Re: [alac] IDN document, draft 4
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/