[Chapter-delegates] Language Independent Domains or Phonetic names.
Alejandro Pisanty
apisan at servidor.unam.mx
Tue Jul 1 13:44:20 PDT 2008
Siv,
time to read the transcripts, presentation, and background mterials for
the latest ICANN meeting, and some of the earlier stuff. Phonetic
similarity is on ly one of many ways to approach this. There is a huge
body of existing work and an active set of present controversies.
As Marcin says later in this thread, there is a need and an opportunity
for a background paper. I don't know who has the bandwidth, expertise, and
available energy free for that task - even if it were not the moving
target that it is.
Alejandro Pisanty
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
UNAM, Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
*Mi blog/My blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com
*LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pisanty
*Unete al grupo UNAM en LinkedIn, http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/22285/4A106C0C8614
---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, www.isoc.org
Participa en ICANN, www.icann.org
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
On Tue, 1 Jul 2008, Sivasubramanian Muthusamy wrote:
> Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 20:42:58 +0530
> From: Sivasubramanian Muthusamy <isolatedn at gmail.com>
> To: Alejandro Pisanty <apisan at servidor.unam.mx>
> Cc: Gene Gaines <gene.gaines at gainesgroup.com>,
> chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
> Subject: Language Independent Domains or Phonetic names.
>
> Hello Alejandro,
>
> I have renamed the subject on this thread initiated by dpefeva at isoc.bg
> originally opened with the subject head "Bulgaria moves to register
> Cyrillic Internet domain" as I realize that it is a core problem that
> needs to be addressed if the universality of the internet is to be
> preserved.
>
> The alternative suggestion is that Coca-Cola gets coca-cola.com as
> well as gets the allocation of the same name pronounced in a standard
> accent and represented in the International Phonetic Alpahabet. ( or
> represented in some form of phonetic orthography) This phonetic name,
> not Coca-cola.com is the base domain name for Coca-Cola corporation.
> The global domain name system would allocate the phonetic base name to
> the applicant globally. It is reserved for the length of the validity
> of the fee paid.
>
> ( By this system, there may not even be a need for an extension like
> .com or .org, but I am not certain )
>
> If the applicant is English speaking, as in this case, there would not
> be difficulties with the English name - the base phonetic name is
> primarily derived from the English name Coca-Cola, so the applicant
> gets Coca-Cola name along with the phonetic base name. This base name
> is auto-fed into a phonetic transcription server at the same time as
> the base name is allotted and the server generates names in all
> official international languages and pulls up the scripts for each
> language All the names are allotted to the applicant as a table. It is
> upto the applicant to manually inspect the character representations
> of the most important languages in terms of desired reach. Coca-Cola
> might choose to consult its branch offices around the world to check,
> for instance if the representation in Hindi script allocated as koke
> kola ( assume that this is Hindi script ) is accurate or distorted.
> The local office or the Hindi lanugauge expert might point out that
> the name is more accurately represented in Hindi as koko kola and
> within a time period of 30 days the applicant might move to correct
> the Hindi representation in the table allocated The phonetic base name
> is copied to the sub-registry for each language on allocation as also
> the initial language script for each relevant language. Corrections
> made, if any, get updated in the relevant sub-registries for language.
> In this scenario, the name allocated is the phonetic orthograph and
> the sub-registry level or machine level abstractions are the language
> names. It is not known if an intermediary digital representation is
> required as another layer of abstraction.
>
> It amounts to redoing the domain name allocation system and involves a
> lot of steps that might be argued as unnecessary. It could even be
> argued that the suggestion is to reinvent the wheel.
>
> But in the light of the concerns expressed by Nitin Desai, Chair of
> the Internet Governance Forum of the dangers of "separation" in the
> BBC arrticle posted in the thread
> http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/chapter-delegates/2008-June/004033.html
> it becomes necessary to resolve the issue of the need for local
> domains leading the Internet into a situation of separated language
> based Internet zones. This is not a technical danger, but a political
> danger.
>
> Whether or not this proposal makes technical sense, we may begin
> working on an RFC on the method of allocation of language domain names
> in such a manner that the local language domain names are universally
> readable and writeable or make the domain names language independent
> at one level.
>
> Again, this is a core problem to be addressed by the Internet
> Community if the universality of the Internet is to be preseved.
>
> Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
>
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 11:29 PM, Alejandro Pisanty
> <apisan at servidor.unam.mx> wrote:
>> S.,
>>
>> going carefully through Marcin's suggestion, i.e. to read how the system
>> actually works, may be useful. What the system does at present is to map
>> non-ascii names into an - as much as possible - unambiguous ascii string. It
>> is a fairly complex system and will probably show that your intuition is
>> right, and to do more would essentially repeat a huuuuuge pile of work
>> already done.
>>
>> Alejandro Pisanty
>>
>>
>> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>> Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
>> UNAM, Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
>>
>> *Mi blog/My blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com
>> *LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pisanty
>> *Unete al grupo UNAM en LinkedIn,
>> http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/22285/4A106C0C8614
>>
>> ---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, www.isoc.org
>> Participa en ICANN, www.icann.org
>> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>>
>>
>> On Tue, 24 Jun 2008, Sivasubramanian Muthusamy wrote:
>>
>>> Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:18:39 +0530
>>> From: Sivasubramanian Muthusamy <isolatedn at gmail.com>
>>> To: Alejandro Pisanty <apisan at servidor.unam.mx>
>>> Cc: Gene Gaines <gene.gaines at gainesgroup.com>,
>>> chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
>>> Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Bulgaria moves to register Cyrillic
>>> Internet
>>> domain
>>>
>>> Hello Alejandro
>>>
>>> Yes, the present system of alphabetic names is created so that people
>>> don't have to remember digits.
>>>
>>> In my suggestion of a digitized name as a "machine level" layer of
>>> indirection, the suggestion is not exactly that the internet user has
>>> to remember the digitized name.
>>>
>>> English- Coca-cola.com. ON ALLOCATION of the name coca-cola.com, at
>>> the same instant becomes owner of the digitzed name ( this could also
>>> be alpha numeric, not necessarily just digits - such as
>>> USAEnglishCommerce32594892 or as 2bbfcdf3f09ae8d700402f36913515cd
>>>
>>> If there are a thousand languages, ICANN simultaneously reserves the
>>> the local strings auto-generated by a machine level reverse-look up.
>>>
>>> By this theory2bbfcdf3f09ae8d700402f36913515cd should auto-generate a
>>> <cyrillic> string, a <Hindi> string, a <spanish> string and 997 other
>>> strings.
>>>
>>> The technical feasibility of this needs to be explored.
>>>
>>> 1. Coca-cola is a 9 letter string. Would a reverse-look up of
>>> 2bbfcdf3f09ae8d700402f36913515cd generate a 9 lettered spanish name or
>>> is there a possibility that it becomes a 19 lettered word in the
>>> process ?
>>>
>>> 2. The name so generated would be easy to type, but is likely to be a
>>> a string of meaningless characters. This would again be hard to
>>> remember.
>>>
>>> 3. So, yet another layer of local indirection may be needed similar to
>>> a RealNames service in each country that the Coca Cola corporation
>>> would go to to obtain the local language string that rhymes with
>>> Coca-cola which the user will remember and type that gets looked up as
>>> the earlier local string of meaningless characters which gets looked
>>> up as the digitized name in the central DNS system which gets looked
>>> up as coca-cola.com
>>>
>>> Very round about. I am typing as I think and really do not see how it
>>> is an improvement over Coca Cola corporation having to go to the local
>>> registry to obtain the best available .bg name
>>>
>>> Without Step 3, the typing problem is somewhat solved, but not the
>>> problem related to the recallability of the name. But Step 3 seems to
>>> bring us back to Square 1.
>>>
>>> If what I have written is 40% sense and 60% nonsense, please do reason
>>> this out and see if more sense can be made out of this
>>>
>>> Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 10:27 PM, Alejandro Pisanty
>>> <apisan at servidor.unam.mx> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Sivasubramanian,
>>>>
>>>> let me see if I understand well:
>>>>
>>>> the present layers are:
>>>>
>>>> domain name read as alphabetic characters by the user
>>>> domain name represented in bits and bytes
>>>> IP address.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The DNS was created so that people would not have to remember the numbers
>>>> in
>>>> the IP address.
>>>>
>>>> Now you would add a numbered list of TLDs so that is an additional layer
>>>> of
>>>> indirection (of course creating a new layer of indirection, a new
>>>> abstraction, is common practice in computing.)
>>>>
>>>> But... let's see, thehr will in the long run be at least a couple hundred
>>>> numbers of TLDs - you'd have that even if we only did ccTLDs in ASCII, as
>>>> presently, plus their representations in the characters of one native
>>>> language that uses non-ASCII characters. So, in chronological order,
>>>> maybe
>>>> <bg-in-Cyrillic> would be number 1, and later on maybe India in TAmil
>>>> would
>>>> be no. 431 (just an example!).
>>>>
>>>> Who would be able to remember this list? Someone would come up with the
>>>> hame
>>>> in-tam for India in Tamil, and we now would have added two layers of
>>>> indirection that would requiere intensive maintenance.
>>>>
>>>> Do we want to go there, or is there an alternative, or did I not
>>>> understand
>>>> you well?
>>>>
>>>> Yours,
>>>>
>>>> Alejandro Pisanty
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>>>> .
>>>> Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
>>>> UNAM, Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
>>>>
>>>> *Mi blog/My blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com
>>>> *LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pisanty
>>>> *Unete al grupo UNAM en LinkedIn,
>>>> http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/22285/4A106C0C8614
>>>>
>>>> ---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, www.isoc.org
>>>> Participa en ICANN, www.icann.org
>>>> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>>>> .
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, 24 Jun 2008, Sivasubramanian Muthusamy wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:05:32 +0530
>>>>> From: Sivasubramanian Muthusamy <isolatedn at gmail.com>
>>>>> To: Alejandro Pisanty <apisan at servidor.unam.mx>
>>>>> Cc: Gene Gaines <gene.gaines at gainesgroup.com>,
>>>>> chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
>>>>> Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Bulgaria moves to register Cyrillic
>>>>> Internet
>>>>> domain
>>>>>
>>>>> Hello Alejandro Pisantry,
>>>>>
>>>>> This is a very valid question. Localization is important, but in the
>>>>> process of localization if the localized zone becomes inaccessible
>>>>> internationally the effect would be contrary to that intended.
>>>>>
>>>>> May be the technical community should think of a domain name
>>>>> architecture whereby there is a digitized domain name system - the
>>>>> digitized 'name' is functional at the DNS level. It is the
>>>>> digitization of a local name visible to the locals as the local
>>>>> language name, but gets converted into any other language for the
>>>>> convenience of those from the rest of the world
>>>>>
>>>>> <cyrillc-bg> name - the user in Bulgaria enters a cyrillic name
>>>>> The DNS system gets the same name translated into digits
>>>>> The international user knows the digital name
>>>>> There is a global web interface akin to tinyurl.com that converts the
>>>>> digital 'name' into any local language, for instance, Spanish
>>>>> The user in spain types the Spanish characters in the address bar of
>>>>> his browser. <spanish-bg> name
>>>>> The DNS system re translates it to the digital name which is looked up
>>>>> as the <cyrillc-bg> name website.
>>>>>
>>>>> A possible solution I wish to know if this is technically sound.
>>>>>
>>>>> Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
>>>>> ISOC India Chennai
>>>>> http://www.linkedin.com/in/sivasubramanianmuthusamy
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 7:27 PM, Alejandro Pisanty
>>>>> <apisan at servidor.unam.mx> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Gene,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I certainly join you in congratulating Dessi and the team in Bulgaria.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I think that here in the chapters we have a very sepcial opportunity,
>>>>>> as
>>>>>> a
>>>>>> community, to test the whole concept that has been advanced now.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In particular I am curious to see what happens the first time that a
>>>>>> site
>>>>>> goes up with a <cyrillc-bg> name and one of us wants to access it
>>>>>> without
>>>>>> a
>>>>>> Cyrillic keyboard in an Internet cafe somewhere. And "access" may well
>>>>>> mean
>>>>>> sending email, as much as it might mean opening a Web site.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Ours is a community that can especially help each other to make
>>>>>> progress
>>>>>> in
>>>>>> such tests and be of assistance to Dessi an all others with her.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yours,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Alejandro Pisanty
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>>>>>> .
>>>>>> .
>>>>>> Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
>>>>>> UNAM, Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *Mi blog/My blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com
>>>>>> *LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pisanty
>>>>>> *Unete al grupo UNAM en LinkedIn,
>>>>>> http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/22285/4A106C0C8614
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, www.isoc.org
>>>>>> Participa en ICANN, www.icann.org
>>>>>> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>>>>>> .
>>>>>> .
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, 24 Jun 2008, Gene Gaines wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 08:30:25 -0400
>>>>>>> From: Gene Gaines <gene.gaines at gainesgroup.com>
>>>>>>> To: Dessi Pefeva <dpefeva at isoc.bg>
>>>>>>> Cc: chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
>>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Bulgaria moves to register Cyrillic
>>>>>>> Intern
>>>>>>> domain
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I am very pleased to see SAITC (Bulgarian State Agency for Information
>>>>>>> Technologies and Communicatoins), with important support from the
>>>>>>> Bulgarian
>>>>>>> ISOC chapter, <http://www.daits.government.bg/>take the step of
>>>>>>> requesting
>>>>>>> registration of a Cyrillic TLD from ICANN. (below)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If "The Internet is for Everyone" then we must provide the means for
>>>>>>> everyone to communicate using their language and their character set.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Congratulation ISOC.bg
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Gene Gaines
>>>>>>> VP, DCISOC (Washington DC Area Chapter of ISOC)
>>>>>>> *
>>>>>>> *On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 7:27 AM, Dessi Pefeva <dpefeva at isoc.bg>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I am happy to announce that the Bulgarian government has shown
>>>>>>>> officially
>>>>>>>> its intent to register the .бг (.bg in Cyrillic) domain. They did it
>>>>>>>> in
>>>>>>>> a
>>>>>>>> letter, sent yesterday to ICANN's President Paul Twomey.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> This is due also thanks to the efforts of ISOC-Bulgaria. Bulgarian
>>>>>>>> President, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and the Minister of ITC
>>>>>>>> are
>>>>>>>> all
>>>>>>>> members of ISOC. They have talked on a number of times in the past
>>>>>>>> six
>>>>>>>> months with ISOC.bg on these issues.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Obviously the conversations have been fruitful. See more information
>>>>>>>> here:
>>>>>>>> http://uk.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUKL2360195920080623
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> And this is the official press-release from the ITC Agency:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Bulgaria has requested the registration of a Cyrillic top level
>>>>>>>> domain
>>>>>>>> (TLD) from *ICANN* <http://www.icann.org/>. The letter from the
>>>>>>>> chairman
>>>>>>>> of the Bulgarian State Agency for Information Technologies and
>>>>>>>> Communicatoins (*SAITC* <http://www.daits.government.bg/>) Plamen
>>>>>>>> Vatchkov
>>>>>>>> to the president of ICANN Paul Twomey was delivered today, June 23rd,
>>>>>>>> 2008, in Paris via the Bulgarian representative to the Governmental
>>>>>>>> Advisory
>>>>>>>> Committee of ICANN, and was distributed for information only in
>>>>>>>> Geneva
>>>>>>>> where
>>>>>>>> the ITU is headquartered. Thus Bulgaria requested the fast track for
>>>>>>>> implementation of its own Cyrillic IDNs.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> In the letter to the ICANN President, the SAITC chairman informs the
>>>>>>>> authoritative international organization, dealing with assigned names
>>>>>>>> and
>>>>>>>> numbers, that Bulgaria has decided to register and maintain the
>>>>>>>> country
>>>>>>>> code
>>>>>>>> .бг (bg in Cyrillic)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Further in the letter, SAITC chairman informs that the discussion on
>>>>>>>> using
>>>>>>>> Cyrillic domain names was initiated by the President of Bulgaria
>>>>>>>> Georgi
>>>>>>>> Parvanov during the visit of the Russian President Putin and the then
>>>>>>>> vice-prime minister, and now President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev
>>>>>>>> during
>>>>>>>> their visit in January 2008 in Sofia. The question was also discussed
>>>>>>>> during
>>>>>>>> meetings of Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev with the
>>>>>>>> Russian
>>>>>>>> counterparts, as well as during talks between foreign ministers
>>>>>>>> Ivailo
>>>>>>>> Kalfin and Sergei Lavrov. Last week, Russian President Medvedev
>>>>>>>> announced
>>>>>>>> in
>>>>>>>> Moscow, that the issue of Cyrillic domain names is an important one,
>>>>>>>> and
>>>>>>>> on
>>>>>>>> his political agenda.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> „We believe that the initiative, which we discussed with our Russian
>>>>>>>> friends in the last months, is a clear fact about the importance
>>>>>>>> which
>>>>>>>> Bulgaria has in the world Internet. It is an example not only about
>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>> historical meaning of the Cyrillic alphabet in the world arena, but
>>>>>>>> also
>>>>>>>> about the fact that through Bulgaria it became an official alphabet
>>>>>>>> of
>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>> European Union. By sending this letter to Dr. Twomey – ICANN's
>>>>>>>> president
>>>>>>>> and
>>>>>>>> my friend, SAITC expresses not only the wish, but the readiness to
>>>>>>>> put
>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>> Cyrillic IDNs on the Internet map", says Plamen Vatchkov. „There's
>>>>>>>> nothing
>>>>>>>> more natural than the proposed domain to be the country code, which
>>>>>>>> is
>>>>>>>> already known and accepted in the country itself. Creating domains in
>>>>>>>> scripts, different from the Latin, is the next big step in the
>>>>>>>> development
>>>>>>>> of the Internet, which will allow millions of people who don't use
>>>>>>>> English
>>>>>>>> to have easier access to the Global Net resources".
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> SAITC is organizing a meeting later this year in Sofia, where all
>>>>>>>> countries, using Cyrillic will be invited - Belarus, Bulgaria,
>>>>>>>> Kazakhstan,
>>>>>>>> Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Mongolia, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan,
>>>>>>>> Uzbekistan
>>>>>>>> and
>>>>>>>> Ukraine. The meeting will be dedicated to discussion about IDNs.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> for more information:
>>>>>>>> Press Center
>>>>>>>> phone +359-2-9492368
>>>>>>>> "Ekaterina Popova" <epopova at daits.government.bg>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> *Ms. Dessi Pefeva,
>>>>>>>> Internet Society - Bulgaria*
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> Chapter-delegates mailing list
>>>>>>>> Chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
>>>>>>>> http://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/chapter-delegates
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Chapter-delegates mailing list
>>>>>> Chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
>>>>>> http://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/chapter-delegates
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> http://www.linkedin.com/in/sivasubramanianmuthusamy
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> http://www.linkedin.com/in/sivasubramanianmuthusamy
>>
>
>
>
> --
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/sivasubramanianmuthusamy
>
More information about the Chapter-delegates
mailing list