Cont'd 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: *Second*, *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 links 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.** http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4779660.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4767972. 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. 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.