Dear fellow Councilors, As you may be aware, I have put most my efforts in my short term at GNSO to researching and reaching out to the IDN community. As such, I have had many correspondences with *John C Klensin*, and the PAC group to understand some of the significant issues that has slowed down the implementation of the IDNs at a technical and policy level by ICANN. Given the upcoming meeting in Wellington, I thought I will put forward directly to GNSO my recent correspondence with John, to give attention to the matter. By doing so: First, I wanted to *correct some of the confusions* that came back from the interested readers, as to who said what in the email, because some people's email does not read color or the authors name was not labeled properly etc..so I have added the *word 'wrote' after the author to clarify. * Second, I CANNOT presume everyone is reading this emails, (they could be quite long and tiresome) since it is not directed to GNSO, however, given that the IDN policy making is to be our business soon, I thought I will at a minimum share directly the substantive points with you. Primarily, my position has been that *lack of policy in IDNs would bring a great risk to the implementation of the technology* as it exist today: 1 - I think everyone is aware that IDN systems (with an IDN TLD root entry) have been running for several years. That means there is a proven working system out there, so *the technology is not a problem* and is a minor consideration *compared to the policy issues.* 2 - If the proposed solution by ICANN is the DNAME solution, the policy implications is far reaching. We need to know who the players in registries, the intentions, the impact on the market, competition, the cultural and political implication. Finally, I hope this discussions below will help decipher the heads of key people's thinking today that are working with ICANN as well as the IDN community I did outreach with. At a minimum, this can give us a heads up to prepare us for the GNSO/PAC meeting in Wellington. Thank you for reading, Sophia ------------ Sophia wrote: Greetings John: I hope you are keeping well. Here I am again back on the global info super freeway…no STOP signs, so I must continue my dialog with you. (pls refer to my comments in GREEN) Thank you once again for all your comments and your efforts on the clarification. It really helped. I hope my late response did not create a gap with the momentum that started. I have to work for my living while I concurrently run research on a subject that probability is like riding a bicycle for you. I can only hope I have come back to you with something you may appreciate. I have observed from your last comments and clarifications *that both of us have a proportional amount of agreements. * Despite your pointing to the study of DNS, which I appreciate, my finding tells me that our differences are more of a philosophical than a major technical gap. On 15/02/06, *John C Klensin* <klensin@jck.com> wrote: Sophia, I needed to take some days to consider your note and, perhaps, to let things calm down a bit (I, of course, don't know what discussions have occurred on the GNSO Council list in the interim). I hope the clarifications and comments below are helpful, but suspect that we are nearing, and may have reached or passed, the point at which further comments from either a technical perspective, or even a "best interests of Internet users" one, are useful. Sophia wrote: I agree with you John and that is where I was fading away. Mind what started it all is a view questioned by many, a question of policy making over IDNs vs. the need to a technical testbed of a technology that is already well established. We need to find a way that IDN TLDs will be launched in the same process of new gTLDs i.e free for all open bid. Having said that, I am no expert when it comes to the IDNs. The only things is I got hooked with the substance in the details, which seem more fascinating than the form. As it is eating away my brain cells one at a time, I may be inclined to hire a FULL TIME research assistance to keep up with you. In any case, I have laid out my thoughts and some of my fact findings for your interest, as well as defined some of the lingua franca of IDN to re-enforce for myself and other interested readers. John wrote: I am going to respond to both your note of the 6th and that of the 5th below. My apologies in advance for the length of this note, but I'm going to try to respond to a number of almost-separate issues while trying to reduce the fairly obvious level of confusion that underlies some of the questions and assertions. --On Monday, 06 February, 2006 00:00 -0800 Sophia B <sophiabekele@gmail.com> wrote:
Great...we are making the technical difference and that they can be separate .foo and .com and that they can be owned by two differ registrars and that could be competing with each other.
John wrote: At one level, that has always been the case and is self-evident. At another, it is extremely important that the Council understand how the DNS actually works, what the four major internationalization options are, how different options are seen by the user, and what their consequences and side-effects are in order to discuss these topics... at least from any standpoint other than narrow self-interest. Good tutorials on DNS operations, written with policy-makers in mind, are available; if you haven't been given the references, please ask.
That point made, what I am trying to address is 2 business issues:
Sophia wrote:> 1- if 'mybrand' is to be protected i.e trademark in every
country...it is a matter of purchasing all the 'mybrand' TDLs...
John wrote: - Show quoted text - It is at least a matter of "purchasing" 'mybrand' in _every_ TLD or of convincing relevant TLDs to not permit it to be registered (by you or anyone else). However, note that you may not be able to do this and you may not want to. Some countries require that you have a business locus in those countries to register in their TLDs, so, unless you open an office there, you may not be able to "buy" that name. In others, your ownership of a well-known trademark (if "mybrand" is one) may be more than sufficient to protect you: you may not have to actually "purchase" (register) the name and might actually be better off not doing so. Even if you manage to control all of the possible second-level domains of that name, you still need to make a judgment as to whether you have bought yourself adequate protection. If "mybrand.TLD-name " is a problem for you, "mybrand.some-SLD-name.TLD-name " may also be a problem. I note that, some years ago, a fairly well known trademark holder in the US decided to take exception to names of the form mickey.someschool.k12.fl.us and minnie.someschool.k12.fl.us So far, none of this has anything to do with IDNs. It might be an argument for not creating any more TLDs of any flavor, but it is worth noting that a new TLD increases your problem by well under 1/2 percent if names below the second level are ignored and by far less than that if they are considered. The place where IDNs enter in depends on whether you believe that, if you need to have control of every instance of "mybrand" in the DNS, you also need control of "muybrand" and "meinefabrikzeichen" (both of which can be perfectly well expressed in ASCII characters) or "xn--80aanvhbf1a" and a huge variety of other synonyms and translations. One can, of course, make a case that you are entitled to, or should protect, all of those things (of which there are many thousands) but one could also suggest that, at some point, silliness sets in. Sophia wrote: I do not see a big problem with this, as long as protection of say for example an "English" trademark in different countries (in English, as well when translated into that countries native languages) can be achieved at a cost that is far less than what it takes to trademark these things in the first place in each country,. For example if one had an ascii brand name in say USA and then a company trademarked in 30 countries, they are likely to (a) pay 31 times for "English language" trademarking fees at as much as $1000 or more in each country and periodic/yearly maintenance fees at some small fraction of that and (b) inclined to translate/transliterate (or both) that English brand name into 31 different native languages and then trademark all of them - ie. 30 times another $1000 assuming only one native language per country, plus periodic maintenance fees for that and (c) pay for all those 30 or more translations in the first place - decent translations can easily cost $1000 or more and (d) perhaps pay also having to trademark transliterations as well as translations in each native language in each selected country. Noting that in most countries only one or two native languages dominate, while spending these hundreds of thousands of dollars translating/trademarking initially and then tens of thousands a year maintaining these trademarks in the 30 countries, domain names may have to be protected. To be reasonably complete, some 31 ascii ccTLD domains will be registered and an additional 31 (or more if more than one native language is desired per country and if transliterated as well as translated options are both considered) in native language IDN TLDs for that country/region will be registered. At prevailing domain costs per year the sum total cost of registering this amount of domains (ascii and IDN) to approximately "mimic" the trademark protection above should not exceed a couple of thousand dollars. In the context of trademarking, these domain costs should be probably a 100 times less than the initial trademarking related protection. And the "labor work" of registering already transliterated/translated and trademarked words/phrases as domain names is far less than the labor associated with trademarking. So in short, from a biz perspective, the registering of IDN TLDs in addition to ascii TLDs in places is acceptable in view of the far greater cost/pain of the trademarking we already do today. As to whether it is wiser not to register domains in regions where trademark cover is already present inherently for domains, *it is probably a legal decision depending on the strengths of the laws and the willingness of the courts of the country to actually uphold the law in a timely fashion during litigation.* In fact given the cost metric outlined above I would think most companies would simply register it, rather than depend on the law to save them later. If the need to register many domains while trying to mimic the tradmarking activity already embarked upon reaches the point of "silliness", the trademarking activity itself will have reached a point of far more costlier silliness well before that. So I am not sure if we need to worry about "silliness". I think the market will take care of itself just as the market today knows not to trademark in every language and every country etc. Sophia wrote: 2-on the other hand, if mybarnd .com is to be protected 'in
every language' under gTLD, then 'com' in every language over 200 translation need to be protected and approved by ICANN.
John wrote: First, as I think Cary has pointed out, "every language" puts one somewhere in the 6000 range, not 200. What is more important is that this problem exists today, with no further action being required on the part of ICANN. Using the admittedly crude examples above, " muybrand.com", " meinefabrikzeichen.com", and " xn--80aanvhbf1a.com" could be registered tomorrow if they have not been registered already. The only nuance that an IDN TLD system would add is the ability to refer to " xn--80aanvhbf1a.com " as something like "xn--80aanvhbf1a.xn--e1aajebclaqxm4e" (if using DNAMES or local aliases) or to register "mybrand.xn--e1aajebclaqxm4e" and "xn--80aanvhbf1a.xn--e1aajebclaqxm4e " in a new domain if separate domains were created. Sophia wrote: So the guardians of this names i.eVerisign etc.. will be
translating and registering them. Are they passing the cost to the customer? Are we going to approve over 200 maybe thousands of translations?
John wrote: This is, again, a situation in which being very clear about how the DNS actually works and about what one is talking about as a result is very important. For example, if the DNAME approach is used, and a DNAME record named .xn--e1aajebclaqxm4e is installed pointing to .COM, then there is no difference between mybrand.com and mybrand.xn--e1aajebclaqxm4e they are the same set of record entries. By contrast, whether or not "xn--80aanvhbf1a.com " could be registered, and on what basis, is strictly a registrar issue with the standard fee structure -- I believe that name could be registered today and that, if you didn't like it, you would need to go through a standard UDRP procedure. Sophia wrote: Correct me if I am wrong, but *URDP does not seem to have much to do with IDNs per se.* I believe URDP- UNIFORM DISPUTE RESOLUTION POLICY- was developed several years ago.for the ascii domains by itu/icann/world intellectual property association (wipo) and adopted by all for resolving domain disputes – for clarification for all interested readers, this how it works…if you buy Dell's name Dell.com <http://dell.com/> and insist on squatting on it - Dell argues trademarks on the basis of URDP to get it back. Over the past few years URDP more less in its intact ascii form is being used to idn as well - at least as in idn.com varieties and presumably will be pushed by icann for full idn tlds as well. (incidentally the Chinese have adapted a form of the URDP for their own use in Chinese idn tlds they have launched). *Computers can only think in ascii/english *. So even multi-lingual domain names have to be finally represented in ascii/english gobbledygook. So for eg. a domain in Amharic (which is an Ethiopian native language BTW) will get converted by a set of rules (enshrined now in a IETF standard agreed to by all called the IDNA standard) that involve a language representation mechanism called unicode into ascii-string. The Amharic names gets represented in this example as say "800aavhbf1a". We can differentiate this "Amharic encoded" string as being different from a straight ascii string "800aavhbf1a" by tagging it with "xn--" in front of it. All "xn--" prefixes tell you its aâ non-ascii/english domain. (the encoding itself tells you which of many languages the domain itself is in - a singular appeal of the unicode language representation is that it represents all words in all languages mostly unambiguously inherently - it was developed by people having nothing to do with the internet over decades - linguists). In this case the domain tld is the normal ascii gtld ".com"...so we have an "Amharic domain represented in ascii gobbledegook".com . ".com" itself being an ascii tld need not be translated and represented as is. If we are proposing an Amharic word as a new Amharic gtld, then we need to convert that via unicode and idna rules to say a string "56yi0" and then we pre-pend with "xn-nn" to get the new amharic tlds representation in ascii as "xn--56i0" so we get the full domain " XN--800AAVHBF1A.xn--56i0". *Note today* if you wish to type the Amharic domains and you want your browser to understand it you will need a plug-in (except or mozilla which introduced it innately a few months ago) that helps the browser do the Amharic to "xn--" conversion via IDNA and then sends that converted name to ICANN roots (or alternate roots if the plug-in additionally supports such alternate roots). But if you already know the "xn--" version of that Amharic domain name you could use ANY existing browser without a plug-in and it will resolve it (you won't see Amharic characters but you will go to right web-site) as long as the relevant root is supported . In the case of the " xn-800AAVHBF1A.com" ".com" tld is supported by ICANN root so a regular browser will resolve this "xn" version automatically*. * *Certainly this is not my authorship, but my web-engineer stands corrected if his FACTS are wrong!** * John wrote: I would hope that, were ICANN to be willing to install a top-level DNAME record with the label of xn--e1aajebclaqxm4e, that there would be some cost-recovery for doing so, but the amounts would not be large. The question of which of well over 6000 DNAMEs would be inserted pointing to COM and how they would be chosen is a pure policy issue. And, were ICANN willing to create a separate top-level domain for xn--e1aajebclaqxm4e, the registration policies for that domain would be ... well, whatever was proposed and accepted. Sophia wrote: I think you have precisely nailed it. Policy first or at least in parallel. Experience showed in past icann launches, that technology was far lesser problem, policy was far more important. In the end the technology worked, but in practice deployment, unfortunately, it proved an abject failure 6 years later. II think it is because ICANN *did not follow-up with the policy* to ensure after deployment worked, no one argued etc. and it might be off to be repeated it again. Sophia wrote> What are the implications above? John wrote: The implications clearly differ with the technology chosen. As I (and others) have pointed out before, few of the existing TLD names actually represent words in English (or any other language), so the matter of translations would be difficult and might call for some policy decisions. If one were trying to minimize policy issues, the DNAMEs or are clearly the better approach of those involving root changes and local aliases are a better approach yet. Presumably, if new names are going to be placed in the root (for either DNAME or delegation records), some procedure will need to be devised for applying for and registering those names and I would not predict that it will be easy to devise such a procedure while still being sufficiently fair to all language groups to minimize the risk of people feeling that they are forced into the development of alternate roots. If we do end up with alternate roots, your ability to register "mybrand" in all TLDs, or even to know whether you have done so, would be severely compromised. Sophia wrote: *I see the very heart of the problem here* – I distaste bringing up *east vs west,* because personally, I love American steak and Chinese noodles, but it is the reality and your statement is a bit of icann/west view for my taste. *First,* what you are saying is that people will fight over which new tlds to choose in new languages, so its perhaps better to just remain with the existing tld names in ascii and simply translate/transliterate them, of course you also say that the existing tlds have no literal meaning ( who is to say that .com really means commercial , it could mean ".come here darling" OR ".CN" MEANS "CHINA" RATHER than a short-code for all "sin" WEB-SITES), so translating them meaningless words would in my opinion be just as problematic. While surely people will fight over which new language tld will be better (ie. No different from in English trying to argue ".biz" is better than ".com" etc or ".xxx" is better than ".sex"), there is no technical limitation on selecting literally any of billions of idn tlds in the hundred of languages. *There is hardly likely to be any conflict*. If people in English could not agree on whether ".biz" is better or ".com" is better, give them both and see who succeeds. *In fact this is exactly what happened in English in a way. * There has been long a school of thought that the internet should have an unlimited number of top-level domain names - millions in English and otherwise. *But there is absolutely no technical limitation and this has been shown over and over again *by many experts over decades- Karl Auberach and many early icann board directors I understand, squealed for this - but icann has been resistance to give control with not a lot of justifiable reasoning I gather - it sort of defuses power as in politics. I was captivatingly surprised to read the recent wall street journal article, which I have shared with you recently that a new company called uniroot, is selling anyone a tld they want (using sort of alternate roots) - a few years ago, I understand there was also another company that promoted that idea that died as well. *Second,* relative to the "If we do end up with alternate roots, your ability to register "mybrand" in all TLDs, or even to know whether you have done so, would be severely compromised " comment, I must strongly disagree, eg. today if i want to buy an airline ticket i cannot go to single airline company and buy them. A travel agent may do the job for me. If I want a phone in a number of countries i can go and easily buy it wherever i want. Your statement implies a single phone vendor worldwide, which despite your inferences *of course presumes English speaking and monopoly of money by western companies.* Actually even in domain names today, if I want to register my names in different cctlds i still have to go around and visit many different registries /registrars and buy them. Many countries do not use registrars. *This is the way the world is.* And to the extent there is a market need for a single way to buy many different domains the 50,000 or more resellers in the world take care of it. *Basically the proposal you mentioned is a centrally controlled, sort of a star trek future* - where the whole world is one government controlled by one entity. *Some may think *that this view is of those who invented/controlled the internet and it fits with US political needs as well (a convenient excuse to control a world resource). *Others would argue the opposite actually *- by limiting all language domain registrations to de facto, a few global western registry/companies will ensure that they will not have the necessary local expertise in languages/culture to actually help the global company wishing to protect mybrand in all countries correctly. By employing different local groups to do so (which alternate roots will necessarily suggest) will do a better job of correctly protecting customer. As for resellers and registrars offering everyone's products for one-stop shopping - today registrars are contacting many different registries in USA and all over the world cctlds registries (with all their odd rules - in Korea only Koreans with a soc sec number can register, in china even today individuals cannot register only companies, in Arabic countries - pornographic names cannot be registered, etc and we pay in all manner of local currencies over different terms - some countries only allow 10 year terms of registration) and offering them seamlessly to customers as it stands. Just like there are different registries supplied by a registrar, the registers will simply supply products from alternate root registries with their own rules and prices but all using same IDNA standard and Technology (that's what is important). *Therefore I would not subscribe at all to the analogy of alternate roots would severely compromising mybrand registration *. *Its like saying democracy undermines order, which would be a statement that only a dictator would use and fool believes *. --On Sunday, 05 February, 2006 23:23 -0800 Sophia B <sophiabekele@gmail.com> wrote:
... Please allow me to present this historic perspective, as well as some relative considerations regarding the IDNs.
1) It is my understanding that ICANN has a fully authorized TESTBED still ongoing with VERISIGN, operating almost 200 languages under ".com". It is also my understanding that the author of the DNAME proposal draft (published in Vancouver) is from VERISIGN (they are the champions of this and the author of the document is a fellow who launched the first Versign testbed. Is it also a fact, pls correct me if I am wrong, to state that this process sold 1 million names in 200 languages, but really did not address the long-term solution? uhmm.
John wrote: I am no particular friend of Verisign's or their behavior, but I believe the explanation above is somewhat distorted. As I understand it, the vast majority of the names registered under the testbed have been converted to IDNA names and the relevant fees paid for standard registrations. More important, despite my use of some of them in the examples above, no one really wants to type in, or look at, any of these ACE-encoded names. In general, if I use one of the IDNA (punycode, as above) names in a DNS name context any modern/contemporary browser, I will see the native characters associated with that name. But nothing contemporary supports the "RACE" names that were used in the testbed. So, unless one finds a string starting with "bg--" and followed by an arbitrary-looking collection of characters to be amusing or of mnemonic value, that testbed, however badly it was handled, is now irrelevant. Sophia wrote: *IDNA to reinforce my own and other readers understanding* is the Internationalized Domain Names Applications standard agreed to buy IETF a few years back. It sets the rules for taking multilingual domains and converting them with the help of unicode into "ascii strings" pre-fixed by "xn--". Everybody has agreed almost completely to this technology including almost all the alternate root efforts (china included) and in fact the final standard is almost identical to the original idea proposed of all things by an ALTERNATE ROOT company - i-dns.net, when ICANN was not focusing to fulfill the need for IDN for many years. Having said the above, these were my findings. The way of translating multilingual into ascii strings can be done in several different ways/formats (something trivial like writing left to right or right to left - just a format agreement like driving on left or right when there is a choice) - all these ways are called ACE encodings (ACE means ASCII Compatible Encoding i think). Originally i-dns.net proposed a particular ACE known as RACE as an interim standard (which Versign launched in its testbed/deployment) while IETF looked into agreeing to it or selecting a different one. (Launching technology with preliminary standard while IETF or ITU develops final standards is common practice on the Internet - example Real Networks video streaming, JPEG or 802.1g wi-fi). The Race encoded names were tagged "BQ--" in front of translated Amharic string. It could have been any tag - they more or less randomly chose BQ. After 3 years of debate (the longest ietf debate ever by a factor of 3x) IETF after discussing dozens of ACE formats had two finalists - the original RACE or a new version called PUNYCODE. Its really a trivial part of the whole IDN concept but one argument says that after 3 years the committee must have something tangible and different to show (not just a few minor unidentifiable changes in the guts of the details only) - so they went with punycode and IDNA was released enshrining punycode - and they essentially drew lots and randomly came up with "XN--" as the identifying tag for PUNYCODE (another member of ACE encodings) names. All new IDN names were tagged XN and everybody except Versign converted existing BQ to XN within a year. Eventually Versign did it as well. *Note:* By the way the original tag was "BQ--" and not "BG--" as you stated John - a very trivial detail . A computer randomly was used to generate a two-letter tag in the case of XN - they sued closing prices of NASDAQ stocks average etc. John wrote: Verisign has permission to register IDNA names in COM and NET and has had it for several years. As far as I know, every other gTLD that has asked for permission to register IDNA-style IDNs has gotten that permission. These are not for testbeds, they are for production registrations. Sophia wrote: I would say yes to this of course, but *my research tells me that no one uses them*. The Chinese from day one in 2000 used their ambassadors and their ministers to protest internationally and to this day more or less block it for use within China. All of these are two language hybrids ie. native language.ascii-cctld. ie. half my name for eg. in Amharic and the other half in English. Totally offensive and does not really help the non-English speaker who cannot type English, even worst, in most cases the non-English speaker has to change KEYBOARD SETTINGS from one language to another half way through typing a single domain name. I understand - yes some people bought them to protect their names but the average non-English speaker who needs IDN has almost never used them. Probably less than 1% of names ever bought under these are actually used or usable. *And the total number of all ICANN approved IDN names registered today is probably less than 500,000 - mostly in .com. - after 6 years *. And most are not hosted and the 1% or less that is hosted are actually not used, because ICANN was not able to make them usable by the people who need it. Wow, *contrast that with China, who after getting serious about their alterative root (started in 2001), about two years ago, that have over 100M people being able to use it *- only 300M truly IDN needing Internet users in the world (note French, Latin, Germans, can use ascii for the most part happily). I hope this are statistics that are not was off base, if so, I would need an issues report, to contrast that, like Marylin Cade would say. John wrote: Now, I believe that testbed was very badly handled and that the way it was approved and handled reflects badly on ICANN (staff, Board, and the then DNSO Council) and on Verisign. My proposal that we be quite aggressive in being sure that "tests" are actually tests and not some sort of early-start mechanism was developed precisely because of that experience. We should at least avoid making the same mistake a second time. More on this below. Sophia wrote: I think you misunderstood here. The usual differences arise when technical people use precise meanings of words, while others are accustomed to speaking in looser terms without loss of communication. I understand the testbed was initially in RACE and then it was converted to IDNA. Your answer seems to focus on that. The RACE/IDNA difference is not the point in my original comments. By suggesting that the "long-term" solution was not addressed years ago, what I meant was, even to date (and that is years after Versign converted to IDNA) the IDN names that launched as a testbed in 2000 and then subsequently in 2003/4 converted to IDNA, are hardly usable anywhere where non-English languages matter. For the first few years there was no resolution either by way of plug-in distribution or other server-side solutions, then there has been a modest rise in plug-in distribution a year or two ago and then probably a relative decline since then. Basically from the point of view of a non-English internet user outside of primarily the USA, these IDNs have been hardly usable and are not much used - and this after many other ascii TLDs have been allowed to launch (not as testbeds). I understand there is one argument for this is, that browser manufacturers are not under the direct control of ICANN etc. ie. Microsoft or left to private hands, that it costs them a lot of money to distribute plug-ins etc. It has also not been cost effective for these primarily Western companies to do distribute these plug-ins. While these market problems are very real in the West/USA etc., they are no consolation to the multi-lingual end-user whom ICANN in my opinion has been less successful to date in serving. *De facto ICANN is and is certainly seen as being in charge of the "Internet" and it would seem that if after 5+ plus years there has been very little usage or progress in the already launched IDN usability, *ICANN could address the real issue – *usability,* Even if ICANN does not control the parties, for a comprehensive solution, it is my understanding that ICANN did not do much more to accelerate the process. Local efforts in countries with local laws seem to be overcoming these problems that ICANN has made, with only very little progress. My purpose in bringing the Versign tetsbed up was for me to have some input/comments on this dead-on-arrival" status as regards usability that has plagued ICANN IDN launches so far *How would we at ICANN avoid these prior usability problems before we go headlong into another launch - DNAMES or new TLDs?* I am all for doing it but wish to ensure that we do not repeat the past. One would imagine that this needs to be sorted out before we experiment and launch. It is in this way of thinking that I suggest "policy usage" issues first. We had the technical launch before - ie. IDN.ascii - and it worked technically but why is nobody able to use it much in practice (yes - anyone can go to the link and download - that's not an answer to the real problem). *The technology was successful, but the deployment has hardly been successful, *while the need is clearly there why and how are we going to do better this time round? Again, I am no DNS expert and am appreciating all the school-kid style education on the technical details of IDN but correct me if I am wrong - the early RACE encoded IDN names carried a "BQ--" designator rather than a "BG--" designator as you suggest above. I would assume in any language or script those are different? *Further research on browser technology:* Native browsers until a year ago could not handle IDN for two reasons. First reason- they had to convert multilingual to Punycode "xn--" ascii-gobbledygook strings using IDNA standard. Second even if translated the domain name has to be sent to a root that understands it - either ICANN or alternate root. In the case of ICANN root, browser simply sends it to your ISP and they are set up to d fault send it to ICANN root. If your ISP is not (and unless someone went to every ISP and made them include alternate root information (a 2 minute procedure) as the Chinese govt. ordered to all isps in china), then the browser itself needs to recognize the fact that the name is an IDN and send it to the correct alternate root (browser needs address of alternate root if the ISP does not have it). *It is my understanding that ICANN has now or NEVER in 6 years told any ISP to add an alternate root location for obvious reasons. *So unless you had billions to pay ISPs or you were China govt hard to get the world's 10,000 ISPs to do the 2 minute programming that is needed. So typical ISPs only point to ICANN root. So until a year ago no browser manufacturer did either. ( I think I brought this point at the DC GNSO meeting) *As a result, plug-ins were the rule* - the original plug-in was developed by i-dns and Versign has licensed and re-branded for use and so have virtually everyone else in the world who launched IDN, including Chinese, Japanese, Arabs whether icann-sanctioned IDN or alternate root ones - copied or licensed the i-dns.net one. In the case of ICANN TLDs. the 2-language hybrid IDNS that ICANN has launched to date - ie. IDN.com variety - the plug-in is not required to handle the alternate root function - because you use the ICANN default root which your ISP knows anyway. So this single-function plug-in was distributed primarily by Verisign for their large testbed - and since. (Aflilias and Neulevel and JPNIC launched IDNs and sold some names but did not bother to develop their own plug-in for distribution and simply use their competitor's Versisgn's free plug-in to do so – that is that for innovation - they make money and would like to have IDN but are not spending money to make their own product - to versign's credit, it actually is doing that - the other's seem to be just making money on ICANN contracts - except of Versign they pretty much do not have an R and D group, I understand of any kind, let alone IDN. But it is interesting they all want DNAMEs though). *It is believed that ICANN also did not do much effort to develop or promote any plug-in, with anyone. *Left to its own devices and with no support, unfortunately, I understand the plug-in deployment failed over 6 years - less than 100,000 plug-ins distributed in first 4 years and since maybe 4 million - almost all by Versisgn. And most of the 4 million where it is really not needed in USA and Scandinavia - no real need for IDN. ICANN could have allowed Versign and the other IDN ICANN registries to talk to local ISPs to alter their software even further - so that the translation step to xn-- could also be done at ISP server end - so need for plug-ins at all - a trivial thing that was originally proposed by IDN inventors - but this was rejected for what many think is no good reason by IETF and ICANN (ie. many think it was an ICANN vendetta against Verisign). So yes ICANN deployed but no one could use it. The alternate root efforts have in some cases patched the ISP side and like in China can do without plug-in at all. *( I think this was what I was attempting to say at the DC meeting, but I was told ISPs do not need any patches, yes they do not if they adher to ICANN root). * Other alternate root efforts use plug-ins (all derived from the early i-dns.net one) that both translate to xn-- and also point directly to alternate roots. But most efforts, like the Chinese, mix both server side patch and plug-ins to achieve maximum penetration. For later IDN email addreses, plug-ins are required - ISP patch is not enough for technical reasons. For example once they got serious, in 2 years, the Chinese have pushed out over 50 million plugins and patched enough ISPs by govt order to account for > 90% of China's 130M end-users. One alternate root company has thru ISP patch and plug-in distribution allowed 60% of Koreas's 36M internet population to access full Korean domains in about 2 years. Meanwhile even with Netscape being disbanded and handed over to Mozilla non-profit and they having agreed to support at least the IDN xn-- translation function innately last year and therefore ICANN IDN not requiring a plug-in if you use Netscape, is why I think the ICANN IDN experiment after 6 years seem to have resulted in utter tragedy in comparison, as far as usability. Sophia wrote> Further. John in his document suggested 20 languages for each
TLD just for the TEST right?. Suppose 20 languages or 200 languages may NOT be considered EVERY language, how about when we have two million languages? Someone mentioned that nobody is going to put every language in every equivalent of say ".com" translated. etc. or that English is the root language of the Internet. Can we you think here that "WWIII" may not be a problem. I do.
John wrote: At one level, I share your concern. I have no idea how the policy and approval procedures will work out when one starts talking about even hundreds of names that are somehow associated with each TLD or some set of TLDs. I have repeatedly sought for, defined, and proposed mechanisms for dealing with the need for internationalization at the TLD level as a client-translation problem, rather that trying to force those decisions to be global policy matters. Sophia wrote: *Of course the natural attraction of DNAMEs is that each incumbent registry selects its own translation (without being sensitive to the local culture who have yet to be represented at ICANN *. It's implication is those who already know best and who can profit the most can do it for you). In every language (even ones they have never heard of or have staff to handle) the whole problem is avoided. I think we should be reminded here that the internet is A GLOBAL POLICY MEDIUM. Its a GLOBAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEM and interestingly, for the first time in history, people are attempting to make the FIRST BOTTOM-UP GLOBALLY DESIGNED COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK. Phone companies are patchwork of national phone systems in comparison. If Multilingual communication between people that will eventually handle virtually every form of communication (post office is dead, VOIP is coming) in a service-oriented (ie. data movement IS the ECONOMY - not goods) handle increasingly as much as 90% of commercial activity in a GLOBALised, OUT-sourced world and the addressing of one's IDENTITY and NAME in this end-all communication/business platform is what the Internet domain name system is about, SHOULD NOT THIS BE A GLOBAL POLICY PROBLEM. *The whole point is the Internet is a global policy problem - and the United Nations understands it, but most scientist or technologist so not. * *I shall hope not, but I think ICANN from what I gather, seem to be seen as a narrow minded group of scientist /technologist, who have historically controlled the Internet since invention ( *despite repeated elections of global board of directors who are either paralyzed or nod in silence) may find it convenient psychologically to shut the noisy world out of their IVORY TOWER *- trivialize the policy issues, turn a global issue to a private local caucus group issue, the way they had the Internet before the world-at-large discovered it. * I also learned there are those who *think that the US govt either thru incompetence or as a direct intended form of manipulation of existing situation, or a mixture, exploits the scientist/engineers' views to keep it from becoming a global issue *and rather a single nations' national issue for all the obvious political superpower reasons. Interesting! ** *At this point, my view would be that I may have to wear a bullet-proof vest and arrive with a contingency of US Navy Seals Team for protection at the ICANN Conferences!!. Or maybe I should just wire the Enterprise and ask Scotty to be ready to beam me up" in in case of emergency. * *.* *[image: Navy SEALs]* Others again are in the view that if ICANN does not want to deal with it as a global problem, then we let it turn into a national sovereignty problem, with alternate roots that countries decide. *The thought is that ICANN does not want it not to be global but chose to give it to incumbents - happens to be all the right people in the western companies, US govt, their friends etc. - all in their comfort zone - people who having signed onto ICANN for their bread-butter contracts can be depended upon to continue courting them *. As such, a "not a global policy issue" can not pass or should not be commented as even reasonable to an ICANN BOARD - and Board members need to wake up to this. Ok, how does ICANN respond to this? *Note:** My own observation for few months now, and having researched and talked with people interested in IDNs, I am inclined to deduce there a number of reasons why the IDN issues have not been pursued competently as well as why GNSO was silent: * 1. Lack of in-dept technical knowledge and information to enable policy making by GNSO. *I think the technologist have dominated the conversation.* One question like "do you know the difference between BQ and BG" and everyone is "quite" or goes to "sleep", which could include me in the future. 2. Western companies (who are ONLY resellers and who have never developed any new technology i.e not been innovative per se - even AT&T continues to develop technology while selling phone service calls), may not have interest in IDN *unless there is a profit justification* viz a guaranteed profit as a monopoly with no extra work (easy way out is DNAMES). 3. Non-West companies/people say little or nothing because they have already *bought in to the "ICANN rules the world" concept. * 4. Fair-minded western types may have been *overwhelmed and "retired" *at first opportunity 5. Meanwhile the inventors/founders of the Internet speak with *GREAT KNOWLEDGE and in a complicated technical terms *and with GREAT ARROGANCE at times (some of our emails are evidences to that), it silences everyone who after-all are not paid for this volunteer board. 6. As a result, the board members from non-western companies already assisting ICANN (like myself) often have to make a living in a ICANN-independent manner - *so the ones who are the least biased tend to be the ones with the least time*. (We have to hire research assistant at our expense). 7. The Board member from X country with bad English or the guy from Timbuktu who just wants to serve the two years so that he/she can leverage that to become Minister of IT back home *may be unmotivated and to nothing* 8. As such, the silence on GNSO BOARD is only matched by the silence on the main Board on IDN and other issues. *This level of silence, have resulted in the external threats to become REAL - china etc. * This silence I think also led to a few, dominating to prevent ideas they often *arbitrarily did not like *about something *they never wanted to do* (allow multilingual domains) and then after preventing the matter, *did not helping with the actual carrying out of successfully, that which was agreed to by default. * John wrote: While "WWIII" is probably hyperbole, I believe the most efficient way to get us to alternate roots and a badly fragmented Internet would be to respond to the perceived requirements for increased internationalization with a "just say no" attitude or one that can be interpreted as people from industrialized countries trying to keep populations from less-developed areas from using the Internet effectively. On the other hand, unless you succeed in persuading everyone in the world to adopt a writing system that uses Roman characters, the argument for IDNs, and IDNs at the top level (at least in appearance to the user) will not disappear. If we are going to do such things by entering names in the root, then it is useful to know what will work, what will not, and, to the extent to which we can make estimates, what the operational impact will be. I believe we should all be quite concerned about making root changes without at least some of that experience and knowledge. If people want to run experiments, then those experiments should be both controlled and informative. The choice of 20 was based on an estimate of the minimum number needed to give us some useful information. Sophia wrote: I see no issue with running experiments, but once again, we launched technology that worked before. The issue is not technology one would think. It is POLICY. *Should we not settle on some idea of how policy-wise ICANN should delegate languages (if DNAMES) and TLDs (if new ones) or at least have some parallel debate.* I understand the Katoh committees studied it in the past and had recommendations, but I have not heard any actual discussions on what the committee thought then about Policy. It appears to me from your comments that the Katoh-committee (spent far more time than we have so far I would have thought this time around) from a policy perspective (ie. bickering) had only a few recommendations to make - and one quite clearly recommended that new TLDs should be issued for IDN TLDs and that these TLDs should not be handed in a grandfathered way to existing gTLDs OR ccTLDs ... correct me if I am wrong. That it should be brandname new "bids" by all-comers. If that reading is right, one would imagine while the technical merits of DNAMES were not discussed (or for that matter DNAMEs as an option was not brought up at all) the prevailing assumption that DNAMES will be a way of awarding existing ccTLDs and gTLDs equivalent IDN TLDs in effect would be counter to what the Katoh-committee was presumably explicitly trying to avoid - incumbents getting IDN TLD equivalents. (I understand in principle that new IDN TLDs can be deployed and DNAMES made only operational in that new IDN TLD as you point out later but I think most people in these discussions presume DNAMES implies incumbents eventually getting their IDN TLD equivalents in many languages - certainly in the Versign DNAME proposal that seems to have jump-started the current fascination with DNAMES that is their assumption/hope). Again I am puzzled that *after having gone to so much trouble and time we are now ignoring even a modest discussion of the original Katoh committee recommendations *. They suggested various policies - long before any experiment. Now we seem to be going ahead without any policy discussion and worse ignoring the policy recommendations made earlier, straight to experiments. I must say I am puzzled. *Perhaps the current IDN committee should get us all upto speed on the Katoh-committee recommendations and why *they suggested what they did and why we are proceeding along the lines of what we are doing - reasons for and against. We can always make different decisions from the Katoh-committee recommendations. John wrote: - Show quoted text -
2)- Unfortunately English is the default language of the Internet today and it is likely to continue to be. Nobody questions that in a serious way - but what everyone wants I believe is a reasonable usable field in every major language today etc. for non-english speaking populations. Without having to be condescending to the "non-West" as I am certain they do understand English is here to stay, what we want to do is really keep the other languages alive. From what I have gathered, it seem that past discussions on this issues suggest 'Textbook thinking" without due consideration of is what the "non-US/West" wants. If we out to call it IDN and ICAAN represents a true international organization, we need to NOT only talk the talk, but walk the walk, applying the cornerstone of globalization in a realistic way, 'think global, act local'.
I think that some of us who have been working on these issues for many years are at least as sensitive to these issues... and to finding ways to make things work effectively with a variety of scripts and languages, as you are. Some of us have even spent a good deal of time working with people in the "non-US/ non-West" trying to accomplish that while also trying to preserve the integrity of the DNS as a global Internet-object referencing resource. The problems are complex. The DNS is not an ideal solution to many of them for reasons that have little to do with English or even Roman characters. The nature of those problems and the range of alternatives have been rather extensively explored outside the ICANN and Roman-script contexts, especially in East and Southeast Asia. At the same time, slogans may not be helpful (e.g., the only practical way to realize "think global, act local" with regard to IDNs is to get internationalization issues entirely out of the DNS -- an IDN in the DNS is inherently global because the DNS is inherently global) and wishing the DNS, or the Internet more generally, worked in a way significantly different than it does won't make it so... any more than lamenting how much easier navigation would be if only the earth were flat is helpful to either navigation or earth-flattening. Sophia wrote: It seems rather puzzling to me that, *after 6 years or more of activity*, the best that ICANN has done to date is to being able to deliver from "those of that have been sensitive to the needs of the non-US/non-West" *is a two-language/script domain name*. ie. the IDN.ascii-tld, technical people can make all the distinction they want but in general use you will never see any significant change I fear. eg. is I would not like the US passport agency to finally recognize that there are many Arab US citizens and that their passport should contain their personal name in the original Arabic and then proceed to write in their passport "Ismael" in Arabic and then "Mohammed" in English. *The whole point is to allow non-native English speakers to skip English in domain addressing* . Making them type half in English is not really a solution?, becomes bad-mannered, if we were not all brainwashed to think that "English" is the "end-all". Worse, whether you need a plug-in or not, or if ISP or Microsoft patches it, these two-language domains will always require end-user to switch KEYBOARD from one language to another while typing a single domain name in a browser (in Hebrew and in Arabic also switch direction of typing). I gather this has been a huge problem , hardly anyone bothers to mention - because no one is really using these things after 6 years . But if you put IDN TLDs - alternate roots or ICANN root, with or without plug-in, this problem goes away - you do not need to switch keyboard settings halfway. *I find it hard to believe that this two-language oddity is what the non-English speaking people have wanted out of their internationalized Internet *. It would seem anyone with any sensitivity to non-English languages using scripts far divergent from roman-like would want single language/script domains - to push the point home, I doubt there is much of a market for " arabic.hebrew" names. What I mean is, "Arabic" on left and "Hebrew" on right - two-language . Hebrew TLD and Arabic company domain name. This is the sort of thing I believe what ICANN has been launching for the past years - two languages, which has been criticized with the IDN community and has not found much of a user. *The more likely scenario would be that perhaps those who were "sensitive to the needs of the non-West" did not understand *. The real reason might just have been technical and political convenience and incumbent-market economic convenience - none of it necessarily helpful to those who really need the internationalization. Technical, because less has to be changed (similar logic as in DNAMES for now I presume). Political, because there was no need to introduce new TLDs way back at a time when ICANN had other on-going battles to defend its authority and incumbent-market economics - it benefited the major existing registries - the early ones being commercial gTLDs or if ccTLDs, then privatized profit-making ones. I bring this up not to apportion blame (even you conceded the initial launches were terrible and we don't need anyone to tell us that the whole IDN roll-out has been a practical failure in the general public's minds) but rather to counter your matter-of-fact assumed suggestion that "everything is in good hands and we have been sensitive to non-US/non-West needs". It is said that those who do not consider the past maybe doomed to repeat it. My real worry is that once again we may be going down a path of technical expediency ( eg. DNAMES) all the while insisting that we are "sensitive". Given the past, in my opinion, *to be truly "sensitive" one needs to consider the policy side of what we are about to before we embark headlong *into another "better testbed" directed down a channel *guided by technical expediency (possibly DNAMES) and by the identical commercial forces as before (Verisign initiated proposal).* And add to that no one seems to even bothering to recall that a prior Katoh-led Committee spent substantial effort coming up with guidelines for the future may have specifically recommended against the path that things currently seem to be pointing - incumbent awarded mappings ie. DNAMES. If we have the same organization, possibly some of the same sensitive people, similar technical expediency directed technical solutions, same arguments, same commercial proposers – I doubt if we do we expect a different outcome? Finally, I truly believe *we need policy discussions first *and should at least consider for discussion the *Katoh-committee recommendations as a first step*. Sophia wrote> 3) I may be presumptuous, but ICANN's argument of resorting to
using DNAME seem to come from the perspective of how ICANN failed to be responsive for long and now "China" and others are threatening to "break the single root". Therefore, perhaps, we were left to a single view and a quick solution, neglecting to entertain the CHOICES we may have for IDN. So, the easiest implementation approach is DNAME, which is is to just give the big registries all the languages without having to change much in the technical stuff - ie. just re-point.com to every language equivalent - no new TLDs etc.
John wrote: - Show quoted text - Actually, I think you misunderstand both the situation and the history. First, DNAMEs are, in Internet time, a relatively old proposal and protocol specification. I didn't invent them and neither did Verisign. Second, there was a proposal from the original ICANN IDN committee that no IDN TLDs be permitted in the root except on a separate application for new TLDs process. For an number of reasons --almost all of them consequences of how the DNS actually works and what is and is not possible as a result-- I still believe that was a wise recommendation, independent of anything China, Verisign, or others might "want" to do. Some of those who are still on the GNSO Council will probably remember that, because of issues with the number of languages in the world, I recommended that we try to sort out the use of IDNs at the second level and below in relevant ccTLDs before permitting them to be used at all... and recommended that several years before China made essentially the same suggestion (of course, by the time they made that suggestion, it was already too late since several gTLDs were doing production IDN registrations). Now, there has been a good deal of pressure from a number of directions to create aliases for country names in national languages. That pressure has actually been much more intense, with more threats, from other directions than from China. If an alias is what is really wanted and that alias must, for technical or political reasons, be in the root, then DNAMEs are the right way to do so. Other solutions are simply not aliases, they are separate domain names. To me, for separate domain names, the original IDN Committee/Katoh-san recommendation should still apply. As with IDNs below the top level and the "what languages" question, I understand the idea of an alias for a ccTLD in the relevant country's national language(s) much better than I understand what to do about gTLDs. Indeed, if I could make recommendations for the GNSO, I would seriously consider a recommendation that, at least for the next several years, the top-level IDN issue is, except for possible completely new applications domains with IDN-style names, entirely a ccTLD problem and that the gTLDs should not participate in any way in the evaluation of what is possible and reasonable other than continuing to register second-level IDNs under existing rules. Sophia wrote: I am aware that DNAMES has existed for a long time as a technical part of the DNS structure. You and Patrick pointed it out in your recent IETF document that was circulated. But you also point out DNAMEs was never really invented with IDN in mind and in fact there is some hesitancy for "borrowing" it for this purpose of IDN. From my crude understanding the reasoning appears to be it would be ideal not to use something for which it was not really intended. *In any case in my understanding the DNAMEs approach is being championed right now - it was not the case I believe in the previous 6 years of ICANN IDN history. *The Katon-committee didn't consider it after 3 years of IDN history at ICANN. If this thing has been around for as long as the Internet, then why all of a sudden this proposal is being championed - whatever the true reasons, it certainly has the suggestions of technical expediency in the face of potential external threats/pressure. *Well, its great that you bring up the Katoh-committee recommendations that you too seem to agree with *, and at some level these are against the grain of the direction in which a DNAMES like deployment would head - awarding incumbent existing gTLD registries equivalents. Saying that DNAMEs is just a technology and how it need not be given to existing registries in principle is true technically. But the real issue is that's where it is likely to head and that's why the POLICY needs to be discussed first. Why are we not even discussing them after having invested so much time and effort on their recommendation? *I understand that the Versign testbed was done badly and everybody acknowledges that* . Now when China came up with a solution they liked, it was already too late because we at ICANN had gone ahead and gone beyond "bad testbed' to actual production registrations under a few major commercial registries ( gTLDs and ccTLDs I guess) and it was too late to go back. Perhaps it is no little wonder that the same China and others are now forging their own path ahead. *So two mistakes - not just one - presumably all driven by the stronger commercial registries wanting to increase sales in their existing ascii TLDs by way of promoting somewhat insulting two-language/script hybrid domain names. * If there is pressure from other sources - other than China to move - would it not be useful or proper for those of us who believe policy issues are equally or more important than technical testing of fairly well-established technology (perhaps as old as the Internet you suggested for DNAMES) to know what these "pressures" are if we as members of various ICANN boards have to endorse the eventual policy chosen. No matter what the spin from wherever, it is abundantly clear that the current IDN activity within ICANN after 2 or 3 year relative hiatus, is happening because of considerable external pressure *. I am not sure I am speaking for all the GNSO members, but for my part I generally viewed the pressure from China as the biggest one while I have heard rumors of others and unhappiness from various other quarters *. If as you say the pressure from China is not the main one and there are multiple others, it would appear that we would need to discuss this pronto! *Could someone please share this with us? So that our job is NOT to simply endorse everything.** * Incidentally I would not be surprised if many of our board members learnt of the China deployed/commercial activity while reading a recent Wall Street Journal article. I have since learnt reliably that this activity was launched initially in a small way with full backing by their Ministry (published statements by Ministers) more than 4 years ago, and starting about 18 months ago it has been extensively deployed all over China. A large fraction of the 130M+ Chinese Internet population is already enabled-to use it and many tens of registrars have actually been selling these domains (which for all external purposes look like real IDN TLDs as described in the Wall Street Journal article) for well over a year and many tens of thousands of names registered and in use. A quick visit to the CNNIC web-site confirms all this. It would be *nice to know of these things earlier and* not from the likes of the Wall Street journal. Sophia wrote> John's statement butters this point:
If a such programmer in China were to decide that, for her users to have a good experience, .US and .COM should be able to be referenced by using Chinese names, there is nothing that the GNSO, ICANN, IETF, ITU, or the Great Pumpkin could do to stop or prevent it. Even the control of the Chinese government would be _extremely_ limited, since those Chinese names would be visible only to users of that particular application with that particular extension, and not "on the wire" or to either DNS servers or the sites or hosts being reached.
I think if this is the way we have looked at it, it seem that our response is shortsighted (because it technical-oriented only and did not consider the business issues) and is perhaps why ICANN has failed achieve success in the IDN arena. Instead of worrying about the political, policy and cultural implications, first, we may have focused on the easy way out...technical. In this case, contrary to what Cary said, I think issuing DNAME is equally reckless as using new TLDs in IDN.
The fact that the Chinese has already launched this process (if we out to call them reckless) and ICANN who ought to know better, is forced to 'follow' the same (can we call ICANN "reckless") as well? Uhmm.
John wrote: - Show quoted text - Again, please understand enough about how the DNS works, and how name resolution and applications on the Internet work more generally, to be able to understand what is said above. The Chinese have not already "launched" anything along the lines of what I suggested. That proposal is not "technical-oriented only" and does consider the business issues (even if the business and cultural issues it considers critical might not be the same ones you would choose). That proposal was actually almost exclusively focused on political, policy, and cultural issues -- many of the technical folks, who prefer a less complex world, actually don't like it. And that proposal is not, in any way, related to DNAMEs -- it is a third alternative. As to whether "issuing DNAME" is "equally reckless" as "using new TLDs in IDN" (whatever that means), I would, again, encourage you to understand what is being proposed and what its technical implications are, if only because doing so is prerequisite to talking intelligently about the business issues (or even most of the political and cultural ones). The "new domain" issues are simply a superset (a rather large superset) of those associated with DNAMEs. DNAMEs supply aliases but, as I pointed out long before the GNSO became actively concerned with this, one still needs to decide who gets which names and what they point to. New domains raise the much more complex issues of allocations and operation, and domain-specific policies as well as those of name selection and assignment, issues that are largely invisible from the DNAME case. Could one adopt a DNAME model and reserve names for later "independent TLD" allocation? Of course. Could one restrict the DNAMEs that would be associated with gTLDs to some limited set, or even to zero if that were felt to be wise? Of course. There is nothing that is "all languages in the world or nothing" about any of the proposals I have heard seriously raised. Sophia wrote> *Ok, pls correct me if I am wrong when I am trying to speak
DNAME implementation approach:* eg. CEO of mybrand.com has to be protected in every language under a gTLD that means "com" in every language, right ? meaning they have to come up with 200 language translations of ".com" and ICANN can approve DNAMES.
John wrote: No, they do not. And the fact that they do not is actually one of the attractions of the DNAME approach (except to the registrars and registries who are anxious to mount "there is now another new domain in which you need to register to protect your brand... please send money" campaigns. _That_ approach requires separate domains). Sophia wrote> Then these companies, like Versign, can go and get
everyone of their.com name holders (40 million in this case) names translated / transliterated into 200 languages to everyone's satisfaction and register them all to get 200 x 45 million DNAMES. *I hope I am on right track so far.*
John wrote: No, you are not. Please read the comments above and, more important, please make an effort to understand how the DNS works in general and how DNAMEs work in particular. Sophia> Are they also going to charge the CUSTOMER (who has already paid
some $6 already) for the translation/transliteration work? Also, if the customer then is upset by the accuracy of translation or if the customer is sued by some other third party saying that the wrong translation now impinges on their own business, will VERISIGN pay for all lawsuit damages? I am almost certain that these companies will NOT agree to this - but this is the result of DNAMES.
John wrote: No, it is not. Sophia> Finally, from where I see it, *policy is to be made first in
complex situations as these.* Technology is a second - fact is these systems seem to have been working for years already, as China seem to have has deployed it for years on a large scale - far larger than anything ICANN has done to date, I believe.
John wrote: No, China has done something else, and only relatively recently. Once you understand, throughly, how the DNS works and, in particular, the difference between the actions of a caching forwarder and a different TLD, I'll be happy to try to explain just what they are doing, and why, to you. ... Sophia wrote> Therefore, as Avil suggested, I propose the alternatives and
solution should be explored by a joint consultation with relevant IDN circles and the Council.
John wrote: Sure. As long as the capabilities and operations of the DNS are sufficiently well understood, and at a policy level, the range and scope of potential ICANN authority is reasonably well understood, that discussions of policies that imply flat earths and more convenient values of PI are avoided. Otherwise, while the discussions would certainly be interesting, the GNSO will waste its time and the world will ignore ICANN and move forward on its own path. Sophia wrote> I myself recommend the POLICY option. Go for a solution
letting the people speaking a specific language (or script as they like to say) is a part of their culture – to take care of it. We can talk about specific implementation strategies once we agree with the policy option!
---- John wrote: First, the proposal that comes closest to the type of solution you seem to propose above is one that you have rejected out of hand. *Sophia wrote: *Answering each of your points in order* * *First,* I have come to understand that technical people tend to view things in only technically acceptable terms, and in this case multilingual domain names serving the need for non-English speakers to reach web-sites in their own character sets. *However, in my experience, in the real world - particularly so in disenfranchised parts of the world - often choices are made that cannot only be technically acceptable but they must also be "emotionally" acceptable*. My understanding is that for IDNs the peoples of the different languages would strongly prefer an approach where IDN TLDs in so much as possible mirror and be "parallel" to ASCII TLDs. (and saying ASCII is not English is a worthless argument that only the adamantly technical people insist on - the wise accept the emotional reality and work around it). Thus the "proposal I am to have rejected out of hand" lacks the emotional merits of IDN TLDs that work more in a "parallel" manner. And emotion has a lot do with it - one can build highly efficient and better designer homes but everyone still wants a "doll house" to live in. -- John wrote: --Second, scripts and not the same as languages and people don't speak scripts: not understanding the difference can only increase your confusion. Sophia wrote: S*econd*, *it is refreshing to know that there are knowledgeable individuals like you who work so hard to decrease the confusion of the less gifted like me.** * I suppose the fact that *the Amharic script* is used for various languages in Ethiopia and Somalia including *Amharic*, Tigre and Tigrinya by a mere 30 million or so people, all without the benefit of the great knowledge you have, must leave them all confused and speaking in twisted tongues and many languages at once, *just like me.* And I can only be ever so grateful for having escaped that many-language-to-one-script mess to speaking the one-script-to-one-language-English (even though I hear some rumors that some 200 million Indonesians may have borrowed it too*). *However, I admit I must also be not so good at English, since I cannot understand the phrase "scripts and not the same as languages" in your discussion above. John wrote: --Third, as long as the DNS is to remain a global resource, a solution that involves letting those who speak a particular language to "take care of it" and go in their own direction is essentially impossible. Or, to put it differently, it is possible in only two ways: with client-level aliasing (which you have rejected) and with different DNS roots for each language group. The latter is inconsistent with both unambiguous global references on a global Internet and, by the way, with your having any possible hope of protecting your business name or trademark globally... except by legal action in each country in which a similar name might be used. Sophia wrote: *Third,* the *notion of different roots for different languages is impossible you suggest*. But from my understanding recent reports suggest that some 100M + people in China (maybe accounting for some half of the world's truly IDN-needy population) have been enabled to do just that for over a few years, with no deaths or no calamities reported. I understand that you have been quoted in the press as suggesting that the Chinese are solving this by "appending" .cn in English characters and thus not really dealing with a different root. *However even the BBC quotes eminent Internet-aware professors and Cambridge university researchers as having tested the Chinese deployment and that there is much much, more to it than meets the eye (see link below) *and that the long-deployed system is in essence a different language root or very close to it. I also understand, that in past years, many technical people have talked about so-called multiple roots-of-authority - I believe these include prominent previous ICANN Board of Directors like Karl Auberach etc. I am puzzled why you think it's impossible, unless in a very very narrow sense but then again my lot in life seems to be always confused. As for the "tragedy" that one would have to legally protect one's business names and trademarks as domain names in every sovereign country independently, I think that is exactly what we do with trademarks today and it would appear its no more onerous to protect one's domains in conjunction with trademark protection than just trademark protection, if your business needs that protection in country "x" (domains cost far less than trademark protection). *And I believe that is why sovereign-nation states exist.* Of course one can solve it all by simply globalizing the whole world into one federated galactic empire and put Captain Kirk in charge of it. And while at it, we could force everyone to learn English - then the problem simply goes away. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4779660.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4767972.stm Should have thought of that, far easier than solving these intractable technical problems that only the Chinese and certain largest-European ISPs like Tiscali seem to be rumored to be able to solve.