Response to Mark Golan

["Yoav Keren" <yoav@xxxxxxxx>]

We are very glad to hear that Mark Golan and his group are very
supportive of the current petition to form the IDNgTLD constituency.

 

However, we respond to one Mark Golan's recent false charges against our
company - Domain The Net. First it would be helpful if Mark Golan
identifies himself and the party he says he represents. The only Mark
Golan we know is the Vice President of CISCO.

 

I am for the record the CEO of Domain The Net and have attended ICANN
meetings since 2000 and have served on a number of key ICANN IDN
committees and other GNSO committees for several years - IDN President's
Advisory Committee (3 years ago), GNSO IDN Working group (2 years ago),
representing my company, and also 3 years ago I was appointed by
Israel's Communication ministry as the representative for Hebrew IDNs in
ICANN committees. Besides attending the general ICANN meetings, I have
participated in hundreds of midnight international con calls to help
develop hundreds of pages of ICANN policy over the years. Similarly I
have helped and worked with other international agencies that have from
time to time shown interest in the IDN cause - notably ITU and the
United Nations - as a speaker and organizer.

 

Accusing our company in misleading Internet users is a pure slander. We
have never suggested the solution we are providing is a part of the
ICANN root. What we provide is completely legal worldwide, and ICANN's
CEO has acknowledged as much in his written statements within the last
triennial Strategy Report to the US Department of Commerce. At the same
time in our different activities at ICANN, ITU, etc. we always talked
bluntly and straightforward about our solution, and were those calling
for an ICANN process that will allow us to participate so that our IDNs
would be included in the root. Like us, many other active parties from
all around the world including China, Korea, Russia, Africa, and Arab
countries that implemented local IDNs have called for the same. In fact,
when we started our efforts ICANN and the ICANN community was against
IDNs, and the combined efforts of all these parties in the different
organizations have concluded in the need for IDNs becoming a consensus. 

The goal of all these parties including our company was always to
provide a solution to those for whom English is a barrier for the use of
the Internet. In Israel this applies mainly to lower socio-economic
classes, elder people and youngsters. In addition we see the need for
Hebrew domain names as part of the preservation and revival of the
Hebrew language.    

 

It is widely acknowledged that if not for the continued decade-long
activism of myself, my company and others like us - for example the
Regtime group on behalf of the Russian script that Mark also vilifies
and the Chinese governmental groups - to push for IDNs with any global
entity, ICANN would not be at the current stage of contemplating actual
IDN deployment. 

 

While in the absence of ICANN's long disinterest starting with its
well-known outright rejection of IDNs back in 1999, we have, like many
other groups, gone ahead and operated domain name systems that by now
work fully or almost fully within the countries where the script is
mainly used. Notably in Israel which is the only country that uses
Hebrew, we have had for some time now almost 100% resolution/usability
within the borders - both on ISP Internet and on the mobile
Internet/phones. We provide a plug-in that works outside. In China
several different IDN gTLDs have been operated by the government
agencies for at least 5 years and have been commercially available and
sanctioned by Ministerial law - including Chinese TLDs that can be
loosely interpreted to mean .com, .net, .gov and .org. Essentially 100%
local resolution exists for all of its now 350 million Internet users.
Again outside China is supplemented by plug-in resolution. (In fact if
"Mark" or his group have attended the last 3 ICANN meetings he/they may
have noted that CNNIC pays for a booth under ICANN-sanction that
actually promotes the commercial availability of these Chinese.Chinese
IDNs). Very similar situations with high levels of local usability exist
in other places like Korea and Bulgaria too without the need of
plug-ins. This is also true in some small Arabic countries and other
countries have deployments with lesser levels of easy usability. 

 

While none of these are currently ICANN approved, most of such parties
have been diligently participating in the new ICANN gTLD process for at
least the past 3 years. Three years ago at the outset of policy making
on the to-be-launched new IDN gTLD deployment process (now in its 3rd
year) it was widely agreed by ICANN and the GNSO council (all meetings
are archived and available as recordings and final policy papers

published) that all such parties that had launched ahead of ICANN during
its multi-year absence in moving IDNs forward should be allowed to
participate and apply for the TLDs they may have launched on an equal
basis toward an eventual ICANN deployment of IDNs. Clearly Mark has
never read or seen this and is not well-informed. In fact the current
application for the IDNgTLD constituency was originally suggested by
several GNSO Council members (including the head) to us and others like
Regtime who are also independent operators of IDN registries. The timing
of such new constituency creation was delayed to fit in with the
then-planned GNSO wide reform effort of today.

 

In summary, one would think that Mark Golan's comments are false and at
best very ill-informed and in line with his efforts thus far to clarify
who and what the people he claims to represent are.

 

 

Yoav Keren

CEO

 

Domain The Net Technologies Ltd.

81 Sokolov st.      Tel:  +972-3-7600500

Ramat Hasharon   Fax: +972-3-7600505

Israel 47238

 

 

 







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