Re: [alac] IDNs

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 27 Mar 2003 03:55:02 +0800, you wrote:

>For example, if I registered a domain ^ziyou(meaning liberty in Chinese 
>simplified script).com^, any other should not be able to register ^ziyou(in 
>Japanese variant)^ or ^ziyou (in Korean variant)^. That script (or we call it 
>word) has been labelled to the Chinese simplified characters, and therefore 
>excluded any potential conflicting name.

This approach seems reasonable, but I would like to understand better how it
works. For example - who is going to develop the variant tables for each
language, and who is going to create the cross-language variant tables (such
as the one that is needed to do what you are talking about)? I imagine that
it might be left to common work between the ccTLDs of each geographical
area, but I would like to ensure that, if possible, gTLDs adopt the same
tables that are adopted by the ccTLDs, so that confusion for consumers is
reduced, and that we use the better knowledge ccTLDs have of their own
languages also at the gTLD level.

>For the first problem, I am a little reservation, and need more time to think 
>about it. Say some one has registered ^liberte.com^, I do not understand why 
>he should enjoy priority to register any IDN with the same meaning. For 
>example, ~~ziyou.com~~ , it is completely different from ~~liberte.com~~and I 
>cannot see likelihood of confusion;

No, of course I was referring to typographical similarity, not to semantical
one. I think that confusion in Western European languages might derive from
the exactly opposite problem than in CJK - from similarity in appearance,
not just in meaning.

So I think that, if the French decide to consider e, é (e-acute) and è
(e-grave) equivalent, then the owner of liberte.com should have priority
over libertè.com, liberté.com, libèrtè.com and other similar variants, or
even get to block them (just as, in the case you were mentioning, you are
going to do with semantical equivalents in CJK), but of course he should not
have any right on frèèdom.com or on the word "freedom" in other languages.

And of course this raises the problem of which language to use to calculate
variants of each existing ASCII domain name. (Maybe it should be an opt-in
thing - registrants have, say, one month of time to raise their hand and say
that they want to associate their domain to a given language and thus block
the resulting variants for that language.)

for European languages originated from 
>Latin, the situation might be different. Surely if what he registered is a 
>well known mark, rather than a generic term, question of translation or 
>transliteration defined in Paris Convention may be implied.

This is yet another problem - for example, I don't have any clue whether
owners of Chinese or Japanese trademarks actually protect the Romanized
version too.
-- 
vb.               [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<------
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