[governance] Is really Bulgarian Cyrillic .бг (.bg) similar to other Latin ccTLDs?

[Daniel Kalchev]

On 01.11.11 17:07, Tapani Tarvainen wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 01, 2011 at 03:31:59PM +0100, Louis Pouzin (well) (pouzin at well.com) wrote:
>
>> Unless visually impaired, anyone should be able to tell *.бг* from *.br*
>> see attachment.
> I think that would depend on the font and what people are used to -
> someone who's never seen Cyrillic could easily confuse бг with br,
> thinking it's just an unusual font.

I have done some presentations that demonstrate the use of different 
(widely available) computer fonts and the possible confusability of 
these two strings.

> How big problem that would be in practice, I couldn't say without
> some (empirical) research (has any such been made?).

It was never a problem. Since 2007 until early 2010 that same string was 
presented to ICANN staff working on the suggested "Fast Track" process 
(what we have now is nothing like the original idea, but better 
something than nothing) AND as official response to the board by both 
the Bulgarian Government and the BG ccTLD manager. It was only after the 
actually Fast Track application that it was indicated it would be 
"confusingly similar".

Rumors go, that this was indicated privately to a Government 
representative shortly before the application, but so far all attempts 
to find such documented has failed.

>> However, visually normal people can't tell *.lt *(Italy) from *.It*(Lithuania)
> Hmm. I have worse than average eyesight, but I didn't think it's this bad,
> for to me those are very distinct but opposite to what you say -
> I thought .lt is Lithuania and .it Italy.
> (Yes, I got the joke. But the point is that such distinctions
> are easy if you're used to them, much harder otherwise.)

The official response to this is that the ISO3166 table and therefore 
the current set of ccTLD names is inherited by ICANN, but they are 
committed to avoid confusability in future. Therefore, Cyrillic and 
Greek are declared "second grade" alphabets and any hint on possible 
confusability is taken as a show stopper.

Funny, that the IDN Fast Track process talk about the need to 
demonstrate probable confusion, not merely possible confusion.

All attempts to obtain scientific proof of this (professional, I guess) 
Linguistic Committee failed so far. I believe they already understand 
that this statement just does not hold water. But then, we don't know 
who instructed them to claim these strings are confusable.

In the end, the question is not how confusable the proposed IDN ccTLD is 
(as long as it it not identical). The question is that this is the 
desire of one nation that was abused for someone's private (or whatever) 
interests.


Daniel


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