[At-Large] UA Days

[Evan Leibovitch]

I have long maintained that UA is little more than a poorly executed
marketing campaign, created to address ICANN's impotence at enforcing its
decisions outside its bubble. Nothing in this discussion challenges that
view.

The ALAC take on this issue is rather focused, or at least it ought to be.
We need to take the point of view of the Internet consumer whose point of
entry (for the purposes of explicitly typing domain memorable names in any
language) is almost always browsers or mobile apps.

IDNs may indeed provide value to people who wish to use them to reach
Internet destinations in their own language. But I'm still wary of any
great effort to push them out to an Internet world that may neither want
nor need them anymore. At most they are an add-on rather than necessity,
since existing global Internet destinations (and the people who seek them)
have had to figure out other ways so far (like the use of all-numeric
domain names or QR codes). IDNs could have been world-changing a decade or
more ago, now they're just late to the game and most of the world has moved
on. Since it has no treaty or other enforcement mechanism, ICANN now has to
rely on promotion. And UA days, nights, weeks and months of talking to
ourselves are not going to do it.

Social coercion? Really? That's just an unfunny joke. Is the plan to SHAME
people into using IDNs? Good luck with that.

That any within the ICANN community consider outreach to browser makers to
be out of scope is just astounding; they are EXACTLY the entities most
needed onboard if there are to be IDN buyers as well as sellers. In the
absence of such outreach, browser makers aren't moving because browser
USERS aren't asking for it; many other demands such as speed and security,
ease-of-use and now AI assistants take priority. That's the problem with
ICANN's IDN development process, which has been top-down -- driven by
domain sellers -- rather than bottom-up, driven by domain users
(registrants and Internet consumers). It's no surprise that the UASG does
not consider end-users a pillar. As a result I really don't know if the
idea has now gone past its expiration date, becoming a solution looking for
a problem that no longer exists. As AI and NLP and voice recognition find
their way ever deeper into apps and browsers, IDNs become less necessary to
end-users by the day. I'm not convinced that the developed world really
cares about (let alone knows) what the non-developed world really NEEDS,
but we have this scheme that involves revenue from domain selling so OK!

Having said all this, ALAC's mandate remains to present the PoV of
end-users -- not domain sellers -- and we can assume that there are at
least some that might still want IDNs. IMO, in their support, ALAC should
be calling on ICANN to eliminate the useless and self-serving UA program
and allocate those resources towards:

   1. Appropriate market research so that we can all honestly determine
   whether IDNs have enough *end-user* and *registrant* demand to justify
   additional resources and indeed new IDN registries.
   2. Explicit outreach and resource support to the developers of app
   makers and browsers (and any other end-user-facing Internet interfaces)
   because without them onboard most of the rest is pointless
   3. IF the market research confirms demand, create a browser/app IDN
   certification program and promote that to the public, to drive bottom-up
   demand.

Cheers,
- Evan

PS: @Alfredo ... given that embedded devices don't need to use "memorable"
or even human-parsable domain names, I'm not sure how IDNs serve IoT at
all, indeed their support adds needless complexity when code space is
minimal. Besides, in its current state ICANN is in no position to force
anyone (outside of contracted parties) to do anything.

@Roberto, I want to actually hear from those farmers in Bangladesh, not
anyone pretending to guess their needs. Do they really need IDNs or are we
just projecting? Are there better solutions? I might suggest that many are
doing just fine on the Internet of today without IDNs, thanks to search
engines and other innovations. I had some very eye-opening experiences when
working a few years at UNHCR, that taught me how how resourceful and
innovative people can be in the tightest of circumstances. I would not
presume to know anyone's actual needs without asking them. And tweaked
Internet domain names are not the only, or even the best, answer to remote
accessibility challenges.
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