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

[Daniel Kalchev]

On 01.11.11 23:10, Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 6:33 AM, Daniel Kalchev <daniel at digsys.bg 
> <mailto:daniel at digsys.bg>> wrote:
>
>
>
>         I have done some presentations that demonstrate the use of
>         different (widely available) computer fonts and the possible
>         confusability of these two strings.
>
>
>     This is awesome and it would be great to share some of the
>     learnings, if possible but if you have already posted it on a
>     website, maybe you can direct me to the URL or email me offline.
>

It is publicly available and searchable on Google as well. I found an 
on-line version at 
https://www.centr.org/main/6079-CTR/version/default/part/AttachmentData/data/Daniel 
Kalchev - bgidn20110202v3.pdf

I believe the different font renderings are informative enough. That 
presentation was produced in the beginning of the year and is pretty 
much schematic, because the target audience is deeply aware of the 
issues -- there were some developments since then, but mostly in area 
of... talking. (ok, politics, I know)

>     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.
>
> No language or aphabet is second grade.Article 19 of the Universal 
> Declaration of Human Rights gives people the right to freedom of 
> expression. There is also the Convention on the Protection and 
> Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions 2005 and another 
> Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

While this is true, one needs to remember what ICANN was like when the 
IDN Fast Track came into effect (end of 2009). An US based company was 
hired to provide the 'language expertise' for the IDN Fast Track and 
unfortunately, their work is covered in secrecy. I can understand that 
the combined desire to avoid any possible 'confusion' (and ICANN be 
blamed for making the Internet less 'stable') and the probably too US 
(therefore ASCII) centric knowledge of the experts led to this 
situation. Thing is, they by default assume any two letter Cyrillic or 
Greek strings is "confusingly similar" to any two character ASCII string 
-- which is ridiculous.. at least.

>     Funny, that the IDN Fast Track process talk about the need to
>     demonstrate probable confusion, not merely possible confusion
>
> This is interesting, to find what the difference between probable and 
> possible is and which is the lower threshold?

In my understanding of English, "possible" means it can be demonstrated 
that it is (however rare) subject to confusability, in some (even if 
carefully crafted and controlled) situations. "Probably", should require 
further qualification of the frequency this is happening. For example, 
you take an sample of 1000 persons. For 5 of those persons .бг and .bg 
are confusable -- this is "possible" but in no way "probable". If, for 
200-400 it is confusable, it is then perhaps "probable". If you have say 
500-700 confused, I would call it "very probable". Sort of that.

Thing is, you can demonstrate that almost any two strings are 
confusable, in a specific context and using specific fonts.

None of this data is available for the evaluation of the Bulgarian 
application however.

Daniel
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20111102/2809d8b2/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t