Re: Regarding issues report on IDNs (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 14:33:07 -0500 From: John C Klensin <klensin@jck.com> To: Sophia B <sophiabekele@gmail.com> Cc: Patrik Fältström <paf@cisco.com>, Marilyn Cade <marilynscade@hotmail.com>, Cary Karp <ck@nic.museum>, Tina Dam <dam@icann.org>, GNSO Council <council@gnso.icann.org> Subject: Re: [council] Re: Regarding issues report on IDNs 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. 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.
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:
1- if 'mybrand' is to be protected i.e trademark in every country...it is a matter of purchasing all the 'mybrand' TDLs...
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.
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.
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.
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?
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. 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.
What are the implications above?
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. --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.
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. 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. 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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
John's statement butteres 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.
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.
... *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.
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).
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.*
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.
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.
No, it is not.
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.
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.
... Therefore, as Avil suggested, I propose the alternatives and solution should be explored by a joint consultation with relevant IDN circles and the Council.
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.
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!
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. Second, scripts and not the same as languages and people don't speak scripts: not understanding the difference can only increase your confusion. 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. regards, john
Thanks Cary, I got John's reply already. John, thanks for the detail reply. Please allow me few days as well to decipher your comments and get back to you. BTW, I hope I do not come across as hot headed on this issue viz you comment 'things calm down'. I value the dialog we are all having and think it is timely. Being new to ICANN and IDN, I certainly may need to dig deep on both, however, my view would always *bottom line on the risks/exposure to the users of Internet, the constituencies* in this case, vs the technology in itself. As a software engineer by trade and working in the technology field for over a decade, I assure you and have finally come to realize that *technology is here to serve and not to master.* But who knows, given the chaos theory, there may be two sides of the flat earth society. We will have to wait and see. I again thank your time. I will get back to you ASAP. Regards, Sophia On 15/02/06, Cary Karp <ck@nic.museum> wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 14:33:07 -0500 From: John C Klensin <klensin@jck.com> To: Sophia B <sophiabekele@gmail.com> Cc: Patrik Fältström <paf@cisco.com>, Marilyn Cade < marilynscade@hotmail.com>, Cary Karp <ck@nic.museum>, Tina Dam <dam@icann.org>, GNSO Council <council@gnso.icann.org> Subject: Re: [council] Re: Regarding issues report on IDNs
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.
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.
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:
1- if 'mybrand' is to be protected i.e trademark in every country...it is a matter of purchasing all the 'mybrand' TDLs...
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
What are the implications above?
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.
--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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
John's statement butteres 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.
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.
... *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.
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).
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.*
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.
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.
No, it is not.
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.
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.
... Therefore, as Avil suggested, I propose the alternatives and solution should be explored by a joint consultation with relevant IDN circles and the Council.
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.
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!
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. Second, scripts and not the same as languages and people don't speak scripts: not understanding the difference can only increase your confusion. 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.
regards, john
-- Sophia Bekele Voice/Fax: 925-935-1598 Mob:925-818-0948 sophiabekele@gmail.com sbekele@cbsintl.com SKYPE: skypesoph www.cbsintl.com
participants (2)
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Cary Karp -
Sophia B