*They made one

point of clarification regarding the treatment of communities who consider themselves ready to implement IDN Variants - that it would only happen after the label generation toolset work is done.   In their project plan this can only begin mid of FY13. *

If a community is already ready on technology, policy and management, why people in that community have to wait until mid 2013 to implement IDN variant TLDs? This conclude would actually exclude some variant-related IDN TLD applications from the first-round new gTLD program. Among six scripts under VIP study and project plan, Chinese community that is most ready on IDN variants would be most affected. If this is the truth, it should be revealed. At the end of the day, it is the ordinary Chinese-script users who suffer most from these arbitrary decisions. I assume at-large has the responsibility to truthfully reflect users' view. Actually, Chinese community is not asking for any favorite treatment, instead, they are against exclusive and discriminative treatment. BTW, variant issues are unique to Chinese scripts, not relevant to Japanese or Korean. So CJK cannot be bundled on variants. Hong -- Dr. Hong Xue Professor of Law Director of Institute for the Internet Policy & Law (IIPL) Beijing Normal University http://www.iipl.org.cn/ 19 Xin Jie Kou Wai Street Beijing 100875 China