[gnso-idng] A summary of assertions and open questions

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There are some assertions, listed here with their authors. I'm only 
listing those which seem to be prospective of some action, not those 
of the form "something will delay everything" or "harms will result", 
as these may be best summarized by their authors.
A0. "no disadvantage" Council language is still operative. Asserted by 
Chuck.
A1. root scaling is not an issue, where the size of whatever we're 
looking at is about the same size as the ccTLD IDN FT, that is, 40, 
plus or minus. Asserted by me.
A2. trademark protection is not an issue, or not nearly as 
controlling, for IDNs generally. Asserted by Steve.
A3. economic analysis and necessity. no assertions made.

A4. security and stability is not an issue, where the characters in 
the scripts approved by Tina et al for the ccTLD IDN FT participants 
are used, or for sensible extensions to those characters (no variants, 
nothing that takes thought). Asserted by me.
A5. maleware. no assertions made.

A6. registry-registrar separation is not an issue if the existing 
regime is unchanged, that is CORE's position of record, though not 
necessarily that of any other contracted, or non-contracted party. 
Asserted by me.
Open questions, the first two by me, the third I infer, probably 
incorrectly, from Avri.
O1. is the choice of scripts dependent upon the ccTLD IDN FT choices? 
Does "no disadvantage" mean nearly simultaneous offerings of the same 
scripts, or does it mean nearly simultaneous choices?
02. is the choice of operators open? Does "no disadvantage" mean 
nearly simultaneous selection of operators without pre-condition, or 
does it mean selection of operators within the set of existing, gTLD 
and ccTLD operators? If CNNIC offers to operate the IDN GTLD .arab 
(pretend I wrote that in Arabic without screwing up my idiot mailer), 
is it any different from CORE offering to operate .random (in Hindi) 
or Verisign offering to operate .com (in Chinese)?
This is slightly weaker than Edmond's Track B, which restricts the set 
of operators to current gTLD operators, and possibly the set of 
strings to reasonable equivalents in some limited number of scripts.
03. how do "no disadvantage" and "competition" and "diversity" work?


The validity of assumption #0 could be checked by the Council.
The validity of assumption #1 could be checked by asking the RSAC.
The validity of assumption #2 could be checked at the Council level.
The validity of assumption #4 could be checked by Tina et al for any 
set of characters and scripts anyone cares to ask to be checked.
The validity of assumption #6 could be checked by comparison of the 
time-lines for changes to the current separation regime, if any, and a 
maximum "no disadvantage" delay from the entry of the ccTLD IDN FT set 
and the entry of any gTLD IDN FT set.
Assumptions #3 and #5 remain poorly defined, and of course open 
questions are just that, open.
The same time this week works for me for call time.

Eric