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 <mailto: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.