RE: [ssac-gnso-irdwg] Actions/Discussion Points: 10 May Meeting

["Metalitz, Steven" <met@xxxxxxx>]

May I offer a few observations:

(1)  Who is the WHOIS user?  This is a good question that ICANN has
never succeeded in answering systematically. A good deal of research is
reflected in some of the links at
http://gnso.icann.org/issues/whois-privacy/
<http://gnso.icann.org/issues/whois-privacy/>   (note especially the
Whois Task Force interim reports from 2002 and the Montreal workshop in
2004) but it does not provide a clear answer.  Even considering just
those who use Whois for its original purpose of identifying/contacting
someone responsible for an Internet resource, this can still take many
different forms (of which law enforcement and IPR uses are examples, but
so are consumers, anti-phishing, parents, etc. etc.).  Perhaps a better
way to approach it is in terms of this purpose: what solution will best
advance this identification and contactability? 

 

(2)     We do know that, up till now, the Whois user in the gTLD
environment (at least) has had to make use of Whois in ASCII.  Of course
the demographics of the Whois user population will change with the
introduction of IDNs but the ASCII-capable segment of that population is
likely to predominate well into the future.  

 

(3)  The value of transliteration will vary depending on the data
element involved. Consider, for example, the mailing address of the
domain name registrant (Registered Name Holder in ICANN gTLD parlance).
Let's assume that this address is in Russia on a street that is
transliterated as Novy Mir.  If an ASCII-capable Whois user cannot read
Cyrillic characters, then rendering this street name in Cyrillic
characters in Whois will not assist the user in contacting the
registrant.  (It may assist this user for other purposes.) Translating
this street name into English ("new world") or French ("nouveau monde")
or some other language will not assist this user, because almost no one
in  Russia would call that street by that name nor would it appear on
maps in that way.  Transliteration, on the other hand, could be useful
to this ASCII-capable user, because romanized maps are more often
available, information about the street name could be transmitted orally
to a Russian speaker, etc.  This is a simple but I hope helpful example
of a case where translation would not be more useful to many users than
transliteration, and I think this would often be the case, at least for
this data element.  

 

(4)   Certainly transliteration is inexact (any more so than
translation?) but I note there are ISO standards for transliterating
many scripts into Roman characters ( see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_transliterations
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_transliterations> ) .


 

Steve Metalitz


________________________________

From: owner-ssac-gnso-irdwg@xxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-ssac-gnso-irdwg@xxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Steve Sheng
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 2:21 PM
To: Jiankang YAO; Ird
Subject: Re: [ssac-gnso-irdwg] Actions/Discussion Points: 10 May Meeting


Hi Jiankang and all,  

  Good point! I would think usage by regular users should be one of the
primary reasons we discuss about different models. If we think from the
user's perspective, transliteration would be of limited use for them.
Translation is the best in this case, but it is expensive. Any middle
ground we can think of? 

Warmly, 
Steve


On 5/19/10 3:00 AM, "Jiankang YAO" <yaojk@xxxxxxxx> wrote:



        
         
        >Edmon noted that a more important question to address is what
will the
        >purpose or use of the transliterated information. He emphasized
that if we could
        >determine who will use the information then we could decide how
the transliteration
        >could work.
         
        I agree with Edmon that we should know that who will be the
customers of the transliterated information.
         
        we should know why we do it and any benefits.
         
        If the customers are the public users, I think that many user
will not know the other language's transliterated information.
         
        for example, I am chinese and know chinese and english, If i
check some domain name information registered in Arabic characters
         in Sadi Arab and the domain names whois information are
transliterated, I don't know Arabic and the transliterated information.
        so this transliterated information is no use to me.
         
        the persontage of people who know english is larger than the
persontage of people who know the transliterated information of other
language instead of native language. 
         
        if the customers are the big organziations such as FBI, the
transliterated information is useful to them because they have enough
resource to decode the transliterated information. of course, even the
domain name information is not the transliterated information, they can
also decode it.
         
        if doing it without customers oriented, we may fall in "do it
just because we want to do it " even the ascii transliterated
information is no use to most of the public.
         
         
        Jiankang Yao
        CNNIC
         
         
         
        

                
                ----- Original Message ----- 
                 
                From:  Julie  Hedlund <mailto:julie.hedlund@xxxxxxxxx>  
                 
                To: ssac-gnso-irdwg@xxxxxxxxx 
                 
                Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 11:22 PM
                 
                Subject: [ssac-gnso-irdwg] Actions/Discussion  Points:
10 May Meeting
                 
                
                Dear IRD-WG members,
                
                Below and in the attached  document are the action items
and main discussion points for the 10 May 2010  meeting of the IRD-WG.
These also are on the wiki at:
https://st.icann.org/int-reg-data-wg/index.cgi?internationalized_registr
ation_data_working_group.    Please let me know if you have any changes
or questions.   
                
                Our next meeting is scheduled for Monday, 24 May at 1900
UTC,  12:00 PDT, 15:00 EDT, 20:00 London, 21:00 CEST, 03:00 Beijing,
04:00 Kyoto,  07:00 NZDT (Tues 25.05)
                
                Best regards,
                
                Julie
                
                Julie  Hedlund, Director, SSAC Support
                
                IRD-WG Meeting: 10 May 2010 at 1400  UTC
                
                Attendees: Edmon Chung, Rafik Dammak, Jim Galvin, Jeremy
Hitchcock, and Bob Hutchinson; from staff: Julie Hedlund, Dave
Piscitello, and  Steve Sheng. 
                
                Action Items: 1) Staff will outline a Model 4  along the
lines suggested by Jim Galvin with assistance from Jim; 2) Staff  will
develop a draft preliminary approach for Working Group consideration as
a  basis for a Public Forum in Brussels.
                
                Discussion Summary: See  attached file.