[EURO-Discuss] [At-Large] UA Days

Mon Apr 1 20:48:46 UTC 2024

Dear all,

I would like to start by making clear what I believe marks the difference between my Weltanschauung and Evan’s, before trying to find where there is room for a constructive discussion.

I have tried what I could, from taking a deep breath, counting to 10 - 100 or 1000, let the matter aside and come back to the email a couple of hours later, but I can’t help being deeply annoyed by statements made by people interacting with the Internet - as tool as well as community - in their comfort zone, using their mother tongue and their script, about how this is not a problem for who does not have this luxury because there are workarounds that they can use.

As I have stated many times, I believe that “Internet is for everyone” means that everybody should have the same ease of use and interaction regardless the difference they have from the dominant model. This includes the right of having their digital identity - like a web site or an email address - being usable and accessible regardless the fact that there are other possibilities or turnarounds, or even other ways to assert their digital identity. This is my red line, that I will never cross.

Going to a possible constructive discussion, I do agree with Evan that money could be spent in a better way. It is true that I have taken for granted - many years ago - that the introduction of IDNs would have been the panacea to the inequalities in the Internet world. Of course, we all knew that there are bigger problems, like accessibility, costs, speed, material, etc., but at least I thought we could move in the good direction.

I agree that we need to rethink the strategy, I find the three points listed by Evan are at least worth a discussion within At-Large - I paste them here for convenience:

  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.

This said, I maintain that in the meantime there is room for At-Large to get organised to put pressure on providers to become UA-ready. I don’t think that the two actions are mutually exclusive, quite the contrary: on one hand to correct what is a current dysfunction of the system and on the other hand to work on the strategy for the next phase.

Best regards,
Roberto

PS: the Bangladesh farmer was an example I used to make sure I did not misunderstood Karl’s point. As it turned out, I did in effect misunderstand - now it is all set. This said, I do not know farmers in Bangladesh, but have often spoken to people in underserved communities and, although they might have even bigger problem, often the language and script limitations are indicated as one. And I don’t feel like dismissing them just because they can survive anyway.

On 01.04.2024, at 12:10, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch at gmail.com> wrote:

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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