RE: [gnso-idn-wg] Passing on a request for aliasing of IDNs

["Edmon Chung" <edmon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think this thread raises a good point, and I generally agree in the direction 
it tries to solve an important issue for IDN TLDs.  Nevertheless, it could 
potentially be complicated... For example I immediately think of 2 further 
considerations:

1. making sure we do not prejudice against existing ASCII TLDs whose intent may 
have been to opt for a particular IDN TLD, but because it was not available at 
the moment chose an ASCII string.  I.e. if new IDN applications are given the 
capability to choose an ASCII alias, the same (or the reverse) should probably 
be extended to ASCII TLDs (of course where appropriate).

2. if a particular TLD is used as an "alias" how would icann fees look like?... 
furthermore, we are talking about 1 particular alias, but what about 2 aliases 
for example in the case of Chinese (as William earlier mentioned about Trad and 
Simp Chinese)... in this case it would be 3 TLDs.  Would that then be 
allowed?... and what would the icann fees be?... We could take this further, 
e.g. an Indic application may want to have 40 aliases for each Indic language 
so that as Indians travel around India they are not limited (this may be a bit 
of a stretch, but still, the point is "one" alias for "one" purpose of the 
"transportability" issue may be problematic and have other types of scalability 
issues.  (that being said I am not against it :-))

On Werner's point, I find that hard to "enforce".  In fact I don't necessarily 
agree either as it might not work well for Chinese for example.  Translation in 
many cases would likely be more desired than a transliteration (and there is no 
universal standard transliteration either, which is rather typical of Asian 
languages I believe)

Edmon




> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-gnso-idn-wg@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-gnso-idn-wg@xxxxxxxxx] On
> Behalf Of Werner Staub (CORE)
> Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2007 7:22 AM
> To: Avri Doria
> Cc: gnso-idn-wg@xxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [gnso-idn-wg] Passing on a request for aliasing of IDNs
> 
> Hi Avri,
> 
> Indeed, the more we look at IDN the more it becomes clear that an IDN
> TLD needs a fallback alias in ASCII. The xn-- of course is not a
> solution for that, it must be an intuitive fallback alias.
> 
> In the case of ccTLD-related IDN TLDs, the original ascii ccTLD is
> available for that purpose.
> 
> But for the sake of consistency, it would be good to have an assumption
> that a TLD requiring a special input method would be mapped to a low-use
> letter-digit-hyphen (LDH) alias TLD. One guideline could be that the LDH
> alias would be written in an established transcription method for the
> respective language, or an established internationally understood
> equivalent name.
> 
> The need for an LDH alias is also apparent for diacritic-based IDNs as
> the required diacritics are not available on all the devices.
> Suppose an Italian TLD ".libertÃ" were launched. It would then not be
> very intuitive to have to use ".xn--libert-nta" when it is not possible
> to type the "Ã" with a grave accent. So the logical alias is .liberta.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Werner
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Avri Doria wrote:
> > hi,
> >
> > I know this issue really isn't on the table yet, but I want to pass on
> > the content of an issue that several people passed on to me in Geneva
> > last week at the IGF consultations.  I got essentially the same request
> > from 2 native Arabic speakers and 1 native Chinese speaker.  The request
> > surprised me as I had not given it consideration, but after several
> > hours of conversations, it starts to make sense.
> >
> > The request was that IDN always be established with an unencoded ascii
> > alias (staying out of the implementation details).  I was given 3 basic
> > reasons:
> >
> > - A concern that if site or email addresses can only be accessed with an
> > IDN keyboard, then those using IDNs will essentially be cut off from the
> > rest of the internet.  I.e those without the right keyboard would not be
> > able to communicate with them.
> >
> > - A compounded concern that this would lead to greater pressures for
> > isolation and restriction of freedom of expression in certain countries.
> >
> > - A concern that when these people travelled abroad, they would be
> > unable to communicate with people back home if they did not bring their
> > national keyboards with them - i.e. it would prevent them using cyber
> > cafes, borrowing a western friend's laptop or using the ubiquitous
> > keyboard one finds at conferences etc.
> >
> > Obviously one could require them to use the xn-- encoding but this is
> > almost as bad as using IP addresses (actually IPv4 addresses might be
> > easier to use then the xn-- encoding - IPv6 might be a challenge)
> >
> > In any case I felt I should pass this concern on to this group.
> >
> > a.
> >
> 
> 
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