[atlarge-discuss] Question to the candidates on IDN and Domain Names

["J-F C. (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey@club-internet.fr>]

There are questions I would like to ask to the candidates. This is about 
the Internationalized Domain Names. I will first explain the context as 
most are still unwarned of what it is about, then I will ask the question.

If you find it difficult - the matter is difficult (this is the _real_world 
vs the ICANN dreamt world.
If you find it difficult to read because of my Franglish, just take it as 
an example of the problem we are to solve, not only for French-English, but 
for the cross relations of 5000 languages the world still count today (we 
lose 20 of them a year, but we also create new ones)

http://eurolinc.org may help (more those who have also some French 
reading). I think that thereshould be at @large site on the matter. All the 
European languages members interestedin lultilinguism may join Eurolinc 
(Eurolinc France has been created, Eurolinc Germany is under preparation, 
we will help others to incorporate and will welcome them on our site).


1. The evolution of the DNS

This question is important to billions of people of non English mother 
tongue because DNs may eventually be supported in their language, and to 
English speakers because they may eventually respect the names of their 
fellow citizens, workers, relations in using their names, logo etc. properly.

However this creates many issues. The first one is the confusion ICANN 
seems to make between country and language. It seems to think that ".fr" is 
only associated with French scripting - but France also accept Berber and 
dialectal Arab as large languages of different scripting and probably more 
than 50 languages as "langues de France". Tamil is a major language without 
a country.


Another issue is the disrespect of international conventions and commercial 
reciprocity that ccTLDs and ICANN seem to head for. This translates into 
the fact that today I can register http://cardin.cn or http://dior.jp. This 
means that Chinese and Japanese names should be supported under ".fr" and 
this to be mandatory for every language. This is not seemingly what ICANN 
press gTLDs and ccTLD to do.

The impact will be that a Chinese registrant in France and a French 
Registrant in China using the same program to register and use the network 
should have the same reciprocal capacity and wording for their contracts 
(when referring to a simple thing as a domain name). But ICANN has not 
defined the domain name except ex-absurdo as what it rules, administers, 
judges but never defined.

These are two probable violations to the fair trade rules and will call for 
the WTO to consider the domain names to protect us but probably creating 
new problems we probably do not need because they will have to learn and 
will have their own philosophy.


Another issue of importance is that the IETF has defined how IDN will be 
supported in making two big mistakes, in following ICANN and Verisign 
choices. The first one is that the IDNs will be "ML.ASCII" (ie 
Muti-Lingual.ASCII, the DN in Chinese and the TLD in ASCII so Verisign may 
sell ".com"). This is a violation of the cultural right of many countries 
and cultures.

The second mistake was to copy the solution of Verisign to transform ML 
names into ASCII names built as two letters+"--"+ a transcoding. IETF chose 
to transcode Unicode names into ascii sequences via a process named 
"punnycode," after a namepreparation equivalent to the transformation of 
upper-case in lowercases etc. IANA (ie. ICANN) chose the two letters as 
"xn". So a "Chinese scripting.com" will print as "xn--cbsds.com" and will 
be accepted by the DNS.

However, "xn" has been radomly chosed among a list of bigrams decided 
acceptable by Louis Touton. It only happens it was not acceptable because 
he ignored that:

- "xn" means "Chrsitians" as "Xms" means Christmas. This will be odd for 
many users to discover their "hidden" face is christianized.
- "xn" is also the official European standard to mean "danger" 
http://www.eurolinc.org/xn.htm
- "XN Inc." is he leading insurrance company for Expatriated or 
"internationlized workers"
- "xn" is understood by many people as an abreviation for "xenophobic" or 
at least "xeno" meaning foreigner - hardly a way to name what is supposed 
to make homeon the net non-English speakers.

When an equimpent cannot print in Chinese, Arabic, etc... it will print 
"xn--abcd.com". This permits to register "babel names". Names chosen for 
their hidden ascii value, but legally registered and possibly protected, in 
using the internationalized scripting. This means that one can plan to 
legally register an Ethopian language IDN which will print worldwide as 
"xn-coca-cola.com."

We known many limitations on the Internet due to the WIPO. Is it necessary 
to make such mistakes which will necessarily lead them to an over reaction? 
As to adopt non multilateral and non reciprocal attitudes which will lead 
the WTO to interfere? At a time the ITU has said that multinational domain 
names are a key issue for them (consensually voted by the ITU GA in Marrakech).

There is also a fear from the confusion of scripting characters in 
different languages (like when I register "lbm.com" to type it as 
"IBM.com"°. This currently lead to hyper-complex schemes which would 
arbitrarily impeach the registration of billions of names. Created by the 
lack of simple real life analysis by IETF this solution would try to patch 
5000 languages to make believe the bug was a new feature for them.

This will have an impact on the "first come first serve" rule because a 
requested name may be refused today and accepted tomorrow due to 
politico/technical changes (this is what ICANN initially proposed).



2. My questions are:

1. are you aware of this major problem?

2. do you support a test by ".us" to register the Spanish, Chinese, 
Japanese, French ,etc names of the US citizens for free (to replace their 
fulty current sprlling) and to shows the rest of the world how IDNs work?

3. do you support the demand to ICANN to replace "xn--" by "x--n" (there is 
no greap appeal in registering "http://x--ncoca-cola.com..
4. do you support that users want and should get "ML.ML" domain names, ie 
in their language also in the TLD.

5. do you support that this organization should have a WG-IDN and a 
doctrine on the matter,

6. do you support that this WG-IDN should cooperate with the language 
organizations and be a member of the ccTLD WG-IDN;  and also of the ICANN 
WG-IDN lead by Katho San.

7. do you support that every TLD should support every language by 
international reciprocity. Also that this support, contracts etc should be 
proposed in using the same words, all over the world for the same language, 
with the same meaning

8. do you support that the conflict resolution procedure should be removed 
from the WIPO and ICAN and given to panels of users only able to understand 
what the users will figure out form a name and decide of the conflicts and 
of their best resolution

9. more globally do you accept that a domain name is a service to the users 
to identify, name and access the site of the registrants before being an 
advantage to the registrants. As such do you agre that the users are 
entitled to see the domain names to stay with the registrants on a life 
long basis (and on a final basis for archiving services).

10. as such and to permit the permanency of the DN, do you support that DN 
must be free; and that the Registry must make its money as a trusted 
service to registrants (RFC 1591, ICP-1), the first of these services being 
a profesional optional WhoIs?

jfc


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