Re: [gnso-idng] Draft on String Similarity

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gomes, Chuck wrote:
> The GNSO new gTLD recommendations approved by the Board and hence the 
> implementation in the DAG already include meaning so it would require a 
> policy change to exclude meaning.  


I wonder if this was mentioned to the rep from the Arab League at the
IGF, who presumably was thinking of both "arab-in-latin-script" and
"arab-in-arabic-script".

Maybe they'll consider going back to the iso3166-MA route.

A problem with attempting to determine the "probability of user
confusion" is that we don't, at present, other than the evaluator(s)
not being arbitrarily stupid (and I spent an hour with the KPMG guy
designing the process and I think it is not only possible, but
probable), have a way of knowing that it is the Arab League which is
applying for "arab-in-latin-script" and "arab-in-arabic-script".

It is just plain weird, cracked even, to think that Egypt will
eventually have .eg, .egypt (in latin) and .egypt (in arabic), and
maybe even .egg, and the city of Cairo will have to settle for one of
latin, or arabic, but not both.

This whole problem goes away if we stick with visual similarity, as
then we're just talking about character variants, which is purely an
IDN problem, in which case we don't need the evaluation process to
"discover" that applications A and B are brought by the same applicant.

The .bz vs .biz caper was good clean fun in comparison to what we may
be looking at, and people I used to think were rational beings are now
trying to sell a-label-kills-an-entire-taxonomy theories of
non-confusability and/or necessary-diversity-utility tests for new gTLDs.

Seriously, what problem are we trying to solve? Fat fingers and typos,
the retail cops-and-robbers problem or business plans that are so thin
that actual competition will kill them? We know after 10 years that
"com" was not harmed by "biz", which presumably "mean" the same damn
thing -- six bucks. Could "kom" or "comm" or ... actually harm "com"?
Other than in the three independent markets, the China root market,
and the Israel and Korea browser hack markets, "com" is in a
greenfield. If, after Verisign expresses its preference for "com" in a
script, aren't we really done?

Do we particularly care if some idiots want to go head-to-head with
Verisign with some script equivalent to "kom" or "comm"? If Google
sprinkles monitary pixie dust on them, as they do for
this-name-is-in-com.co (Columbia, NeuStar's turnabout on the bz/biz
exploit), they may have a business, but even so, the immediate harm
they present is waste of a unit of evaluation (argued by some to be
infinite, though whether it is ment delay or capacity may be an
interpretation question), a unit of root zone delegation (also argued
by some, NOT me, to be infinite), and the very thin set of claims that
it will harm users more than they are harmed by not recalling if NANOG
is in .com or in .net, harm Verisign's brand, or harm ICANN's reputation.

And to be off-topic and informational, today a non-binding referendum
is taking place in Catalonia, on the question of independence. At some
point in the distant future we (the GNSO) may need a means to
transition a g to a cc.

Eric