[governance] Re: The nice thing about China...

[David Allen]

At 9:10 AM +0100 2/6/07, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
>On Mon, Feb 05, 2007 at 05:40:03PM -0500,
> David Allen <David_Allen_AB63 at post.harvard.edu> wrote
> a message of 42 lines which said:
>
>>Interesting, isn't it, trying to get information when the language you must use seems, for you, like no more than so many squiggles on a page?
>
>Yes, but this is completely out of scope for ICANN (which, last time I checked does not regulate Web page contents and does not sheperd the HTML format or the HTTP protocol).
>
>Multilinguism on the Internet is indeed a very important thing, but it has nothing to do with ICANN (for good or for bad) and little to do with Internet governance. Chinese-speaking people write in Chinese on the Internet for many years. So what? In what way a governance mailing list like this one has anything to do about it?

Glad you asked, since a quick reading of the earlier posts can miss what matters here.

The problem is fully multilingual domains to put in the browser address bar - so ML.ML, all native characters, and not the last bit in Roman characters.  The wo/man on the street - the taxi driver or doorman or your parents or the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker ... - sweats the squiggly stuff at the end of the address.  Access for non-elites turns upon not having to coax a computer into coughing up a foreign language - foreign from the point of view of that user of course.  That the page itself can be read in the native language - if it can be reached in the first place! - only makes foreign script in the address all the more an acute problem.  (If by now you have read G Huston, you see in some detail.)

How to accommodate this has indeed been a subject at ICANN since its inception meeting Singapore in 1999.  Eight years later, now at the present, it is a subject of some activity at ICANN.

The original post had to do with the power to exclude folks from the 'Net.  That of course is governance.  Not to mention that, for Rio IGF it appears that access will be overarching.

So yes, the topic is central.

This was in the original exchange of posts, if the message was condensed.  Considering some of the other assertions made above, a quick review further:

Hybrid-IDN (Internationalized Domain Names), that is ML.Roman, have launched in something like 150 plus languages over the past 7 years, to ~3 million end-users, half through Versign dot com and the other half through at least 40 national ccTLDs.  But access depends on full ML, not hybrid.  China has gone there, for its 1.3 billion.  Other language groups are actively headed there, with the technology now fully demonstrated by an 'anchor tenant.'  As originally pointed out, when China's work became known in the West, after two years of operation already (illustrating among others seamless interoperation with 'our' root), ICANN became alarmed and so especially active.

>>Certainly, saying "nonsense" is a surefire way to get help, bound to make others think highly of the request. ;-)
>
>Exactly the same process that we often saw with the "alternative root" crowd. "We do not talk with people who disagree with us". Convenient.

>>I could give you an, authoritative, three-sentence overview (have just done so offlist to a query)
>
>Non-public information is ignored.

hmmm ... who is 'not talking with people' ...



At 8:00 AM -0800 2/6/07, yehudakatz at mailinator.com wrote:
>by Geoff Huston
>December 2006
>
>  http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2006-12/idn.html

Quite helpful to get the link.

Geoff Huston does a first rate job, I think, informed, elegant writing, balanced, sensitive to the range of questions, exhaustive almost.  Thanks indeed to him.

I will note three additions / exceptions.

1 - The history recounted does not look before the last eight years.  Indeed it does not credit the invention of the technology.

The technology was available at the first ICANN meeting in Singapore March 1999, but spurned.  After a year testbed of the technology set up in Asia, ICANN began active debate November 2000, a year and a half plus after Singapore.  Later the technology became the basis for the IETF standard for IDN.  It was the basis for hybrid-IDN that ICANN promulgated.  It is the technology that has become prominent with China's use and is under active diffusion to other language scripts.

Marking the point, only Western references are cited at the end.  But the technology came from the East.

2 - The author is not quite correct in his description with 'plugin.'  This raises the larger - interesting and pivotal - question of architecture, see below.

3 - The 'http://' issue has become effectively moot, with browsers that fill this in automatically.

But these three points do not deflect from the quite significant contribution that Geoff Huston makes here.  It is vital to have the resource he has created; he has done a key service.

When we back up from it, we see there is a level of detail that some, at least, in the policy debate will not be inclined to engage.  Fortunately, there is a level, up from that detail, where discussion can proceed.  Certainly, we find key questions about overall architecture, when there is a confederation of roots, as has begun.  Architecture gets us to the meat.

But I can go only so far; we need someone with full command of the matter.

Tan, Tin Wee, and Subbiah are the inventors.  Subbiah and his company, i-dns.net, have brought the technology to China and other language groups.  They developed the technology in the later 90's, offered it from the initial ICANN meeting on, and have shepherded it since.  Subbiah can speak from 'the horse's mouth,' as we say.

Some part of what I've posted above is thanks to him.  Because a subscription to the list has taken a couple days, the prospect has been delayed.  But now, Subbiah, are you there?

David

[For convenience so links are in one place: the previous link for the excellent detective work from Cambridge University - http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2006/03/01/new-chinese-tlds ]



____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance