MINC Position to Multilingual Community on Multilingual Domain Names
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Oct. 26 Draft Position version 0.1
Oct. 31 Draft Position version 0.2
Nov. 3 Draft Position version 0.3
Comments received after version 0.2
Stefan Probst, Nov. 1(MINC Individual member)
Kilnam Chon, Nov 1(MINC Organization member)
John Klensin, Nov. 1(IAB Chair, IETF)
Comments received after version 0.1
Stefan Probst, October 28th(MINC Individual member)
Kilnam Chon, October 29th(MINC Organization member)
David Conrad, October 31st(MINC Board member)
John Klensin's personal opinion(IAB Chair, IETF)
I. Introduction
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MINC's mission is to promote multilingual Internet names. The
promotional efforts will cover the whole spectrum of the names' life
cycle from R&D to service. In order to promote, MINC will cooperate
with other global organizations such as ICANN(IDN Committee, etc),
IETF, ISO, and Unicode as well as many other regional and national
organizations.
In this position paper, MINC addresses the internationalized domain
names under ASCII TLDs(ccTLD and gTLD) and multilingual TLDs.
MINC also works on non-domain names such as Keywords, which
will be addressed in a separate position paper later.
III. Interoperability Testing
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To ensure interoperability, MINC should initiate call for interoperability
testing to ensure each of these systems interoperate with each other.
All vendors and TLDs who participate in interoperability testing will
get a certificate of participation and if they achieve interoperable
status, receive a stamp of MINC Interoperability.
As the IETF protocol specifications, both for multilingual names
in the DNS and for high-level searching and keyword functions are
completed, MINC expects to review the work and where appropriate,
recommend to ICANN that mutlilingual interoperability certification
requirements be included in the requirements for registrar certification.
IV. mTLD(multilingual TLD) Space Plans
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Before Internet community explores mlTLDs, MINC proposes to seek
cooperation from the relavant organizations such as Internet Coporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers(ICANN) by informing them that identified
challenges which shall be implemented with the relevant bodies' cooperation.
While recognizing the inherent complexities and tradeoffs,
MINC and its members continue to believe in the importance
of evolving to a system in which top-level domains can be
expressed in the language of the user and/or that of the relevant
countries.
MINC looks forward to working with ICANN, regional and language-based
organizations and to achieve this goal while preserving seamless
connectivity and international accessibility across the Internet. The
regional and language organizations identified so far are
Arabic Internet Names Consortium
AINC: To be provided later.
Chinese Domain Names Consortium
CDNC: http://www.cdnc.org/e-index.shtml
Japanese Domain Names Association
JDNA: http://www.jdna.jp/index-e.html
International Forum for Information Technology in Tamil
INFITT: http://www.infitt.org/
V. mTLD Space Dispute Resolution
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Where there are more than one party wishing to have rights to mlTLD,
MINC volunteers as a coordinator together with ICANN which shall be
explored between the two entities to coordinate all requests for right to
operate a "mTLD", and form an "Arbitration Committee" to provide the
coordination.
VI. Language code TLD(lcTLD) Space Coordination with ccTLD Group
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MINC Board will issue a call for proposal to all ccTLDs in conjunction with
ICANN to invite them to set up language code TLDs(mlcTLDs).
a. AINC on formalising multilingual TLDs in Arabic
(list to be worked out between AINC and MINC)
b. INFITT on formalising multilingual TLDs in Tamil
(list to be worked out between INFITT and MINC)
c. An expanded CDNC including other Chinese speaking stakeholders
in other places on formalising multilingual TLDs in Chinese(Zhongwen)
(list to be worked out between CDNC and MINC)
d. IAK, NNC, KRNIC on formalising multilingual TLD in Hangul
(list to be worked out between would-be entity and MINC)
e. Russian WG on formali multilingual TLDs in Russian
(list to be worked out between would-be entity and MINC)
Appendix: Terminology Definition
Multilingual TLD(mTLD)
- Multilingual ccTLD: Local language version of ccTLD
- Multilingual gTLD: Local language version of gTLD
Language Code TLD(lcTLD)
- TLDs based on language codes
Multilingual Language Code TLD(mlcTLD)
- Local language version of language code TLD