<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Dear Colleagues,<br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">
<div><div class="im"><font><br>At
the recent Internet Governance Forum in Bali, a workshop was held to
share information and discuss implications of a new procedure that will affect
the DNS root zone and allow the delegation of IDN variants at the top
level. Variants are considered important for many languages used by the
global population. Attached is the full report and I paste below the
summary of the issues discussed for your information.<br>
</font><font><span style="font-family:Arial"><br></span></font></div>Best regards,<font><span style="font-family:Arial"></span></font><font><br><br>Rinalia <br><br>-----<br><br></font><font><font><div style="font-size:small;display:inline">
Note:</div> <br></font>
</font><div class="im"><p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">The process of implementing the procedure
is currently underway with the most immediate need being the establishment of
Generation Panels for 17 scripts that have IDN TLDs requested under two TLD programs
- the country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) Fast Track program and the New generic
Top Level Domain (gTLD) program.<span>
</span>Prioritization of the 17 scripts does not exclude other script
communities from moving forward to form Generation Panels.<span></span></span></font><font> <font><span style="font-family:Arial"><span><font><span style="font-family:Arial">The 17 scripts that have IDN TLDs
requested are:<span> </span>Arabic, Bengali, Chinese,
Cyrillic, Devanagari, Georgian, Greek, Gujerati and Gurmukhi, Hebrew, Japanese,
Korean, Latin, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu and Thai.<span>
</span>A significant proportion of the scripts are Asian language scripts.<span> </span></span></font></span></span></font></font><font><br></font></p><p style="text-align:justify"><font> </font>
</p></div><div><div class="h5"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font><b><span style="font-family:Arial">Main Issues Raised </span></b><span><span style="font-family:Arial"></span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font><span><span style="font-family:Arial"> </span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font><u><span style="font-family:Arial">Spillover benefits of the Root Zone
Label Generation Rules (LGR) development </span></u></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">The development of the Root Zone LGR,
though focused on the top level of the Root system, has applicability at the
second and third levels in terms of guidance for dealing with variants.<span> </span></span></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">The ICANN rights protection
mechanism for trademark owners in the new gTLD program is currently not
addressing variants in an integrated way due to the legacy mentality of only
thinking in terms of Latin script and ASCII for solutions. </span></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">The Root Zone LGR is expected to
guide ICANN’s implementation of key TLD initiatives involving variants in the
future.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font><u><span style="font-family:Arial"><span style="text-decoration:none"><br></span></span></u></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font><u><span style="font-family:Arial">The complexity of variant management
<span> </span></span></u></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">Variants are complex and what is
defined as variants tends to differ from language to language.<span> </span></span></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">Visual similarity is a major concern
that is shared across languages and scripts.<span>
</span>Complex scripts with characters that change shapes depending on
adjoining characters require a rendering engine at the Operating System and
browser level for accurate visual representation.<span> </span></span></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">Challenges in grappling with
variants include achieving consistency across and within TLDs, dealing with the
innumerability of variants, having the right tools to deal with the technical
challenges of managing IDNs and ensuring that IDNs are usable in applications used
by users.<span> </span></span></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">Variant management at the Registry
level requires deciding whether variants should resolve or point to the same IP
address.<span> </span>There is no one size fits all
solution.<span> </span>The decision is dependent on
three variables: locale, registry and user community.<span> </span>Variations may be needed across registries to
achieve consistency of variants.<span> </span></span></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">Language communities have
recommended to ICANN that variants should be allocated to the same TLD
applicants and not to different applicants to avoid confusion and ensure
consistency of user experience.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Arial"> </span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font><u><span style="font-family:Arial">The challenge of universal
acceptance of IDNs</span></u><span style="font-family:Arial"></span></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">With the implementation of the Root
Zone LGR procedure, the most important concern for the user community is the
universal acceptance of IDNs and IDN variants.<span>
</span>Software intended for end users such as web browsers, email clients and
operating system needs to support IDN and IDN variants to ensure a positive
user experience.<span> </span></span></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">The introduction of IDN TLD and IDN
Variant TLD to Internet users will realistically not be smooth and is likely to
encounter some barriers and difficulties.<span>
</span>Historically it has been extremely challenging to ensure universal
acceptance - some of the labels introduced with the new TLD expansion in 2001
still do not work consistently everywhere.<span>
</span>There are various points of potential failures in enabling universal
acceptance.<span> </span>The problem lies not with
the DNS, but with applications. </span></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">ICANN has highlighted the issues of
universal acceptance in its Report on “Examining the User Experience Implications
of Active Variant TLDs” (</span><a href="http://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/variant-tlds/active-ux-21mar13-en.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:Arial">http://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/variant-tlds/active-ux-21mar13-en.pdf</span></a><span style="font-family:Arial">).<span>
</span>The </span><span><span style="font-family:Arial">Joint ccNSO-GNSO
Internationalized Domain Names Working Group (JIG) at </span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">ICANN believes that industry-wide
collaboration involving the technical and user communities is essential to
address the problem of universal acceptance effectively.</span></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">Concrete policy recommendations to
address the problem of universal acceptance include: (1) Discourage systems
that do not accommodate IDN and IDN Variants; (2) Develop ways of identifying
what is a legitimate IDN TLD label; (3) Encourage IDN TLD Operators </span><span style="font-family:Arial" lang="EN-CA">and
Accredited Registrars to ensure that they support <span>universal acceptance of IDN TLDs in their own systems; (4) Advocate for
universal acceptance, raise awareness and provide reference/learning materials.</span></span><span style="font-family:Arial"></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font><u><span style="font-family:Arial"><span style="text-decoration:none"><br></span></span></u></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font><u><span style="font-family:Arial">Language community engagement and
mobilization issues</span></u></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">The Root Zone LGR procedure puts in
place an open process that is welcoming and embracing of all languages that
have been encoded in Unicode.<span> </span>Engagement
in the process requires that language communities be aware of the initiative,
be interested to engage and be ready to mobilize their respective communities
to fulfill the requirements for forming Generation Panels.<span> </span></span></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">The Arabic, Brahmi/Devanagari and
Han script communities are already mobilizing to form Generation Panels.<span> </span>They comprise large language communities that
are prepared for engagement because of their previous engagements with ICANN via
case studies that led to the development of the Root Zone LGR procedure.<span> </span>Securing the involvement of smaller language
communities that have not engaged with ICANN before is a challenge without
dedicated or targeted outreach, which is essential to nurture interest and support
readiness.</span></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">The disadvantage to late entrants or
language communities that are not able to engage can potentially be addressed
by the Integration Panel, which can produce Label Generation Rules for certain
languages without waiting for proposals from Generation Panels, provided that
the languages are in active use and are encoded in Unicode. <span> </span></span></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">The Chinese language community experience
in making the first proposal for IDN Variant management in 2000 offers the
following principles to guide the implementation of the Root Zone LGR procedure:
(1) Adopt an open language community concept (i.e., if you speak the language,
you are part of the language community irrespective of territorial/country
jurisdiction); (2) Adopt a bottom up and consensus-based decision-making and dispute
resolution model for the language communities; (3) Ensure that permissible code
points are those that are acceptable to the user community.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Arial"> </span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font><u><span style="font-family:Arial">Importance of the ICANN Public
Comments for the Root Zone LGR procedure</span></u></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">The Root Zone LGR procedure specifies
the ICANN Public Comments as the only governance oversight and appeals mechanism
for the decisions of the Integration Panel.<span>
</span>Generation Panels will essentially engage in a public negotiation process
with the Integration Panel through the Public Comments process.<span> </span>The openness of the process allows for input
from other stakeholders/interested parties for the Integration Panel’s
consideration. </span></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">Via the Public Comments process, the
Integration Panel is required to defend its decisions in an open and
transparent way and in a sufficiently rigorous manner (i.e., </span><span style="font-family:Arial">provide
defensible rationale for its decisions against high standards of
scrutiny/challenge).<span> </span>Should the
Integration Panel fail in this respect, ICANN is empowered to act to have the Panel
replaced. </span><span style="font-family:Arial"></span></font></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><font><span style="font-family:Symbol"><span>·<span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:normal;font-size-adjust:none;font-stretch:normal"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Arial">The Public Comments process still has
certain weaknesses such as impediments to the effective participation/input of
relevant stakeholders in a timely manner.<span>
</span>The ICANN Accountability and Transparency Review Team 2 is currently
addressing issues related to improvements of the Public Comments process.</span></font></p>
<font><br></font></div></div></div></div>
</div><div style="font-size:small;display:inline">END</div><br></div>
</div><br></div></div>