[council] [Coordination] Interim Committee on Internationalized Domain Names

["YJ Park" <yjpark@myepark.com>]

Council members,

After Melbourne meeting, we have seen various groups formed
regarding "Internationalized Domain Names" by Board and GAC
or "Multilingual Domain Names" by NC.

I. Status report

Interim Committee members are YJ Park(Chair), Grant Forsyth.
It has been formd and recognized on March 11 during NC meeting.
We do expect more volunteers from other constituencies, too.

II. Comparisons Statements by Three Parties:
---------------------------------------------
Names Council stated in its Business Plan.(Please, see Appendix 1)
1. To develop consensus policies for multilingual domain names
2. To evaulate Verisign Multilingual Testingbed
3. To propose terms of reference for NC task force or working group.

ICANN Board stated in its Resolutions.(Please, see Appendix 2)
1. To identify the various internationalization efforts and the issues
2. To engage in dialogue with technical experts and other participants
in these efforts, and to make appropriate recommendations to the Board.

GAC stated in its Communique.(Please, see Appendix 3)
1. Importance of interoperability of the present and future Internet;
2. The prevention of cybersquatting and resolution of disputes in the IDNs
3. The application of competition and market access, consumer protection
    and intellectual property principles.

Therefore, the mission statements described by three parties during
Melbourne meeting have been overlapped in many areas and needs some
coordination among three parties to have more productive results in the
future.

III. The common subjects to start with
--------------------------------------
    - Who are the players in each character-set regions
    - What kind of technologies have been explored
    - How many testbed have been carried out
    - The impacts of each testbed to each character-set region
    - The domain name disputes in each chracter-set region
    - The relations among Character-sets vs Language vs Sovereignty

       [Case a] Global Groups
       Chinese character-set - Chinese Language - China, Taiwan, .....
       Arabic character-set - Arabic Language - Arab region,
                                                                       Part
of Africa,
                                                                       Part
of Asia

       Note 1: Even though the Japanese, the Korean cannot speak
       Chinese, they can recognize some common Chisnese characters
       and they even have been used in various places especially in the
       daily newspapers and academic journals.

       Note 2: Even though French and Spanish are quite different from
       English, they are not keen to this Internationalized Domain Names
       due to its similar character-sets to Roman one.

       [Case b] Small homogeneous community
       Korean character-set - Korean Language - Korea ?

       [Case c] Small heterogeneous community
       India: 200 or so languages and 34 or so official languages

       Hindi charater-set - Hindi Language - India ?
       Tamil character-set - Tamil Language - India, Mauritius,

       [Note] African local languages have not been considered.

IV. The Notable Differences among Three Statements
------------------------------------------------------
- NC highlights Versign Testbed evaluation and potential policy involvement.
- Board emphasizes information gathering process.
- GAC placed emphasis on "Interoperability", "Cybersquatting" and
  "Pre-registration" implication to domain name registrants and registrars
  with respect to potential law enforcement.

V. How to coordinate three committees which have the similar goals
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Considering GAC's capacity as advisory committee in the ICANN
structure, NC is to react those substantial issues more seriously in a
timely manner upon GAC's requests.

NC is to facilitate discussion within DNSO however due to a series of
urgent issues such as Verisign contract, New gTLD contract and their
evaluation process, UDRP review process, DNSO funding, secretariat, etc.
it is quite challenging for the community to engage in this discussion.

It would be more helpful to hear from ICANN Board WG's and
GAC WG's opinionss to NC Interim Committee's scope and timeframe.

This is my rough ideas to get this ball rolling.

Thanks,
YJ

ps. I could not get the whole list of GAC WG members(8).

[Appendix 1: NC's Buisiness Plan Version 7]
Develop consensus policies for implementation of multilingual
domain names. Timeframe: 2001.

Strategies
5.1 Request ICANN to review and evaluate the Verisign Multilingual
Testbed prior to live launch of multilingual domain name registrations.

5.2 Establish an interim committee to propose terms of reference for
an NC task force or other group.

[Appendix 2: Resolutions Passed at Melbourne ICANN Board Meeting]

[Resolution 01.38] The Board expresses its concern over likely confusion
about the nature and implications of the numerous existing
internationalization
testbeds and pre-registration services, and urges wider and more intensive
education and dialogue among the global Internet community.

[Resolution 01.39] In order to promote better understanding of the technical
and policy issues surrounding the internationalization of domain names, the
Board designates an internal working group consisting of Masanobu Katoh
(chair), Vint Cerf, Karl Auerbach, and Ivan Campos to identify the various
internationalization efforts and the issues they raise, to engage in
dialogue with
technical experts and other participants in these efforts, and to make
appropriate
recommendations to the Board.

[Resolution 01.40] The Board asks that the working group submit a report
on its efforts at the next Board meeting in June.

[Appendix 3: Communiqué of the Governmental Advisory Committee]

With regard to international domain names (IDNs), the GAC confirms
the importance and interests of this development to the benefit of Internet
users worldwide. Further, regarding IDNs, including testbed initiatives,
the GAC considers that three key public policy areas need to be kept
at the forefront of the considerations of ICANN, its Supporting
Organisations
and the broader Internet community. These are:

the essential importance of interoperability of the present and future
Internet;
the prevention of cybersquatting and resolution of disputes in the IDNs
environments should be addressed by appropriate means and processes
such as an appropriate dispute resolution policy and implementation of
sunrise periods; and the application of competition and market access,
consumer protection and intellectual property principles. Specifically, the
GAC
states that:

Anti-cybersquatting principles and mechanisms should translate from the
current ASCII character set environment to any non-ASCII character set
environments, and that technological implementation should appropriately
keep pace with any developments in this area.

Preserving the universal connectivity and accessibility domain name system
is vital to the continuance of the Internet as a global network. While
various
technical experimentation may need to be investigated in the pursuit of
unified
standards, ultimately, a unified or interoperable standards for multilingual
domain names should be achieved, with the ability of systems to work
ubiquitously across the Internet.

IDNs registration in top level domains should benefit from effective and
fair
conditions of competition, at appropriate levels and scale of activity.
ICANN
should take steps to communicate to operators of IDNs testbeds that they
should note any legal obligation they have to inform consumers regarding
both
the status and operation of their testbeds, including the status of their
registrations
within that testbed, particularly in circumstances where registrations are
taken
prior to full system implementation.
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