[At-Large] UA Days

Wed Apr 3 14:04:17 UTC 2024

Dear Evan,

"Even UA Day, as an outreach effort, continues to  insist on top-down
efforts rather than bottom-up. From the ICANN report on last year's UA Day
<https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/universal-acceptance-day-01jun23-en.pdf>
, *not a single event* anywhere in the world targeted end-users,
application developers, or the mainstream news media (page 10 of the
report). The "outreach" is only being done to comfortable audiences of
insiders who won't ask embarrassing questions like "who actually wants this
besides domain sellers?". Meanwhile, the general public of end-users -- the
constituency ALAC claims to represent -- employs the many existing, easier
and cheaper ways to communicate in any language with each other and with
Internet content and services."

I remember going to Buenos Aires with a great deal of excitement to be part
of the team forming LACRALO in the 2000s. As ICT Professional and
practitioner this was the opportunity to stop being the front end user and
understand what was under the hood. I then went to the Rio meeting and ran
into the lawyers and the permanent policy wonks. Quite unnerving at the
time. Twenty years later in my neighbourhood ICANN continues to be in
rarified air where a minority of us reside. ICANN has gotten very little
traction despite significant effort. Some policymakers relate to ITU a lot
better because it is felt that they deal with the bread and butter issues
(connectivity, community access etc.). ICANN in most instances work on the
assumption that these minor matters have been dealt with. Matters such as
new gTLDs for example are of no relevance because of cost. If ICANN wants
to reach the underserved it has to be seen as useful  and actually be
relevant. Maybe because of its very nature and structure it cannot reach or
help the underserved and therefore focus on those areas that have moved
beyond the basics.

My mere two cents

Lance

On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 7:52 AM Evan Leibovitch via At-Large <
at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:

> Hello Haida,
>
> On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 5:05 AM Hadia Abdelsalam Mokhtar EL miniawi via
> At-Large <at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
>
>
>> I fully agree with you that raising users awareness and knowledge about
>> the possibility of having domain names and email addresses in their own
>> languages is important.  I can tell you that nearly every time I
>> participated in a session related to the DNS and/or ICANN and I raised the
>> topic of domain names and IDNs, hardly anyone in the session was aware of
>> the existence of Arabic domain names. How can they demand or understand the
>> need for it when they are barely aware of its existence?
>>
>
> ICANN first published IDN guidelines in 2003
> <https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/idn-guidelines-2003-06-20-en>.
> That there is so little awareness of them after more than 20 years of
> existence, perhaps suggests that little demand exists. That is, few people,
> companies or governments are asking ICANN or its community what solutions
> it is offering so that IDNs may be offered in response.
>
> WhatsApp and ChatGPT support more than 50 languages, Facebook more than
> 100, Google Search and Twitter more than 150 each. Most chat and broadcast
> platforms as well as applications and operating systems enable Unicode so
> that anyone can use whatever script their input device can handle. Indeed
> platforms such as QQ and Yandex were designed primarily for use in
> non-Latin-script environments. In this world in which people today easily
> access the Internet in the language of their choice using existing methods
> on even the simplest of access devices, what specifically is the *public*
> need for IDNs? Search engines from multiple sources can take a request from
> anyone in their own script and language, and find the appropriate resource
> regardless of what its domain name happens to be. This could, indeed, work
> with a single domain and a flat namespace.
>
>
>> Our mission has two aspects: Raising awareness about the existence of
>> IDNs and encouraging users who realize the benefits of IDNs to demand them.
>>
>
> What reason for confidence do you have that raising awareness of IDNs will
> create demand that does not yet exist? The technical and government
> communities within ICANN have had two decades to spread the word about IDN
> benefits, yet that message has not gained traction far outside the ICANN
> community.
>
> Even UA Day, as an outreach effort, continues to  insist on top-down
> efforts rather than bottom-up. From the ICANN report on last year's UA Day
> <https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/universal-acceptance-day-01jun23-en.pdf>,
> *not a single event* anywhere in the world targeted end-users,
> application developers, or the mainstream news media (page 10 of the
> report). The "outreach" is only being done to comfortable audiences of
> insiders who won't ask embarrassing questions like "who actually wants this
> besides domain sellers?". Meanwhile, the general public of end-users -- the
> constituency ALAC claims to represent -- employs the many existing, easier
> and cheaper ways to communicate in any language with each other and with
> Internet content and services.
>
> To me, IDN's current boosters remain because of (a) financial
> self-interest, (b) the sunk cost of decades of volunteer effort and
> emotions, and/or (c) their own deep lack of awareness regarding what the
> world has already done to solve the challenges of multilingual access.
>
> The real awareness that I see absent is that IDNs have been met by
> widespread public indifference, if not rejection, despite 20 years of
> availability and promotion. A year's worth of more UA days is not going to
> change that, because simply it's an inferior solution to what has already
> been solved.
>
> Cheers,
>
> - Evan
>
> _______________________________________________
> At-Large mailing list
> At-Large at atlarge-lists.icann.org
> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
>
> At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
> _______________________________________________
> By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your
> personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance
> with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and
> the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can
> visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or
> configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or
> disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.

-- 
Lance Hinds
Chief Technology Officer
BrainStreet Group
287 'C' Albert St.
Georgetown Guyana

This message contains information that may be privileged and/or
confidential and is the property of BrainStreet Technologies or BrainStreet
Learning. The information contained herein is intended only for the
individual or entity to whom it is addressed and others authorized to
receive it . If you are not the intended recipient, you are not authorized
to read, print, retain, copy, disseminate, distribute, or take  any action
in reliance to the contents of this information or any part thereof and it
may be unlawful to do so. If you receive this message in error, please
notify the sender immediately and delete all copies of this message from
your system. BrainStreet Technologies or BrainStreet Learning are neither
liable for the proper and complete transmission of the information
contained in this communication nor any delay in its receipt.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large/attachments/20240403/cc0aaba7/attachment.html>