Re: [gnso-idn-wg] 4.1.5

[subbiah <subbiah@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Talking about geographical diversity in the winners of upcoming TLD 
rounds, someone correct me if the following is wrong. I believe the GAC 
has made a specific request of GNSO in recent documents to ensure that 
there is geographical diversity (or something equivalent) in the 
winners. I assume this naturally applies even more strongly when it 
comes to IDN which is needed more naturally in the non-Western areas, 
that to date have been the lion's share of ASCII gTLD winners of the 
past several years. I believe there is a good reason for GAC to have 
this sentiment - the usual reasons of fairness and leveling of the 
playing field for an asset - the Internet - which endlessly claims to be 
a global and shared-resource, if nothing else.

So if the sentiment behind my presumption about the GAC request is 
assumed to be a fair one, how then would GNSO or ICANN go about ensuring 
that outcome ? Unless we are willing to think in terms of some quota 
system, which I know is anethma to the average-ICANNer, I cannot think 
of any unforced way other than to lower the barriers of entry - not 
necessarily just for the relatively resource-less applicant but for all 
applicants. A threshold low enough that even the least wealthy applicant 
that shows sufficient minimal technical and financial capability  can 
cross and the merits of the application can be based on other differing 
criteria. The question  of what is sufficient  capability, need not 
arise from the concept of some kind of "handout" from ICANN - reduced 
application or discount (while that would be most welcome). But rather 
it can naturally, particularly in the case of IDN where the need for IDN 
matches poorer locales, arise with a recognition that many of these IDN 
regions do not expect or need the same ultra-level of expensive 
technical standards (e.g. 0.000000001% failure rates)  or financial 
requirements (salaries are far less, commensurate with lower purchase 
prices of domains) as  Western  gTLD  requirements/end-user expectations.

Is this practical ? Will it really threaten technical stability etc. ? 
The answer must be yes and no, respectively, if one considers that well 
over half the ASCII cctlds today (say over 100) are probably run at far 
less technical standard levels or financial requirement levels than a 
Verisign or a Neustar and certainly as someone else pointed out would 
not themselves meet the criteria of any present-day GNSO gTLD 
application. If these ccTLDs have been operational without in the main 
breaking down the Internet and with a reasonable level of operational 
satisfaction by the clienteles of the countries they have served for a 
decade or more, than clearly the lower technical and financial standards 
by which they operate are demonstrably a lowered bar-level. One that 
should be acceptable to ICANN and overcome any "instability" fears.

Any comeback, that "its fine for ccTLDs" but not fine for a global gTLD, 
can be shown the lie by considering the following. For an idealized IDN 
country whose people and only whose people speak that IDN language with 
an additional small minority of them living in small pockets worldwide, 
the set of Internet users who have been using that country's existing 
ASCII country-code web-sites will almost precisely match the set that 
can be expected to use any new IDN global gTLD in that IDN language. 
That is, the same people can be expected to use a future IDN gTLD as 
those that currently use the parent country's existing ASCII ccTLD. 
Existing ccTLDs that mostly will not qualify for today's GNSO gTLD 
application criteria.

For the above reasons, I think we can not only lower the bar with little 
risk of calamity but have a natural way to determine what that bar 
should be for a given IDN/region. And as a net result, we would have an 
unforced way to allow geographical diversity that the GAC wishes in TLD 
awards. This may naturally lead to future ASCII gTLDs going to the West 
more and the IDN gTLDs to the IDN regions more. This is in a way fine 
because the IDN regions will absorb more of the "riskier" TLDs, while 
the West will continue to maintain the premium levsls of operational 
standards its users seek and need. But there is an intrinsic fairness in 
that - those who can pay more take less risk, like everything else in 
this world.

Therefore I strongly support Tin Wee's proposal in this matter.

Subbiah



Alexei Sozonov wrote:

> Hello everyone again,
>
> ...reg  4.1.5.
>
> I have already said that in fact Cyrillic as a script covers several
> languages/countries. The population using Cyrillic is very large.
> Just in Russian we have more than 20 million people on the Internet
> already. In fact we are on the board of the .ru ASCII TLD committee and
> know that .ru has been operating for 10 years and now has several
> hundred thousand  domains in .ru. Even now the total cost of operating 
> this
> widely used system is probably less than US$25 000 a year, and certainly
> was less when they first started. For even a big country like Russia ,
> and running a TLD that is quite stable, operational costs are much
> lower. For comparison, an application deposit fee for ASCII gTLD
> applicant to ICANN is $50 000 per applicant. Crazy - and what for???
>
> In ICANN  insurance is mandatory - and it's reasonable
>
> So this financial levels set by ICANN for West (place were money are 
> just printed
> on paper for the rest of the world :)  in the past should not be 
> applied, if we want
> russian/other applicants participate in fare way. Its quite meaningless.
>
> Alexei
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tan Tin Wee" <tinwee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <rmohan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>; <gnso-idn-wg@xxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 2:21 PM
> Subject: Re: [gnso-idn-wg] 4.1.5
>
>
> > Regarding 4.1.5 which Ram has just initiated,
> >
> > Support for prioritizing languages/scripts for the IDN gTLD launch 
> > according to demand/need, possibly using a notion of "distance to 
> > ASCII" (for example, by giving higher priority to right-to-left 
> > scripts than to "decorated Latin")
> >
> > can be and should be upgraded to agreement, unless we want to quibble 
> > over
> > whether one can or cannot compare languages and scripts to ASCII ;-)
> >
> > However, I would like to discuss the following because I think it is 
> > worthwhile
> > to consider the issue of lower entry barriers. I had previously
> > commented about the success criteria of an IDN deployment at TLD level.
> >
> > I think it is important that we have support, if not agreement by
> > everyone, that in the forthcoming IDN gTLD outcome, we should see
> > some geographical diversity in the winners, and there should be 
> > processes
> > in place that levels the playing field for newcomers especially from 
> > developing
> > countries, for the entry barrriers to be lowered as well as for their
> > technical and operational expertise to be leveled upwards with
> > assistance programmes. I see this as only fair and right thing to do.
> > In this regard, there has to be some degree of preferential treatment
> > during this transient period at the very least. I would like to propose:
> >
> >   Support for preferential and/or fast-tracked prioritized
> >   treatment of applications  from applicants arising from
> >   the particular language/script communities themselves that
> >   are in need of IDN gTLDs so as to achieve inclusivity, for example,
> >   a. through lower financial entry barriers, b. technical and 
> > operational
> >   criteria that are commensurate with the community which the IDN 
> > gTLD is
> >   intended to serve, with policies that are crafted in consultation
> >   with the specific language or script-using community, in recognition
> >   of their rights and natural linguistic expertise in their own 
> > language and
> >   their specific knowledge of what is appropriate and needed;
> >   where the prioritisation process can involve the utilitarian
> >   measure of an effective user population that stands to benefit
> >   from the deployment of the IDN gTLD applied for.
> >
> > As you rightly put it, we need objective yardsticks,
> > and prioritization stated without objective yardsticks
> > addressing financial entry barriers, and technical and operational
> > difficulties of applicants from developing countries for instance,
> > or the size of the population that will stand to benefit,
> > will only be paying lip service to the currently disenfranchised.
> >
> > bestrgds
> > tw
> >
> >
> > Ram Mohan wrote:
> >
> > > Dear WG Members,
> > >
> > > Currently, 4.1.5 is a Support statement.  I wonder if there are 
> > > significant opposing views to this statement, or if we have the 
> > > willingness to elevate this “Distance to ASCII” statement to an 
> > > Agreement?
> > >
> > >  Although there are many reasons for an IDN gTLD application, 
> > > arguably the biggest one is to allow those communities where 
> > > traditional ASCII representations, and/or alphabetized 
> > > representations are inadequate for domain name labels, are allowed a 
> > > way to represent their languages online.  We know that there are 
> > > only a few remaining barriers to achieving this.  Should we 
> > > encourage “distance to ASCII” as an objective yardstick of 
> > > prioritization?
> > >
> > >  -Ram
> > >
> > > * *
> > >
> > > *4.1.5 *
> > >
> > > *Support* for prioritizing languages/scripts for the IDN gTLD launch 
> > > according to demand/need, possibly using a notion of “distance to 
> > > ASCII” (for example, by giving higher priority to right-to-left 
> > > scripts than to “decorated Latin”).



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