Comment on Proposed Implementation Plan for Synchronized IDN ccTLDs

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I share Hong Xue's observation that we should not have come to this
point in the IDN ccTLD FastTrack implementation, as these issues have
been communicated to ICANN, at the highest level, directly, on many
prior occasions.

I also share the observations of Hualin Qian and Shian-Shyong Tseng
that the IDN implementation should address users' needs, not create
new problems, and the caution that delay will affect, has already
affected, ICANN's fundamental goal expressed as "One World, One
Internet, Everyone Connected", and, coincidentally, that the CDNC/JET
work from 2000 to the present, is fundamental to the correct solution
of the central problem.

I also share the observations of John Klensin, each and every one of
them, though my phrasing of issue 4, "Internationalization is a
complicated business" (and one I've been professionally engaged with
since 1987 doing operating system internationalization at X/Open, Sun,
Hewlett-Packard, and the Open Software Foundation) I would place the
single repertoire problem among the initial causes of complexity,
rather than refer obliquely to the UTC's "Han Unification". Nor would
I overlook the fundamental mistake of problem domain, which results in
treating a DNS label separator as sentence punctuation, possessed of a
transitive directionality property, allowing directionality to leak
from between adjacent labels, another inherent defect in the UTC's
contribution in the area of directionality.

Finally, I share the observations of Patrik Fältström.

My technical comments are submitted separately, in a multi-authored
technical statement.

My policy comments are my personal comments.

We are addressing a problem which arose in error.

The one-script-per position was a mistake.

A process which allowed an Anglophone advocate from a no-indigenous
languages state to create a policy with a limitation on scripts,
Indic, Han, etc., was a process in error.

The inability to fix this over the entire life of the IDN process is
an error, and the unwillingness to review error is something which
should be part of the "Transparency and Accountability" review of
ICANN as an institution.

The stakes are high. Not screwing up, not managing the already
existing divergence between the root systems, is of fundamental
institutional, and technological importance.

The process which lead up to Nairobi 19, and subsequent, is obscurant,
rather than transparent.

If obscurantism, risk-denial, and business as usual remain the
institutional tools for problem solving we must accept that these
values are not universally shared, and that other institutional tools
for problem solving are available.

Eric Brunner-Williams
in a personal capacity, though of course CORE has an interest in the
institutional, and implementation issues.