[gnso-idn-wg] RE: Preparing for next week's call

["Olof Nordling" <olof.nordling@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear all,
At the last meeting, there was a request for information on the New gTLD
Committee discussions in Amsterdam regarding the gTLD string checks and the
"confusingly similar" concept. The Committee chair did summarize the
findings in emails at
http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-council/msg00186.html and
http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-council/msg00199.html .   
MP3 recordings of the full discussions on this topic can be found at
http://gnso.icann.org/calendar/index-2006.html#aug and are named "29 August
part 2" and "30 August part 1" for those that want the full story.

In the discussions, the notion of "confusingly similar" as grounds for
challenge/rejection of a gTLD string application, was agreed upon for visual
similarity of strings. An example mentioned was that .c0m would be seen as
"confusingly similar" to .com. In contrast to this, conceptual similarity
was not seen as covered by "confusingly similar", meaning that .jobs would
not preempt the launch of, for example .labor (nor would the existing
operator of .jobs have any priority rights to .labor). This reasoning was
carried over to translations of the concept to other languages, with
examples like .arbeit (in German) that would not be "confusingly similar" to
.jobs. In analogy, for IDN gTLDs, .работа (in Russian) would not be
"confusingly similar" to .jobs.

Hope this helps as background information for our work.

Best regards
Olof

-----Original Message-----
From: Olof Nordling [mailto:olof.nordling@xxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 12:20 PM
To: 'gnso-idn-wg@xxxxxxxxx'
Subject: Preparing for next week's call

Dear all,

Following-up on the paired conference calls 23 January; the MP3 recordings
are posted on the website, the transcripts are being posted right now and
the overview summary will be mailed with the agenda for next call.

As to reading material for the paired conference calls 30 January, the New
gTLD PDP Draft Final Report and the IDN Issues Report can be found at
http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/GNSO-PDP-Dec05-FR-14Nov06.pdf  and
http://gnso.icann.org/issues/idn-tlds/issues-report-02aug06.htm ,
respectively. Key sections of both are covered in "Document excerpts for the
IDN WG" at http://gnso.icann.org/issues/idn-tlds/idn_wg_readers_digest.pdf .
A slide presentation of the first (Bruce's report in Sao Paulo) can be found
at http://www.gnso.icann.org/correspondence/tonkin-gtld-sp-04dec06.pdf  and
a slide set on the second is attached to this mail.

Allow me also to remind you to send comments to the list regarding the
remaining topics 4-7 from the last call ;-).

Very best regards
Olof

-------------------------------- 
Olof Nordling 
Manager, Policy Development Coordination 
ICANN 
6 Rond Point Schuman, Bt.5 
B-1040 Brussels, Belgium 
Tel.: +32.2.234 7872
www.icann.org