Re: [alac] IDN document, draft 4

[Wendy Seltzer <wendy@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

As an English-speaking user, I'm poorly placed to comment on this, since my 
native experience is with the script that is currently in use, but with 
that large cube of salt, I disagree with much of its slant.

Overall, I think it's unhelpful to reinforce the notion that "squatters" 
are the most pressing concern about domain names.  Avoidance of confusion 
is valuable, but much confusion is a matter of initial expectations, and I 
just don't know enough about all the languages' use of variant scripts to 
know how likely confusion is.   Some languages may give different, equally 
valid, meanings to two variants that look alike to untrained eyes; avoiding 
confusion in one script may deprive another of useful domain names.   For 
that reason, your point 3 seems impossible to define uniformly, and thus 
the paragraphs that follow from it utopian.

Cultural and political respect is important, but I would not say it's more 
important than technical function, which should always be ICANN's paramount 
concern.  Again, I'm not sure whether others feel that multiplication of 
scripts is among ICANN's most pressing concerns.  To me, it isn't.  I'd 
much rather see a minimal ICANN helping to oversee a technically well-run 
and competitive Internet, than a body with larger scope trying to 
everything proposed here.

I'm not sure why it's critical that all gTLDs be translated.  Ten years 
down the road, I don't think it would be unrealistic to see (finally) a 
profusion of TLDs, in which choice could be enriched by their offering 
different options.  It's entirely possible -- and not necessarily a bad 
thing -- that some wouldn't use ASCII script and would therefore be 
difficult to type on a U.S. keyboard.  To me, the strongest support for 
translatability would be a policy that all domains should be able to 
interconnect easily with all others.  Have we ever articulated such a policy?

I know the vision that domain names should be merely labels, not imbued 
with semantic meaning, is equally utopian, but it's my utopia :)

Thanks.  Sorry for not commenting earlier.
--Wendy

At 11:42 AM 12/13/2004 +0100, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> On request by Hong, added indication that testbed registrants should be
> asked for confirmation if testbed registrations are kept, or compensated
> if testbed registrations are discarded.

--
Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@xxxxxxxxxxx
Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html
Chilling Effects: http://www.chillingeffects.org/