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

["Yoav Keren" <yoav@xxxxxxxx>]

Avri, Werner, Edmon, Sophia, all,

 

I would first like to express my support in the views of Edmon and
Sophia.

 

Furthermore, I would like to re-visit the core issues that troubled
those people that addressed Avri. I generally think that they are wrong
in their fears and in there views, and I'll explain why:

1.      IDNs have been created to remove the language barrier for those
the English/ASCII script creates a barrier to use the Internet. The
whole idea of IDNs is to solve LOCAL community barriers, from the
language/script side. They were not intended and would not be able to
solve local government censorship. Isolation of local Internet
communities and restriction of freedom of speech already exists these
days in several countries, and is controlled by governments through
different technical methods including the monitoring of email
communication, the blocking of IP addresses and domain names, etc. These
methods will continue to exist after IDNs are launched. IDNs are not
intended to solve this problem, not would it matter or solve the problem
if they are aliased to an ASCII TLD.
2.      Furthermore, the use of IDNs would enable more people in the
world to be exposed and enjoy the enormous possibilities of the
Internet. IDNs would certainly reduce the barrier for local/language
communities that currently do not use the Internet. I believe the
existence of IDNs will not affect the policy of those certain
governments and they might continue in their censorship. But if those
communities will be relieved from the language barrier, with time they
will be more and more exposed to the goods of the Internet, and the
censorship would certainly become weaker and weaker. One of the main
strengths of the Internet is in the fact it allows easy and cheap
communication among its users - and I believe that even if this
communication would be made within censored communities - on the long
run these communities would be far better off regarding freedom of
speech, new ideas, knowledge, etc. 
3.      About the email issues - I would first like to remind all of us
that we are currently talking about Internationalized Domain Names.
Although I believe that one of the immediate and most important
applications would be IEAs (Internationalized Email Addresses) their
full implementation is more complicated (from the technical side), and
it would take time till email software vendors would develop supporting
versions, and some more time till ISPs and email service suppliers would
implement it. 
4.      IEAs are certainly intended for use within local/language
communities. It is clear that communication using IEAs from people of
that community traveling or leaving abroad would need special measures.
Yet, this could be simply solved in many ways; one is for example - a
web-based IEA solution that also offers a web-based keyboard in the
designated language. Such services are actually available today for the
typing of email content in local languages without having IDNs and IEAs
implemented yet. 
5.      I do not believe that IEA's should or would replace the use of
ascii email addresses. Nor would IDNs replace the use of adcii domain
names. It is to my belief that those that English is a barrier to them,
would use IEAs nd IDNs, and those from the local communities that
English is not a barrier to them would use both. The fact that IEAs and
IDNs would exist without having an alias in ascii, has nothing to do to
whether those people will or can communicate with people outside of
their community using English (English in general - the email address is
just a part of it). English would probably continue to be the common
international communication language - also in domain names and email
addresses, while other languages will be used in IDNs and IEAs for local
communication in local/language communities. 
6.      Regarding IDN ccTLDs - Sophia stated that IDN ccTLDs should not
be automatically given to current ccTLD registries. And I would like to
add - who said we must have IDN ccTLDs at all? I believe that if we are
able to implement one to a few gTLDs in each relevant non-ascii
language/script it would be more than enough, and I am not sure whether
going on an IDN ccTLD path would not bring us to a point where we have
hundreds of IDN ccTLDs in each language, which will expand the name
space to enormous levels, while creating many new problems - political
(think about the .il - Israel's extension in Farsi - who will get it?
The Iranians?!?! Israelis?!?! ...), legal, etc..

                                                                     

To summarize, I believe that:

- Ascii aliases are not needed. 

- IDN TLDs should not be automatically given to anyone. Process should
be open and free. 

 

Best,

 

Yoav

 

 

________________________________

From: owner-gnso-idn-wg@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-gnso-idn-wg@xxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Sophia B
Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2007 9:11 PM
To: Avri Doria
Cc: gnso-idn-wg@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [gnso-idn-wg] Passing on a request for aliasing of IDNs

 

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.