Re: [soac-newgtldapsup-wg] A modest proposal

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 10/15/10 9:35 AM, Elaine Pruis wrote:
> ...
>
> " We propose a couple of applications in some kind of public
> "linguistic" interest so that more languages are benefited by the
> current new gTLD round."
>
> In what way does the ccTLD fast track for IDNs not fulfill this need?
Thank you for your question and the thought behind it.

The ccTLD IDN FT contains the unfortunate "one script per" 
restriction, which may be retained until the ccTLD IDN PDP is complete.
Therefore, to pick a script example that is topical with the 5.2 -> 
6.0 delta of Unicode, the Tai Lue language, spoken by about 670,000 
people in South East Asia (250,000 people in China, 200,000 in Burma, 
134,000 in Thailand, and 5,000 in Vietnam) and similar to other Tai 
languages, won't be available as a script for any top-level name space 
for at least as long as the ccTLD IDN PDP takes to complete.
There are nearly 300 living languages in daily use by the peoples who 
reside in, or in part, within the territorial jurisdiction of the PRC. 
The addition of Standard Mandarin to the IANA root is a welcome 
change, but hardly complete.
Similarly, while Hindi in Devanagari script has Constitutional status 
in India, and will be a welcome change to the IANA root when it too is 
present in that name space, there are 11 scripts used by government in 
India for official purposes, expressing 22 distinct languages.
The ccTLD fast track for IDNs amounts to the promotion of a single 
non-Latin script and the associated language(s) in a plural state, to 
the detriment of all other languages using any other scripts. This is 
an active harm to plural societies caused by deliberate policy, and 
one that we should avoid, and that the ccNSO already regrets having made.
The "modest proposal" allows for any script and associate language to 
be used for a name space, under the appropriate top-level L2R or R2L 
directionality unbrella, at some cost less than the one-time $185,000 
per application, and the associated recurring operational expenses, 
particularly those that arise from contractual compliance obligations.
Eric