Fwd: RE: [gnso-idn-wg] One comment on techno-policy details

[Mawaki Chango]

--- Mawaki Chango <ki_chango at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 19:26:44 -0800 (PST)
> From: Mawaki Chango <ki_chango at yahoo.com>
> Subject: RE: [gnso-idn-wg] One comment on techno-policy details
> To: gnso-idn-wg at icann.org
> 
> Hello Bruce, Tina, et al.
> 
> Thanks to Cary, I have understood that the "root" only speaks
> ascii,
> and any "alien" script is in the root encoded in ascii (so I guess
> my
> question about whether the confusion was at the DNS level was
> rather
> rethorical.) So  on the infrastructure side, there is no threat to
> the security and the stability of the Net, so far, and that, I
> beleive was the main idea behind the "confusingly similar" in the
> first place. So what about the user experience, now that it is
> clair
> that's what we are talking about?
> 
> First of all, I don't see how we can expect to avoid confusion at
> one
> level (domain names) by sticking to a confusing notion  (the
> language
> of our policy discussion)? We had that debate about new gTLDs in,
> and
> after, Amsterdam, and I thought we made some progress. I remember
> there was a discussion with, among others, Ross who suggested
> better
> alternate language (I'll look up that email and forward it to your
> information and consideration.) There seemed to be a consensus, if
> not on the language suggested by Ross, at least on the fact that
> "confusingly similar" needed to be changed. Now I see that not only
> we're back to it, we go even worse talking about "ex ante rights"
> --
> not to be confused with IPRs [sic], so what "rights" are we talking
> about??!?? What I've retained from "confusingly similar" is to
> ensure
> a secure and stable functioning of the Net, not to get entangled in
> some entrenched "rights" derived from being an earlier player in
> the
> market, via some opportunistic and fuzzy adventures in semantics!
> Is
> there any reason why using here the expression "typographic
> similarity" or confusion, as suggested by Chun Eung Hwi, fails to
> address this? 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Mawaki
> 
> P.S. By the way, I'm sorry to say the para. in question (below) is
> convoluted, there is definitely a need to clarify this and call a
> spoon a spoon.
> 
> 2.2 Agreement to limit confusion and collisions due to variants.
> Agreement that this may be a stability and security issue and part
> of
> the reserved name process. Agreement that variants of an IDN gTLD
> string be treated in analogy with current practice for IDN SLD
> labels, i.e. variants are not available for registration by others.
> Agreement that this approach implies certain "ex ante rights" with
> similarities to the "confusingly similar" test foreseen in the New
> gTLD recommendations. Agreement that such "rights" must not be
> confounded with IPR rights as such. Some support for enabling a
> choice for an IDN gTLD strings with variants to only block variants
> or to use variants as aliasing.
> 
> --- Bruce Tonkin <Bruce.Tonkin at melbourneit.com.au> wrote:
> 
> >  
> > Hello Mawaki,
> > 
> > It would be useful to give some practical examples here.  Ie
> > strings that you would or would not consider confusingly similar
> > across different scripts.
> > 
> > Part of the issue here is that it depends to some degree on how
> the
> > ASCII domain name string is displayed in an application.  At the
> > DNS level it is all just ascii.
> > 
> > For example is:
> > 
> >  xn--bruce.example confusingly similar to bruce.example
> > 
> > At the raw ascii level I would probably say no - ie the "xn--"
> > provides sufficient differentiation, others may say that they are
> > too similar.
> > 
> > When you then render "xn--bruce" in an application you might get:
> > 
> > ’a’`¾ñ.example which looks nothing like bruce.example
> > 
> > Applications may or may not limit the set of scripts that can be
> > used.  So for example this email application I am using allows me
> > to mix scripts.
> > 
> > I think the assumption so far is that where two scripts that can
> > appear together in the same application at the 1st level would
> look
> > the same then they could fall into the confusingly similar
> > category.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Bruce
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> 
>