of at-large would be to act as a repository and producer of facts, data, and analyses about internet usage as pertains to ICANN's mission. These could range from literature surveys, surely there must be mountains of research out there, to sponsoring data collection and analyses by domain (in the general sense) experts where lacking. Otherwise it just becomes a talking club: people of varying capabilities spouting about what they believe to be true and debating those beliefs among themselves mostly with little or no result -- another social media outlet with no product and no persistence. I could imagine, for example, quarterly and annual, etc ("intelligencers"), summaries of the state of the world which is affected by ICANN's mission. I know, sounds too much like real work. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*
It was certainly not my intention to cause upset, apologies for that. At a certain point, all of us here who understand the function of the DNS and the processes of ICANN are already in a kind of elite position that has us out of touch with the Internet's underserved to various extents. I had the opportunity to serve in a role of providing connectivity in African and Latin American refugee camps under contract to UNHCR for a number of years, so I have first-hand experience with many of the challenges and solutions at play in such environments. But that is certainly not the same as living there. That is why I advocate so strongly for the need for evidence and research, to not take Roberto's word or mine or anyone else's here on faith, but to honestly investigate the needs of the underserved and the available solutions. It is also why I strongly reject Alfredo's stated approach to policy, choosing the path of least resistance under the guise of "practicality". At best such an approach will maintain the status quo and at worst will cause decline. On Mon, Apr 1, 2024 at 4:49 PM Roberto Gaetano via At-Large < at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote: As I have stated many times, I believe that “Internet is for everyone”
means that everybody should have the same ease of use and interaction regardless the difference they have from the dominant model. This includes the right of having their digital identity - like a web site or an email address - being usable and accessible regardless the fact that there are other possibilities or turnarounds, or even other ways to assert their digital identity. This is my red line, that I will never cross.
I agree violently with Roberto that access to the Internet and digital identity must be universal, I would even call it an aspirational human right. Where we differ is in the suitability of a DNS-based domain name for that purpose. To me, domain names are among the most expensive and least sustainable forms of Internet identity currently available. Memorable domain names serve numerous roles, but personal identity is among their weakest. There are many, MANY reasons for this, but the most obvious is that your Internet identity must not demand an annual fee, which if left unpaid (even by accident) can be acquired by someone else. To me the line demanding that everyone has access to an Internet domain is not only not red, it is drawn with dust. There are many other ways to claim a digital identity, almost all of them superior to Internet domains. Most of them are free of cost (let alone annual fee). And a number of them, such as OpenSSL and Mastodon accounts, do not require putting your identity in the hands of a commercial organization that profits from use (or spread) of personal information. We must also acknowledge the effect of progress and technical evolution. New forms of digital identity exist now that weren't dreamed of 20 years ago but dominate today. My children hate using email and my grandchildren don't know what email is, but they are all very well connected. What they do use, from Signal to Discord to Xing to WhatsApp to Wechat, all have flat namespaces and (critical to the UA discussion) most are quite happy with Unicode characters in IDs. Generally only global trademark holders care about "memorable" IDs because everyone can use aliases for which duplicates are OK. And if all you need is chat and finance, even SMS suffices for identity if you choose not to fully connect (and that choice must be available too). These are not stopgap or compromise solutions, they are indeed the mainstream accessible forms of digital identity today and it is Internet domains that are the archaic and inferior alternative. (It is these IDs that I put in my standard signature, not my phone or email.) The rise of AI in general use only accelerates the decline of domains as identity. I assert that this reality is a primary reason that IDNs have such poor uptake from consumers and app developers, the interest for them primarily comes from financially-interested domain sellers and not from anyone needing an identity. There is simply too little bottom-up consumer demand, a phenomenon that we in At-Large must comprehend to adequately represent the end-user PoV on the issues of IDNs and UA. But, as I said before, this is only my opinion, even though I believe it to be well-informed by first-hand experience. I await being disproven. Let's get some evidence. Cheers, -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56
Correction: On Tue, Apr 2, 2024 at 1:51 PM Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
That is why I advocate so strongly for the need for evidence and research, to not take Roberto's word or mine or anyone else's here on faith, but to honestly investigate the needs of the underserved and the available solutions. It is also why I strongly reject Alfredo's stated approach to policy, choosing the path of least resistance under the guise of "practicality". At best such an approach will maintain the status quo and at worst will cause decline.
Upon re-reading the thread I realize that it was Alberto, not Alfredo, who made that ill-advised appeal to pragmatism. Sorry. - Evan
Dear Roberto, Thank you for sharing the session brief . I fully agree with you that raising users awareness and knowledge about the possibility of having domain names and email addresses in their own languages is important. I can tell you that nearly every time I participated in a session related to the DNS and/or ICANN and I raised the topic of domain names and IDNs, hardly anyone in the session was aware of the existence of Arabic domain names. How can they demand or understand the need for it when they are barely aware of its existence? Our mission has two aspects: Raising awareness about the existence of IDNs and encouraging users who realize the benefits of IDNs to demand them. I also concur that market surveys, as mentioned by others , are important. Targeted market surveys conducted at a regional and national basis can assist in pinpointing specific areas of focus. Moreover, I believe that after connecting the unconnected, IDNs will play a significant role in actively bringing newly connected users online. Kind regards Hadia Elminiawi From: At-Large <at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org> On Behalf Of Roberto Gaetano via At-Large Sent: Friday, March 29, 2024 6:23 PM To: EURALO Discuss <euro-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org>; At Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Subject: [External] [At-Large] UA Days Hi all I have attended the UA Days in Belgrade. I am taking the opportunity of a delay in my flight back to drop some notes. The meeting was very interesting. We had a full house in the morning, with numbers decreasing in the afternoon. I don’t know about the online participation. Please find the programme here: https://uaday.rs/program/?lang=en The first panel was about multilingualism, Sally Costerton was among the speakers. It seems that the concept that the ultimate goal is multilingualism in the Internet is taking speed. To be noted that Anil Kumar Jain, UASG Chair, mentioned the four “pillars” among which there is no mention of the role of the user community. Interesting contribution by Leonid Todorov, arguing that we will have a stronger push to UA readiness from places and people that are more disadvantaged rather than from places and people that are better aware - in an intellectual way - about the need for equality of opportunities in internet access. The second panel featured some registries that have been active in achieving results in term of UA readiness. I was the last speaker, and brought the point of view of the users, who are the most affected by lack of UA, making also a couple of examples. The good news is that my contribution was well received, the bad news is that I made the point that the user community should play a role - I argued that it should be the “fifth pillar” in the UA strategy - as users can put pressure on the providers that are not UA ready, proposing that we have a paradigm shift from “providers will graciously become UA compliant as a bonus for the users” to “users worldwide have the right to demand that all users have the same Internet experience regardless their language or script they use”. The bad news is in the fact that I have proposed that the user community - and At-Large at the forefront - use their footprint in the wider community to build awareness of the user rights and produce pressure - also in collaboration with governments - to providers to be UA compliant. That means a call for action for At-Large. In summary, we need to move from being spectators, waiting for things to happen, for the technical community to provide solutions, for providers to deploy UA-compliant services, to an active part of the community to demand and obtain the same level of service for all Internet users, regardless language, script, physical location, or other factors. Cheers, Roberto
Hello Haida, On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 5:05 AM Hadia Abdelsalam Mokhtar EL miniawi via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
I fully agree with you that raising users awareness and knowledge about the possibility of having domain names and email addresses in their own languages is important. I can tell you that nearly every time I participated in a session related to the DNS and/or ICANN and I raised the topic of domain names and IDNs, hardly anyone in the session was aware of the existence of Arabic domain names. How can they demand or understand the need for it when they are barely aware of its existence?
ICANN first published IDN guidelines in 2003 <https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/idn-guidelines-2003-06-20-en>. That there is so little awareness of them after more than 20 years of existence, perhaps suggests that little demand exists. That is, few people, companies or governments are asking ICANN or its community what solutions it is offering so that IDNs may be offered in response. WhatsApp and ChatGPT support more than 50 languages, Facebook more than 100, Google Search and Twitter more than 150 each. Most chat and broadcast platforms as well as applications and operating systems enable Unicode so that anyone can use whatever script their input device can handle. Indeed platforms such as QQ and Yandex were designed primarily for use in non-Latin-script environments. In this world in which people today easily access the Internet in the language of their choice using existing methods on even the simplest of access devices, what specifically is the *public* need for IDNs? Search engines from multiple sources can take a request from anyone in their own script and language, and find the appropriate resource regardless of what its domain name happens to be. This could, indeed, work with a single domain and a flat namespace.
Our mission has two aspects: Raising awareness about the existence of IDNs and encouraging users who realize the benefits of IDNs to demand them.
What reason for confidence do you have that raising awareness of IDNs will create demand that does not yet exist? The technical and government communities within ICANN have had two decades to spread the word about IDN benefits, yet that message has not gained traction far outside the ICANN community. Even UA Day, as an outreach effort, continues to insist on top-down efforts rather than bottom-up. From the ICANN report on last year's UA Day <https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/universal-acceptance-day-01jun23...>, *not a single event* anywhere in the world targeted end-users, application developers, or the mainstream news media (page 10 of the report). The "outreach" is only being done to comfortable audiences of insiders who won't ask embarrassing questions like "who actually wants this besides domain sellers?". Meanwhile, the general public of end-users -- the constituency ALAC claims to represent -- employs the many existing, easier and cheaper ways to communicate in any language with each other and with Internet content and services. To me, IDN's current boosters remain because of (a) financial self-interest, (b) the sunk cost of decades of volunteer effort and emotions, and/or (c) their own deep lack of awareness regarding what the world has already done to solve the challenges of multilingual access. The real awareness that I see absent is that IDNs have been met by widespread public indifference, if not rejection, despite 20 years of availability and promotion. A year's worth of more UA days is not going to change that, because simply it's an inferior solution to what has already been solved. Cheers, - Evan
Dear Evan, "Even UA Day, as an outreach effort, continues to insist on top-down efforts rather than bottom-up. From the ICANN report on last year's UA Day <https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/universal-acceptance-day-01jun23...> , *not a single event* anywhere in the world targeted end-users, application developers, or the mainstream news media (page 10 of the report). The "outreach" is only being done to comfortable audiences of insiders who won't ask embarrassing questions like "who actually wants this besides domain sellers?". Meanwhile, the general public of end-users -- the constituency ALAC claims to represent -- employs the many existing, easier and cheaper ways to communicate in any language with each other and with Internet content and services." I remember going to Buenos Aires with a great deal of excitement to be part of the team forming LACRALO in the 2000s. As ICT Professional and practitioner this was the opportunity to stop being the front end user and understand what was under the hood. I then went to the Rio meeting and ran into the lawyers and the permanent policy wonks. Quite unnerving at the time. Twenty years later in my neighbourhood ICANN continues to be in rarified air where a minority of us reside. ICANN has gotten very little traction despite significant effort. Some policymakers relate to ITU a lot better because it is felt that they deal with the bread and butter issues (connectivity, community access etc.). ICANN in most instances work on the assumption that these minor matters have been dealt with. Matters such as new gTLDs for example are of no relevance because of cost. If ICANN wants to reach the underserved it has to be seen as useful and actually be relevant. Maybe because of its very nature and structure it cannot reach or help the underserved and therefore focus on those areas that have moved beyond the basics. My mere two cents Lance On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 7:52 AM Evan Leibovitch via At-Large < at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
Hello Haida,
On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 5:05 AM Hadia Abdelsalam Mokhtar EL miniawi via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
I fully agree with you that raising users awareness and knowledge about the possibility of having domain names and email addresses in their own languages is important. I can tell you that nearly every time I participated in a session related to the DNS and/or ICANN and I raised the topic of domain names and IDNs, hardly anyone in the session was aware of the existence of Arabic domain names. How can they demand or understand the need for it when they are barely aware of its existence?
ICANN first published IDN guidelines in 2003 <https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/idn-guidelines-2003-06-20-en>. That there is so little awareness of them after more than 20 years of existence, perhaps suggests that little demand exists. That is, few people, companies or governments are asking ICANN or its community what solutions it is offering so that IDNs may be offered in response.
WhatsApp and ChatGPT support more than 50 languages, Facebook more than 100, Google Search and Twitter more than 150 each. Most chat and broadcast platforms as well as applications and operating systems enable Unicode so that anyone can use whatever script their input device can handle. Indeed platforms such as QQ and Yandex were designed primarily for use in non-Latin-script environments. In this world in which people today easily access the Internet in the language of their choice using existing methods on even the simplest of access devices, what specifically is the *public* need for IDNs? Search engines from multiple sources can take a request from anyone in their own script and language, and find the appropriate resource regardless of what its domain name happens to be. This could, indeed, work with a single domain and a flat namespace.
Our mission has two aspects: Raising awareness about the existence of IDNs and encouraging users who realize the benefits of IDNs to demand them.
What reason for confidence do you have that raising awareness of IDNs will create demand that does not yet exist? The technical and government communities within ICANN have had two decades to spread the word about IDN benefits, yet that message has not gained traction far outside the ICANN community.
Even UA Day, as an outreach effort, continues to insist on top-down efforts rather than bottom-up. From the ICANN report on last year's UA Day <https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/universal-acceptance-day-01jun23...>, *not a single event* anywhere in the world targeted end-users, application developers, or the mainstream news media (page 10 of the report). The "outreach" is only being done to comfortable audiences of insiders who won't ask embarrassing questions like "who actually wants this besides domain sellers?". Meanwhile, the general public of end-users -- the constituency ALAC claims to represent -- employs the many existing, easier and cheaper ways to communicate in any language with each other and with Internet content and services.
To me, IDN's current boosters remain because of (a) financial self-interest, (b) the sunk cost of decades of volunteer effort and emotions, and/or (c) their own deep lack of awareness regarding what the world has already done to solve the challenges of multilingual access.
The real awareness that I see absent is that IDNs have been met by widespread public indifference, if not rejection, despite 20 years of availability and promotion. A year's worth of more UA days is not going to change that, because simply it's an inferior solution to what has already been solved.
Cheers,
- Evan
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Evan, It seems to me that the function of UA day is inherently NOT directed at end users. It is directed at getting vendors, those who provide software interfaces for end users, to make provision for IDNs. End users are, of course, wildly unlikely to be writing their own browsers, email systems, etc., so they don't really need to be involved. (Except to the extend that it would be useful to show some user demand when trying to convince vendors to become IDN compatible.) Making end users aware of the option to use non-ASCII characters for these is, to my mind, an entirely separate discussion. Both whether it is a worthwhile effort and how to go about it if so. It is also something that would really need to be deferred until something like Universal Acceptance is available on at least the most widespread browsers and email systems. Pitching to end users, when the software they use does not yet support IDNs, would be counterproductive. Bill Jouris On Wednesday, April 3, 2024 at 04:52:15 AM PDT, Evan Leibovitch via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote: Hello Haida, On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 5:05 AM Hadia Abdelsalam Mokhtar EL miniawi via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote: I fully agree with you that raising users awareness and knowledge about the possibility of having domain names and email addresses in their own languages is important. I can tell you that nearly every time I participated in a session related to the DNS and/or ICANN and I raised the topic of domain names and IDNs, hardly anyone in the session was aware of the existence of Arabic domain names. How can they demand or understand the need for it when they are barely aware of its existence? ICANN first published IDN guidelines in 2003. That there is so little awareness of them after more than 20 years of existence, perhaps suggests that little demand exists. That is, few people, companies or governments are asking ICANN or its community what solutions it is offering so that IDNs may be offered in response. WhatsApp and ChatGPT support more than 50 languages, Facebook more than 100, Google Search and Twitter more than 150 each. Most chat and broadcast platforms as well as applications and operating systems enable Unicode so that anyone can use whatever script their input device can handle. Indeed platforms such as QQ and Yandex were designed primarily for use in non-Latin-script environments. In this world in which people today easily access the Internet in the language of their choice using existing methods on even the simplest of access devices, what specifically is the public need for IDNs? Search engines from multiple sources can take a request from anyone in their own script and language, and find the appropriate resource regardless of what its domain name happens to be. This could, indeed, work with a single domain and a flat namespace. Our mission has two aspects: Raising awareness about the existence of IDNs and encouraging users who realize the benefits of IDNs to demand them. What reason for confidence do you have that raising awareness of IDNs will create demand that does not yet exist? The technical and government communities within ICANN have had two decades to spread the word about IDN benefits, yet that message has not gained traction far outside the ICANN community. Even UA Day, as an outreach effort, continues to insist on top-down efforts rather than bottom-up. From the ICANN report on last year's UA Day, not a single event anywhere in the world targeted end-users, application developers, or the mainstream news media (page 10 of the report). The "outreach" is only being done to comfortable audiences of insiders who won't ask embarrassing questions like "who actually wants this besides domain sellers?". Meanwhile, the general public of end-users -- the constituency ALAC claims to represent -- employs the many existing, easier and cheaper ways to communicate in any language with each other and with Internet content and services. To me, IDN's current boosters remain because of (a) financial self-interest, (b) the sunk cost of decades of volunteer effort and emotions, and/or (c) their own deep lack of awareness regarding what the world has already done to solve the challenges of multilingual access. The real awareness that I see absent is that IDNs have been met by widespread public indifference, if not rejection, despite 20 years of availability and promotion. A year's worth of more UA days is not going to change that, because simply it's an inferior solution to what has already been solved. Cheers, - Evan _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
Hi Bill, On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 12:18 PM Bill Jouris <b_jouris@yahoo.com> wrote:
It seems to me that the function of UA day is inherently NOT directed at end users. It is directed at getting vendors, those who provide software interfaces for end users, to make provision for IDNs.
Is it really directed at apps developers? Consider that some of the apps in play are open source. ICANN could simply contribute code to Mozilla, Thunderbird, Wordpress, Signal and other projects to make their IDN support seamless. If that support is an in-demand feature it will make those applications more desirable in a competitive environment.
End users are, of course, wildly unlikely to be writing their own browsers, email systems, etc., so they don't really need to be involved.
People aren't writing browsers, email systems, etc. to satisfy the needs of ICANN, they're trying to meet the needs of end-users. So if end users don't care about IDNs, neither will apps developers, since they have other priorities such as speed, security, and *end-user* focused features such as VPNs, form auto-completion, spell-checkers, incognito modes and so on. (Except to the extend that it would be useful to show some user demand
when trying to convince vendors to become IDN compatible.)
End-user demand for IDNs isn't "useful", it's a mandatory prerequisite. Without such bottom-up demand, app developers have no incentive to divert resources. In the service of i18n developers place far more emphasis on Unicode support, multilingual UI and multilingual integrated search engines. If these features satisfy end-user needs then there is no reason for them to spend extra effort on IDNs. Developers may well see IDNs as just a way for ICANN and its contractors to peddle more domains, and without end-user interest they have no incentive to facilitate that. One must again remind that ICANN is not a treaty-backed organization. It has no means to impose, let alone enforce, its decisions on the world. Its solutions must be superior and *desired*. Thus, so long as end-user demand is not seen as a *necessary* component in advancing IDNs, they will remain a non-priority to developers and an avoidable risk to would-be IDN registrants. (Aside: I truly find it amazing that this argument even needs to be made within the community tasked with advancing end-user interests within ICANN.) Making end users aware of the option to use non-ASCII characters for these
is, to my mind, an entirely separate discussion.
If so, that "separate discussion" is the only one worth having within *ICANN At-Large*. Other constituencies (civil society, governments, the technical community, etc) all have their own places to define and assert their own needs.
Both whether it is a worthwhile effort and how to go about it if so. It is also something that would really need to be deferred until something like Universal Acceptance is available on at least the most widespread browsers and email systems.
Chicken and egg. If end-users don't care about IDNs, browsers and apps won't support them. If browsers and apps don't support IDNs, end-users won't care about them. BTW, the objective is not for browsers to implement "UA". Support for IDNs is the solution being pitched, UA is just the name of the marketing campaign.
Pitching to end users, when the software they use does not yet support IDNs, would be counterproductive.
And THAT is why, 20 years from now, ICANN will still be wondering why IDNs never caught on. - Evan
Hi Evan, Consider that some of the apps in play are open source. ICANN could simply contribute code to Mozilla, Thunderbird, Wordpress, Signal and other projects to make their IDN support seamless. If that support is an in-demand feature it will make those applications more desirable in a competitive environment. And I've been arguing, without apparent success, for ICANN to do exactly that. Bill Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 11:27 AM, Evan Leibovitch<evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote: Hi Bill, On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 12:18 PM Bill Jouris <b_jouris@yahoo.com> wrote: It seems to me that the function of UA day is inherently NOT directed at end users. It is directed at getting vendors, those who provide software interfaces for end users, to make provision for IDNs. Is it really directed at apps developers? Consider that some of the apps in play are open source. ICANN could simply contribute code to Mozilla, Thunderbird, Wordpress, Signal and other projects to make their IDN support seamless. If that support is an in-demand feature it will make those applications more desirable in a competitive environment. End users are, of course, wildly unlikely to be writing their own browsers, email systems, etc., so they don't really need to be involved. People aren't writing browsers, email systems, etc. to satisfy the needs of ICANN, they're trying to meet the needs of end-users. So if end users don't care about IDNs, neither will apps developers, since they have other priorities such as speed, security, and end-user focused features such as VPNs, form auto-completion, spell-checkers, incognito modes and so on. (Except to the extend that it would be useful to show some user demand when trying to convince vendors to become IDN compatible.) End-user demand for IDNs isn't "useful", it's a mandatory prerequisite. Without such bottom-up demand, app developers have no incentive to divert resources. In the service of i18n developers place far more emphasis on Unicode support, multilingual UI and multilingual integrated search engines. If these features satisfy end-user needs then there is no reason for them to spend extra effort on IDNs. Developers may well see IDNs as just a way for ICANN and its contractors to peddle more domains, and without end-user interest they have no incentive to facilitate that. One must again remind that ICANN is not a treaty-backed organization. It has no means to impose, let alone enforce, its decisions on the world. Its solutions must be superior and desired. Thus, so long as end-user demand is not seen as a necessary component in advancing IDNs, they will remain a non-priority to developers and an avoidable risk to would-be IDN registrants. (Aside: I truly find it amazing that this argument even needs to be made within the community tasked with advancing end-user interests within ICANN.) Making end users aware of the option to use non-ASCII characters for these is, to my mind, an entirely separate discussion. If so, that "separate discussion" is the only one worth having within ICANN At-Large. Other constituencies (civil society, governments, the technical community, etc) all have their own places to define and assert their own needs. Both whether it is a worthwhile effort and how to go about it if so. It is also something that would really need to be deferred until something like Universal Acceptance is available on at least the most widespread browsers and email systems. Chicken and egg.If end-users don't care about IDNs, browsers and apps won't support them. If browsers and apps don't support IDNs, end-users won't care about them. BTW, the objective is not for browsers to implement "UA". Support for IDNs is the solution being pitched, UA is just the name of the marketing campaign. Pitching to end users, when the software they use does not yet support IDNs, would be counterproductive. And THAT is why, 20 years from now, ICANN will still be wondering why IDNs never caught on. - Evan
Hello all, if you feel strong enough about this and can convince the powers that be in our community perhaps could you suggest the ALAC makes a Statement about this? Kindest regards, Olivier On 04/04/2024 06:45, Bill Jouris via At-Large wrote:
Hi Evan,
Consider that some of the apps in play are open source. ICANN could simply contribute code to Mozilla, Thunderbird, Wordpress, Signal and other projects to make their IDN support seamless. If that support is an in-demand feature it will make those applications more desirable in a competitive environment.
And I've been arguing, without apparent success, for ICANN to do exactly that.
Bill
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android <https://go.onelink.me/107872968?pid=InProduct&c=Global_Internal_YGrowth_Andr...>
On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 11:27 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote: Hi Bill,
On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 12:18 PM Bill Jouris <b_jouris@yahoo.com> wrote:
It seems to me that the function of UA day is inherently NOT directed at end users. It is directed at getting vendors, those who provide software interfaces for end users, to make provision for IDNs.
Is it really directed at apps developers?
Consider that some of the apps in play are open source. ICANN could simply contribute code to Mozilla, Thunderbird, Wordpress, Signal and other projects to make their IDN support seamless. If that support is an in-demand feature it will make those applications more desirable in a competitive environment.
End users are, of course, wildly unlikely to be writing their own browsers, email systems, etc., so they don't really need to be involved.
People aren't writing browsers, email systems, etc. to satisfy the needs of ICANN, they're trying to meet the needs of end-users. So if end users don't care about IDNs, neither will apps developers, since they have other priorities such as speed, security, and *_end-user_* focused features such as VPNs, form auto-completion, spell-checkers, incognito modes and so on.
(Except to the extend that it would be useful to show some user demand when trying to convince vendors to become IDN compatible.)
End-user demand for IDNs isn't "useful", it's a mandatory prerequisite. Without such bottom-up demand, app developers have no incentive to divert resources. In the service of i18n developers place far more emphasis on Unicode support, multilingual UI and multilingual integrated search engines. If these features satisfy end-user needs then there is no reason for them to spend extra effort on IDNs. Developers may well see IDNs as just a way for ICANN and its contractors to peddle more domains, and without end-user interest they have no incentive to facilitate that.
One must again remind that ICANN is not a treaty-backed organization. It has no means to impose, let alone enforce, its decisions on the world. Its solutions must be superior and _desired_. Thus, so long as end-user demand is not seen as a *necessary* component in advancing IDNs, they will remain a non-priority to developers and an avoidable risk to would-be IDN registrants.
(Aside: I truly find it amazing that this argument even needs to be made within the community tasked with advancing end-user interests within ICANN.)
Making end users aware of the option to use non-ASCII characters for these is, to my mind, an entirely separate discussion.
If so, that "separate discussion" is the only one worth having within /ICANN At-Large/. Other constituencies (civil society, governments, the technical community, etc) all have their own places to define and assert their own needs.
Both whether it is a worthwhile effort and how to go about it if so. It is also something that would really need to be deferred until something like Universal Acceptance is available on at least the most widespread browsers and email systems.
Chicken and egg. If end-users don't care about IDNs, browsers and apps won't support them. If browsers and apps don't support IDNs, end-users won't care about them.
BTW, the objective is not for browsers to implement "UA". Support for IDNs is the solution being pitched, UA is just the name of the marketing campaign.
Pitching to end users, when the software they use does not yet support IDNs, would be counterproductive.
And THAT is why, 20 years from now, ICANN will still be wondering why IDNs never caught on.
- Evan
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site:http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
-- Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD http://www.gih.com/ocl.html
Hi Olivier, Thanks for the input. As you know I'm just a lowly ALS rep and have not been in any leadership position for quite a while. If these powers that be (all of whom I would assume are subscribed here) can be brought to consensus that IDN acceptance must be driven bottom-up and cannot succeed without research and end-user support, I'll gladly co-author a draft statement for ALAC's consideration. And you know I've written some good ones in the past ;-). - Evan On Thu, Apr 4, 2024 at 2:23 AM Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl@gih.com> wrote:
Hello all,
if you feel strong enough about this and can convince the powers that be in our community perhaps could you suggest the ALAC makes a Statement about this? Kindest regards,
Olivier
On 04/04/2024 06:45, Bill Jouris via At-Large wrote:
Hi Evan,
Consider that some of the apps in play are open source. ICANN could simply contribute code to Mozilla, Thunderbird, Wordpress, Signal and other projects to make their IDN support seamless. If that support is an in-demand feature it will make those applications more desirable in a competitive environment.
And I've been arguing, without apparent success, for ICANN to do exactly that.
Bill
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android <https://go.onelink.me/107872968?pid=InProduct&c=Global_Internal_YGrowth_Andr...>
On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 11:27 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote: Hi Bill,
On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 12:18 PM Bill Jouris <b_jouris@yahoo.com> wrote:
It seems to me that the function of UA day is inherently NOT directed at end users. It is directed at getting vendors, those who provide software interfaces for end users, to make provision for IDNs.
Is it really directed at apps developers?
Consider that some of the apps in play are open source. ICANN could simply contribute code to Mozilla, Thunderbird, Wordpress, Signal and other projects to make their IDN support seamless. If that support is an in-demand feature it will make those applications more desirable in a competitive environment.
End users are, of course, wildly unlikely to be writing their own browsers, email systems, etc., so they don't really need to be involved.
People aren't writing browsers, email systems, etc. to satisfy the needs of ICANN, they're trying to meet the needs of end-users. So if end users don't care about IDNs, neither will apps developers, since they have other priorities such as speed, security, and *end-user* focused features such as VPNs, form auto-completion, spell-checkers, incognito modes and so on.
(Except to the extend that it would be useful to show some user demand when trying to convince vendors to become IDN compatible.)
End-user demand for IDNs isn't "useful", it's a mandatory prerequisite. Without such bottom-up demand, app developers have no incentive to divert resources. In the service of i18n developers place far more emphasis on Unicode support, multilingual UI and multilingual integrated search engines. If these features satisfy end-user needs then there is no reason for them to spend extra effort on IDNs. Developers may well see IDNs as just a way for ICANN and its contractors to peddle more domains, and without end-user interest they have no incentive to facilitate that.
One must again remind that ICANN is not a treaty-backed organization. It has no means to impose, let alone enforce, its decisions on the world. Its solutions must be superior and *desired*. Thus, so long as end-user demand is not seen as a *necessary* component in advancing IDNs, they will remain a non-priority to developers and an avoidable risk to would-be IDN registrants.
(Aside: I truly find it amazing that this argument even needs to be made within the community tasked with advancing end-user interests within ICANN.)
Making end users aware of the option to use non-ASCII characters for these is, to my mind, an entirely separate discussion.
If so, that "separate discussion" is the only one worth having within *ICANN At-Large*. Other constituencies (civil society, governments, the technical community, etc) all have their own places to define and assert their own needs.
Both whether it is a worthwhile effort and how to go about it if so. It is also something that would really need to be deferred until something like Universal Acceptance is available on at least the most widespread browsers and email systems.
Chicken and egg. If end-users don't care about IDNs, browsers and apps won't support them. If browsers and apps don't support IDNs, end-users won't care about them.
BTW, the objective is not for browsers to implement "UA". Support for IDNs is the solution being pitched, UA is just the name of the marketing campaign.
Pitching to end users, when the software they use does not yet support IDNs, would be counterproductive.
And THAT is why, 20 years from now, ICANN will still be wondering why IDNs never caught on.
- Evan
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing listAt-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.orghttps://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
-- Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhDhttp://www.gih.com/ocl.html
-- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56
Dear Evan, How about something like this? (which was pointed out to me) https://www.punycoder.com/ Kindest regards, Olivier On 04/04/2024 05:45, Bill Jouris via At-Large wrote:
Hi Evan,
Consider that some of the apps in play are open source. ICANN could simply contribute code to Mozilla, Thunderbird, Wordpress, Signal and other projects to make their IDN support seamless. If that support is an in-demand feature it will make those applications more desirable in a competitive environment.
And I've been arguing, without apparent success, for ICANN to do exactly that.
Bill
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android <https://go.onelink.me/107872968?pid=InProduct&c=Global_Internal_YGrowth_Andr...>
On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 11:27 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote: Hi Bill,
On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 12:18 PM Bill Jouris <b_jouris@yahoo.com> wrote:
It seems to me that the function of UA day is inherently NOT directed at end users. It is directed at getting vendors, those who provide software interfaces for end users, to make provision for IDNs.
Is it really directed at apps developers?
Consider that some of the apps in play are open source. ICANN could simply contribute code to Mozilla, Thunderbird, Wordpress, Signal and other projects to make their IDN support seamless. If that support is an in-demand feature it will make those applications more desirable in a competitive environment.
End users are, of course, wildly unlikely to be writing their own browsers, email systems, etc., so they don't really need to be involved.
People aren't writing browsers, email systems, etc. to satisfy the needs of ICANN, they're trying to meet the needs of end-users. So if end users don't care about IDNs, neither will apps developers, since they have other priorities such as speed, security, and *_end-user_* focused features such as VPNs, form auto-completion, spell-checkers, incognito modes and so on.
(Except to the extend that it would be useful to show some user demand when trying to convince vendors to become IDN compatible.)
End-user demand for IDNs isn't "useful", it's a mandatory prerequisite. Without such bottom-up demand, app developers have no incentive to divert resources. In the service of i18n developers place far more emphasis on Unicode support, multilingual UI and multilingual integrated search engines. If these features satisfy end-user needs then there is no reason for them to spend extra effort on IDNs. Developers may well see IDNs as just a way for ICANN and its contractors to peddle more domains, and without end-user interest they have no incentive to facilitate that.
One must again remind that ICANN is not a treaty-backed organization. It has no means to impose, let alone enforce, its decisions on the world. Its solutions must be superior and _desired_. Thus, so long as end-user demand is not seen as a *necessary* component in advancing IDNs, they will remain a non-priority to developers and an avoidable risk to would-be IDN registrants.
(Aside: I truly find it amazing that this argument even needs to be made within the community tasked with advancing end-user interests within ICANN.)
Making end users aware of the option to use non-ASCII characters for these is, to my mind, an entirely separate discussion.
If so, that "separate discussion" is the only one worth having within /ICANN At-Large/. Other constituencies (civil society, governments, the technical community, etc) all have their own places to define and assert their own needs.
Both whether it is a worthwhile effort and how to go about it if so. It is also something that would really need to be deferred until something like Universal Acceptance is available on at least the most widespread browsers and email systems.
Chicken and egg. If end-users don't care about IDNs, browsers and apps won't support them. If browsers and apps don't support IDNs, end-users won't care about them.
BTW, the objective is not for browsers to implement "UA". Support for IDNs is the solution being pitched, UA is just the name of the marketing campaign.
Pitching to end users, when the software they use does not yet support IDNs, would be counterproductive.
And THAT is why, 20 years from now, ICANN will still be wondering why IDNs never caught on.
- Evan
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site:http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
Hi Olivier, That's an interesting tool, especially for debugging, but I'm not sure what role it plays in UA. With the same effort that one could use to turn their native text into punycode with that tool, one could use Google Translate (which has a very similar interface) and do more. - Evan On Mon, Apr 8, 2024 at 6:03 AM Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl@gih.com> wrote:
Dear Evan,
How about something like this? (which was pointed out to me) https://www.punycoder.com/
Kindest regards,
Olivier
On 04/04/2024 05:45, Bill Jouris via At-Large wrote:
Hi Evan,
Consider that some of the apps in play are open source. ICANN could simply contribute code to Mozilla, Thunderbird, Wordpress, Signal and other projects to make their IDN support seamless. If that support is an in-demand feature it will make those applications more desirable in a competitive environment.
And I've been arguing, without apparent success, for ICANN to do exactly that.
Bill
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android <https://go.onelink.me/107872968?pid=InProduct&c=Global_Internal_YGrowth_Andr...>
On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 11:27 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote: Hi Bill,
On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 12:18 PM Bill Jouris <b_jouris@yahoo.com> wrote:
It seems to me that the function of UA day is inherently NOT directed at end users. It is directed at getting vendors, those who provide software interfaces for end users, to make provision for IDNs.
Is it really directed at apps developers?
Consider that some of the apps in play are open source. ICANN could simply contribute code to Mozilla, Thunderbird, Wordpress, Signal and other projects to make their IDN support seamless. If that support is an in-demand feature it will make those applications more desirable in a competitive environment.
End users are, of course, wildly unlikely to be writing their own browsers, email systems, etc., so they don't really need to be involved.
People aren't writing browsers, email systems, etc. to satisfy the needs of ICANN, they're trying to meet the needs of end-users. So if end users don't care about IDNs, neither will apps developers, since they have other priorities such as speed, security, and *end-user* focused features such as VPNs, form auto-completion, spell-checkers, incognito modes and so on.
(Except to the extend that it would be useful to show some user demand when trying to convince vendors to become IDN compatible.)
End-user demand for IDNs isn't "useful", it's a mandatory prerequisite. Without such bottom-up demand, app developers have no incentive to divert resources. In the service of i18n developers place far more emphasis on Unicode support, multilingual UI and multilingual integrated search engines. If these features satisfy end-user needs then there is no reason for them to spend extra effort on IDNs. Developers may well see IDNs as just a way for ICANN and its contractors to peddle more domains, and without end-user interest they have no incentive to facilitate that.
One must again remind that ICANN is not a treaty-backed organization. It has no means to impose, let alone enforce, its decisions on the world. Its solutions must be superior and *desired*. Thus, so long as end-user demand is not seen as a *necessary* component in advancing IDNs, they will remain a non-priority to developers and an avoidable risk to would-be IDN registrants.
(Aside: I truly find it amazing that this argument even needs to be made within the community tasked with advancing end-user interests within ICANN.)
Making end users aware of the option to use non-ASCII characters for these is, to my mind, an entirely separate discussion.
If so, that "separate discussion" is the only one worth having within *ICANN At-Large*. Other constituencies (civil society, governments, the technical community, etc) all have their own places to define and assert their own needs.
Both whether it is a worthwhile effort and how to go about it if so. It is also something that would really need to be deferred until something like Universal Acceptance is available on at least the most widespread browsers and email systems.
Chicken and egg. If end-users don't care about IDNs, browsers and apps won't support them. If browsers and apps don't support IDNs, end-users won't care about them.
BTW, the objective is not for browsers to implement "UA". Support for IDNs is the solution being pitched, UA is just the name of the marketing campaign.
Pitching to end users, when the software they use does not yet support IDNs, would be counterproductive.
And THAT is why, 20 years from now, ICANN will still be wondering why IDNs never caught on.
- Evan
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing listAt-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.orghttps://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
-- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56
participants (21)
-
alberto＠soto.net.ar -
Alfredo Calderon -
Andrei Kolesnikov -
Andrey Kolesnikov -
Anivar Aravind -
Barrack Otieno -
Bill Jouris -
bzs＠theworld.com -
Carlton Samuels -
Christian de Larrinaga -
Desiree Miloshevic -
Evan Leibovitch -
Hadia Abdelsalam Mokhtar EL miniawi -
Hank Nussbacher -
Jonathan Zuck -
Karl Auerbach -
Lance Hinds -
Natalia Filina -
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond -
Roberto Gaetano -
Satish Babu