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

["Sophia B" <sophiabekele@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Avri,

Thanks for sharing this with us. I think it is interesting as well.


> 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.
However, first of all, allow me to kindly say that the three (3) differnet
reasons you gave above are one and the same.  So basically, these people
while there concern is valid, are worried mostly about cosmetics vs.
substance of the global issues we are trying to resolve.

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 soemone who is not the existing cctld operator.    My sources
substanciate this by telling me that the origianl Katoh-IDN commitee after 1
year of study by a panel far ORE international in character than the currnet
GNSO expert group actually recomended 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.

My personal opinion on this is, the whole analogy as stated
will bypass current ICANN's efforts to trying to get IDNs at the root and
using ascii aliasing expediently to support the already tried and true
failuer of DNAMES at a policy level, therefore a fruitless excersice r going
in circles!

Regardng devise communication issues pointed out by the respectve
persons, implying a full UNICODE can not be used on the devise, again is a
superfical argument: Here is why:
a) having the alterative 'fallback mechanism' that Werner suggested maybe
even discourage devise manifacturers from supporting future development of
IDN based devises. If the mission is to have all devices capable of
inputting IDN TLDs, then one should not have english fallback mechanisms, so
the device manufactueres are incentivised to change.
b) The whole point of IDN was to quickly remove English barrier.
cI E7 finally supported IDNA not becuase of ICANN etc. but becuase the other
browser manufactuers supported it.
d) Moreover, these devices are limited and in most cases the IDN ethnic poor
we are serving do not own them anyway, so 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 fancy transation of 'aliasing' would bring.   BTW, I am
still at a loss on the interchangebility of ''DNAME' and 'aliasing', which
has been one of "confusingly similar' ascii string for most in the group;)
Maybe, these two strings should be the 'test' we use for 'criteria'  we are
developing in GNSO policy over confusingly similar strings!

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.