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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/