Non-English Domain Names Likely Delayed

Mon Jul 18 14:42:49 UTC 2005

At 3:22 PM +0100 2005-07-18, Neil Harris wrote:

>  Neither is beyond the wit of man, particularly given commercial pressure
>  from registry customers.

	The registry customers don't pay the bills of ICANN and the 
governments who maintain the ccTLDs.  The registries pay those bills, 
and they get their money (in part) from those who would intentionally 
create confusing domain names of the sort you would want to prevent.

	It's like MCI registering 1-800-OPER-ATER because 50% of the 
people in the US are illiterate and cannot spell, and don't know that 
they really meant to use the AT&T service over on 1-800-OPER-ATOR. 
Why do you think AT&T changed to 1-800-CALL-ATT?

	You may get some TLD operators to sign up for service with you, 
but I don't think you're going to get even a simple majority. 
Moreover, without official approval and coordination through 
IETF/IANA/ICANN, I don't think you're going to get a sizable minority.

	You seem to have the technical side down reasonably well.  What 
you need to do now is to work on putting that process into the 
correct place within the context of Internet governance, and get that 
out of the hands of people who are involved in creating specific 
products that use the scheme in question.

	Having this coordinated by the right group isn't going to change 
the minds of the registry operators who want to make the extra bucks, 
and it sure as hell won't change the minds of any of the alternative 
root operators -- None of them would be in business at all if it 
weren't for the network abusers.

	But you'd be more likely to get more of the legitimate TLD 
operators that would otherwise remain on the fence.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.