Paul

Personally i enjoy having the discussion and getting the issues and concerns on the table – that is the only way staff at ICANN can at least attempt to address them. I also realize that it is not easy to understand what staff is doing and what the various statusses are. Believe me, the communication aspect around soemthing like IDNs is something we try really hard to do well. Hopefully blog posts on some o fht emain questions and issues help. If there are suggestions for other activities then by all means let us know.

Tina

In terms of defining how aliasing can be done – - this is not a policy question. If the policy side clearly defines that they want aliasing and what they define by that, then we can ask the technical community to provide some guidance on how such alaising can be tecnically provided. DNAME have been one such suggestion that to date have not been verified.

Tina

I would love to take you up on your offer, but unfortunately personal circumstances do not permit.

I understand the need for fairness. Indeed, implementing IDN ccTLDs at this current point in time would probably act against my own vested interest, but frankly having analysed the situation in depth, I cannot think of a single constructive argument for delaying the introduction of IDN ccTLDs, even though there is a risk that would take market share from my own IDN dot com investments.

Fairness, however, should not be sought to the Nth degree at the cost of progress. Progress itself is a massive fairness issue. Many economies in the World are being denied an Internet where direct navigation is not an every day part of the Internet experience, and that is costing the World economy billions of dollars, at a time when we cannot afford for things to be under-performing.

To be fair IDN.IDN is not the only progress issue, the wanton neglect on Microsoft’s part to introduce a browser that supports the IDNA protocol has been a very serious burden for everyone. That problem, however, is now thankfully be laid to rest, and that will mean the widespread adoption of IDNs whether with IDN extension or with existing ASCII extensions. However, to provide an equal playing field for all, it is of paramount importance to get IDN.IDN for right to left languages which cannot realistically be expect to function with bi-directional strings.

Progress is about fairness. You cannot achieve fairness without progress, and whilst I have severe time constraints to deal with, I may yet come to Paris and lamblast you all if you are not showing signs of delivery. And beware because I am more than capable of making the delivery in French should the need arise.

Are ICANN going to take make it clear in this “policy document” whether or not Aliasing can be done at the Back-End of the Registry or not before they agree the policy, or are we just going to leave it in the lap of the God’s and wait to see what innovative schemes the registries for these new extension dream up to exploit the punters and implement off their own backs?

I think Tina has made it extremely clear that while it may look easy, when you actually try to implement something that you outline above, the people involved themselves aren’t happy with the approach.

Towards the end of this latest comment, you start making assumptions and outlining accusations that are proveably untrue. I won’t stir it up by going into them because it is clear that you feel strongly about this and we should therefore be trying to work together rather than throw bricks at one another.

Can I please suggest you take up Tina’s offer to get involved in the work going on – we could do with all the people we can – and I have also outlined some ideas for getting more and clearer information out to you and others in a response to another of your posts above.

Do take us up on the offer.

Kieren

Is what you are asking for a breakdown of the IDN issue into different elements with an explanation of how we got where we are, the assumptions going forward, the future issues, and a timeline?

Or would something like this, which would be more of a report, not be interactive enough?

Would you prefer it if we have Tina take questions in a live Q&A session online some time soon?

Or is there some other method by which we can provide useful information on the work ICANN is doing without it having to be this adversarial, aggressive approach?

Kieren