Re: [soac-newgtldapsup-wg] TR: bundling

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Richard,

My view is that the framework that Peter and Paul first approached 
this problem (or told Edmon and I to piss off), that a second string 
is a second application, was poorly informed.
Whether we blame the Unicode Consortium, or the IETF, or Chris Despain 
(who's learned since) for the one-script-per rule of the ccTLD IDN FT, 
or Peter and Paul (now Rod, who's views are not known to me), the 
notion that a competent application for a two character string for 
Chinese users must pay two (best case) to four (worst case) times any 
applicant for a Latin Script label amounts to an extra cost for 
Chinese serving applicants.
The situation is even graver in the Indian Sub-Continent, where one 
state (India) alone has 11 official scripts and 22 official languages, 
and all of the adjacent states have two or more official scripts and 
two or more official languages.
Peter and Paul thought that Edmon and I were trying to cheat them 
(Peter and Paul) out of their deserved revenue. I don't know if 
Peter's changed his views, but it was pretty disconcerting at the 
Delhi meeting to be told we were just a bunch of crooks looking to 
cheat ICANN.
<brave_hat="on">
I _assert_ that an application is not for a string, but for the 
namespace resources that will serve, and not harm, the registrants and 
the users of their domain registrations.
An application by a community, or an institution serving a community, 
which uses two or more linguistically distinct identifiers, such as a 
pan-Indian "reproductive health" in the Indian Sub-Continent, is not 
complete if the request is only for the resource in Standard Hindi in 
Devanagari script. The _sectarian_ preference for Hindi speakers over 
all others would _harm_ the the registrants and the users of their 
domain registrations.
In contrast, an application for namespace resources sufficient to meet 
the needs of investment banking, polo clubs, law and foreign 
investment would not be incomplete if the requested resources was for 
a single string in Standard Hindi in Devanagari script and a single 
string in UK English in Latin Script.. There would be no harm.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India#Official_languages

As our charter is need, which is both material and linguistic, we can 
inform the Board that access to basic health and literacy in plural 
societies is remarkably different from Verisign trying to sew up all 
the ways to say ".com".
It may make sense to "bundle" two or more applications that share some 
property, such as being made using the same resources (front or back), 
which _may_ take the form of two or more applications for similar 
strings, but that is ICANN's general problem in recognizing two or 
more applications have some shared property, possibly allowing a 
savings to be identified.
But this is distinct from the special case of material need and 
linguistic plurality among the communities for which service is to be 
delivered without harming them, without imposing a language-loss 
policy because the fee the distant monolinguals charge is too great to 
pay.
<brave_hat="off">

I know that is longer than "+1". "Bundling" is outside of our scope. 
Finding "plurality of language coupled with need" is within our scope.
Eric