And thank you for your response, with which I largely agree.

The DNS is far from irrelevant. Regardless of the demand for "memorable" domains, or the share of manually-typed domains in personal web access, having a trusted, secure and useful DNS will remain paramount to a smoothly functioning Internet, at least in our lifetimes.

I only have one general comment to your response.

As I mentioned in my response to Alan, domain names are not the solution to all of the Internet's inclusion and access challenges. And it might be a mistake for ALAC to tackle every such problem using only ICANN's fairly limited toolkit.

I agree that it is imperative to maximize linguistic and cultural inclusion. However I assert that trying to do this through IDNs is futile and becoming moreso every year.

A genuine commitment to the end-user perspective means exactly that: understanding what communities, and the underserved, and linguistic/cultural minorities need from us ... not starting with our own assumptions and tools and trying to twist the problem to fit our "solution". (As one example: what about the many linguistic groups whose scripts are supported by Unicode but not punycode -- do we demand for them to wait for ICANN to catch up? Or do we support a Unicode-based solution that might, just, not involve domain names?)

We must put ourselves into the perspective of the communities, the underserved, those challenged with access. Right now ALAC looks at them from the perspective of domain landlords, and every challenge assumes some kind of domain-based answer. Sometimes it's appropriate, but just as often not. While such a hit-and-miss approach can be sustained indefinitely with the support of ICANN, it's not serving the end users which means ALAC isn't fulfilling its mandated role. It's also expending significant volunteer resources on efforts that have no chance of success.

At least, ALAC needs to choose its battles and realize that it can't solve all problems alone and only with domains. For a start, it needs a direct and formal relationship with the Internet Society whose main mission is inclusion and access. (As a head start to this, many ALSs are ISOC chapters). ALAC could also apply for ICANN project funding to research and survey appropriate groups to know what the-world-at-large needs from ICANN-At-Large.

ALAC's being hyper-focused on the end-user first and foremost will demand a substantial change in priorities and outputs. It will demand ALAC members who filter every resolution, every statement for relevance to end-users only. That won't be an easy transition. But it's long overdue.

- Evan