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

["Sophia B" <sophiabekele@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Avri,

Thanks for sharing this.  It was interesting.


> 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.


First of all, allow me to kindly say that the three (3) different reasons
stated separately are in fact one and the same.  So basically, the
peoples concern is valid, they are mostly worried about cosmetics vs.
substance of the global issues we are trying to find resolve for.

Therefore, I tend to agree with Edmond and his point of view than that of
Werner.  Werner's opinion is a bit premature and is based on the assumption
that in cctld, the country-code IDN will automatically be GIVEN to the
current cctld of that country.  So far there is no policy of this nature,
therefore, there is a good chance that the operator of IDN cctld may end up
being someone who is not the existing cctld operator.  As such, my sources
tell me that the original Katoh-IDN commitee after 1 year of study by a
panel far ORE international in character than the current GNSO expert group
actually recommended to ICANN BOARD (its in archives) 3 years ago that the
IDN cctld should NOT AUTOMATICALLY go to existing cctld. In fact maybe
bidded out for etc.

Myself, I am of the view that the whole analogy as stated
attempts to bypass current ICANN's efforts to trying to implement IDNs at
the root and using ascii aliasing expediently, to support the already
tried and true failiuer of DNAMES at a policy level!

Regarding devise communication issues implication that a full UNICODE cannot
be used on the devise, is a superficial and perhaps false argument:  Here is
why:

a) If you do allow a fallback mechanism, like Werner suggested, these device
manufactures will NEVER change or very slowly.
If your mission is to have all devices capable of inputting IDN TLDs then
one should not have English fallback
mechanisms, PERIOD, so the device manufactures are incentivised to change
b) The whole point of IDN was to quickly to remove English barrier.
c) IE7 finally supported IDNA not because of ICANN etc. but because the
other browser manufactures supported it.
d) Moreover these devices are limited and in most cases the IDN ethnic poor
we were serving do not own them anyway,
and if we force them to support UNicode now, by the time they have the money
to own them, the support will be there.

I strongly hope the group could see this view and question the damage that
Dname or its finance translation of 'aliasing' would bring.  BTW, I am still
at a loss on the interchangeability of ''DNAME' and 'aliasing'.  They seem
to be "confusingly similar' ascii strings;)  Maybe we should be thinking to
use them as 'test' strings in the PDP for 'confusingly similar'!

Best;)
Sophia


On 23/02/07, Avri Doria <avri@xxxxxxx> 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.